By Jonathan S Tobin, COMMENTARY
President Obama was careful to wait until after the presidential election to move against Israel since injecting his tilt against Israel into the campaign would not have helped Hillary Clinton’s faltering efforts. Nevertheless, Obama must know that his parting shot at Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has implications for the future of his struggling party. But the party’s growing left-wing faction, led by Senator Bernie Sanders and figures like Rep. Keith Ellison, doesn’t care. These figures share Obama’s disdain for the Israeli government and have no qualms about a measure that strips Israel of leverage in peace negotiations, brands hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Jerusalem and settlement blocs as outlaws, subjects Israeli officials to possible prosecution in international courts, and gives new life to the BDS movement waging economic war on the Jewish state. Nor, other than a few Congressional leaders, do many Democrats seem concerned that on their party’s watch, the U.S. has signaled approval of the Palestinians’ end run around negotiations, effectively killing the peace process.
For years, many Democrats have complained about Republican claims that the GOP had become the pro-Israel party. Democrats argued that such assertions politicized what should to be a bipartisan issue. But this ignored their party’s steady drift away from support for Israel. Under Obama that trend ceased being a matter of nuance and became a political fact. Eight years after Obama openly declared his goal to have more “daylight” between the United States and Israel, his strategy has created an open breach.
Large numbers of Democrats still count themselves as strong backers of Israel. Yet Obama was able to count on their silence or acquiescence as he went from ginned-up spats with Netanyahu to a rapprochement with Iran and now to a sea change in U.S. policy. Obama’s latest move leaves the Jewish state isolated on the world stage at a time of growing anti-Semitism.
One year ago, I wrote in COMMENTARY about what we termed the “Democratic Divorce from Israel.” In the last 12 months, concern about the Democrats’ abandonment of their former stance as a uniformly pro-Israel party has only grown.
The split among Democrats was put on display during the Democratic primaries, when Clinton’s support for Israel’s self-defense contrasted with Sanders’s UN-style canards about the 2014 Gaza campaign. But while Clinton won the nomination, Sanders’s position was embraced by the party’s liberal activist base. Clinton’s defeat will only accelerate the left’s march to ascendancy. That a virulent foe of Israel like Keith Ellison has received support(including the backing of Schumer) in his campaign for the DNC post indicates which way the wind is blowing among Democrats.
Obama’s UN betrayal was not so much a turning point as the logical conclusion of a long-term trend with inevitable consequences. Nor does Obama’s exit from the White House leave the way open for a comeback for pro-Israel Democrats. Even in retirement Obama will be the party’s most prestigious and popular figure and could continue with his vendetta against Netanyahu and Israel (think Jimmy Carter on steroids). Additionally, the leftist faction that despised Clinton and seems likely to be calling the shots in the coming years is sympathetic to attacks on Israel.
It would be a tragedy both for Israel and the United States if support for Israel became one on which partisan affiliation determined opinions. But the problem here is not the lockstep support for Israel that has become nearly universal among Republicans and which is manifesting itself in the positions taken by the incoming Trump administration. Rather it is the ease with which Obama was able to abandon Israel without significant pushback from his party. And an ascendant left wing will only continue the trend. It remains to be seen whether what’s left of the pro-Israel faction in the party—both among elected officials and its major donors—have the will or the numbers to reverse what seems now to be an inevitable slide toward hostility to the Jewish state.
George Washington did not have the authority to do that under the Constitution. It’s all judicial tyranny. They say the law means whatever they want. It’s arbitrary nonsense.
This is all the constitution says:
“The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.
He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.
The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of their next session.
Section 3.
He shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, and shall commission all the officers of the United States.”
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii
That’s it. It’s not in there. The court has no business deciding anything that isn’t literally specified. If the Constitution doesn’t mention it, it’s none of their frigging business! We need strict constructionists on the court. The Corker-Menendez Amendment was unconstitutional, Obama-care’s punitive provisions were un-constitutional. They didn’t strike them down. Something has to be done to cut the courts down to size.
Democrat is spelled S O C I A L I S T in Europe.
Or vice versa: how the ‘Demofrats’ “lost” their deplorable pledges.
regarding Zivotofsky v. Kerry: “Obama could recognize new Palestinian state” Dec. 31, 2016 |Updated Jan. 1, 2017 6:53 p.m.
By SUSAN SHELLEY / Staff Columnist
“When the United States failed to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, breaking with decades of U.S. policy, it was clear that more, and worse, might be coming.
…
But if President Obama is committed to “saving the two-state solution” before leaving office, he doesn’t need a UN resolution. He has the power as president to recognize a Palestinian state, on whatever territory they claim.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court considered exactly that question and reached exactly that conclusion.
The case of Zivotofsky v. Kerry involved the passport of a child born in Jerusalem to American citizens. Under a law passed by Congress in 2002, U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem had the right to ask the State Department to list their place of birth as “Jerusalem, Israel” on their passports.
Congress passed that law, section 214(d) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, to override the U.S. government’s long-standing policy that Jerusalem was not recognized as being under any country’s sovereignty.
The Supreme Court said the law was unconstitutional. Citing history as far back as George Washington’s recognition of the revolutionary government of France in 1793, the justices concluded, “the power to recognize or decline to recognize a foreign state and its territorial bounds resides in the President alone.”
Harry Truman recognized Israel in 1948. Will Barack Obama recognize Palestine in 2017?
If he does, recognition by the European Union, Russia and China could immediately follow. By the time President Trump arrives in the Oval Office, a Palestinian state hostile to Israel and controlled in part by the terrorist group Hamas, which governs Gaza, could be a fact on the ground.
Would he do it?
No one can stop him. Obama could recognize a Palestinian state on the morning of Jan. 20 and then go to the Capitol for Donald Trump’s inauguration.
For the rocket-firing terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who applauded the UN resolution condemning Israeli settlements after it passed without a U.S. veto, it would be a triumph.
For Israel, it might mean another war for survival.
But for Obama, it would be a wall of framed page-one newspaper stories in his presidential library. A “legacy” doesn’t build itself, you know.”
Susan Shelley is a columnist for the Southern California News Group.
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/breaking-739872-united-jerusalem.html