Obama oversteps

By Richard Baehr, ISRAEL HAYOM

One analyst is now using the language of Captain Ahab and the great white whale, from Herman Melville’s 1851 novel “Moby Dick,” to describe U.S. President Barack Obama’s obsessive pursuit of a nuclear agreement with Iran.

An alternate analysis might be Obama as Captain Queeg from the movie “The Caine Mutiny,” as he is currently displaying the same kind of paranoia seen in that erratic, vengeful captain. In Obama’s case, he appears to be motivated by a need to punish anyone who might interfere with his plans for securing a nuclear deal with Iran, whatever its terms, before he leaves office. Today, the list of enemies interfering with Obama’s plans includes U.S. Republicans, Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This week has demonstrated that when the president becomes really upset with someone or some country, his cool facade melts away and he morphs into a very unattractive figure, one that even members of his own party in Congress may be willing to oppose on key issues, at least when it comes to the Iran deal and policy toward Israel. In this case, Obama and his team have made specific threats regarding how the administration might behave toward Israel — a policy reassessment, withholding veto support at the U.N., pushing a Palestinian state at the Security Council. Perhaps later there will also be foreign aid deductions or sanctions (hey, you have to impose the sanctions on someone after lifting them from the U.S.’s new strategic partner, Iran).

One of Obama’s most cooperative enablers, journalist Jonathan Chait, in essence acknowledged that sanctions directed at Israel might be in the picture soon. Defending Obama against accusations of “being nicer to Iran than Israel,” he pointed out that Obama has not moved for sanctions against Israel yet.

Amid reports of an enraged president in the White House after hearing news of Netanyahu’s victory in last Tuesday’s election, it did not take long for Obama, administration spokespeople and the ever-reliable Obama allies in the press to launch a full-fledged campaign against Netanyahu. They had two excuses, remarks uttered or posted by Netanyahu in final days before the election that led to accusations that he was both “suppressing” the Arab vote and giving up on the two-state solution. Incidentally, the two-state solution is currently being kept alive mainly by people who do not live in the region, know little about it, or who get paid to promote it.

The White House assumed that funding the opposition to Netanyahu, sending an experienced “get out the vote” operator to get similar results with anti-Netanyahu voters in Israel, repeatedly body-slamming Netanyahu, boycotting his speech to Congress, and threatening that relations would deteriorate should Netanyahu be re-elected, would be enough to convince Israeli voters that the safe course was to vote for the center-left parties, and have Isaac Herzog as the next prime minister. The message was that this would be the way to preserve relations with America, and — hint, hint — not get Obama any angrier at Israel.

The allegation that Netanyahu tried to suppress Arab voters was too juicy to pass up. Of course, it was a malicious lie. However artless Netanyahu’s final get-out-the-vote message to his own voters may have been, there is no evidence whatsoever that Netanyahu or anyone in his government interfered with efforts by Arabs to vote. Did Netanyahu have a right to condemn efforts by NGOs (funded by European governments, and in part by the U.S. State Department) to stir resentment toward him and encourage voter turnout among the opposition? Was it not his right to use this as a spur to get his own voters to show up?

Regarding Netanyahu’s controversial comment about the two-state solution: He specifically stated that Palestinian statehood would be impossible given the current conditions — Hamas control over Gaza and participation in a Palestinian government, the turmoil in the region, the possibility that Hamas/Hezbollah style leadership could take control in the West Bank and put all Israelis at risk from ever more lethal rocket fire.

Netanyahu tried to clarify both remarks immediately after the election in interviews he gave to any American radio or television program that would have him. Netanyahu is not a fool; he was aware that his statements, especially distorted by those unfriendly to him and his government, could create new problems for him with the Obama administration. The interviews in which Netanyahu explained his remarks were out there for the Obama administration to view before the American president completed his NCAA basketball picks for the men’s and women’s brackets and finally found time to call the prime minister to congratulate him for his election victory. After what were almost certainly lukewarm congratulations for his “plurality” victory, an official White House press release revealed that Obama tore into Netanyahu for the election day comments, letting him know the administration was going to rely on these as the real Israeli policy, nothing Netanyahu said or did before or after. And of course, there would be consequences.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, unhappy that no one specifically asked him about the supposed suppression of Arab voters, opted to reiterate the White House’s discontent. Obama repeatedly made Netanyahu’s campaign the subject of his public comments over the last few days. The White House’s friends in the press (better described as units 1-8 of the Venceremos Brigade) then went predictably ballistic accusing Israel of disgracing its democratic heritage, destroying hopes for peace, alienating Americans and making Israel a partisan issue in the U.S. They argued that Israel was making it impossible for American progressives to support them, especially when there are so many more attractive options available for the Left to love — Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, the Palestinian Authority (where Mahmoud Abbas is now in the 11th year of a four-year term) and anyone opposing Islamophobia.

The president may reflect the emerging views of his leftist party, but he has been busy shaping its leftward tilt. This tilt requires much less support for Israel (one country among many), and paints Israel as the perceived favorite in its conflict with the Palestinians, making it undeserving of sympathy or support from those who want nothing more than redistribution of power, wealth and influence from the strong to the weak. But Obama and the very vocal Left are not in synch with the congressional Democratic party , which is not nearly as anxious to cut ties with Israel.

There are exceptions, though. Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, long considered one of the most strident leftists in the House of Representatives, called for “regime change” in Israel just days before the election. Schakowsky seemed unaware that regime change is used to describe a change in the form of government (e.g. military coup, revolution) not the replacement of one party with another in the same type of government system. Regime change is what might have occurred following the massive street demonstrations during the “green revolution” in 2009 in Iran after that country’s stolen election. Schakowsky and Obama were silent during that week. Of course, the president had grand plans for Iran, once the U.S. withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan, striking a deal favorable to the mullahs on their nuclear program, and allowing, if not encouraging, Iran to become the surrogate regional power in our absence. A potential Arab Spring in Teheran would have threatened those “achievements” and policy objectives.

This weekend, over half the Democrats in the House of Representatives and virtually all the Republicans signed a letter authored by Democrat Eliot Engel and Republican Ed Royce (in total over 360 of the 435 members) demanding a congressional right to review any future Iran agreement. It appears that in the Senate, the effort to accomplish the same review may have hit the two-thirds veto override mark. We are seeing what Jennifer Rubin calls congressional backlash against the White House’s new campaign against Israel. The president is likely to face sharp resistance from both parties if he actually tries to harm Israel at the United Nations. The black caucus and Schakowsky and a few others will follow their president over a political cliff, but most Democrats are not there, and won’t be there any time soon in terms of going to political war with Israel . Republicans are moving on the issue — with Florida’s Marco Rubio, and Arkansas’ Tom Cotton, in particular, blasting Obama in speeches over the past few days, making clear that Israel is a U.S. ally and Congress will stand with Israel, even as the president runs to Tehran looking for allies.

But the fear remains that in his last 22 months in office, Obama may be perfectly willing to go to war with Congress over Israel and Iran, since they are his twin foreign policy obsessions, beyond framing radical Islam in a good light (“since it does not exist”). And part of that fear is that when it comes to Israel and to its prime minister, Obama may have his hands full like Captain Queeg.