Do not speak of it in public. Do not expect any Israeli official to admit it. But Israel is facing an issue unlike anything it has had to deal with during the past 50 years: It cannot depend on the United States.
True, the relationship in terms of weapons’ supply remains good. Old programs continue to provide advanced arms to Israel. Nor is the problem the one most people think of first: on Israel-Palestinian, “peace process” issues.
President Barack Obama’s Administration has seen that no real progress is possible on that front. It tends to blame Israel in public and Obama intensely dislikes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but those problems have little material effect. If that personal matter were the only issue involved Israel could muddle through as it has with other presidents.
The difficulty with Obama is that his entire strategy in the Middle East is contrary to Israeli interests, except for putting some sanction’ pressure on Iran regarding its nuclear weapons’ program. The greatest threat to Israel today is the rise of radical Islamist regimes. Here is how Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh puts it:
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“The Palestinian cause is winning. With the Muslim Brotherhood part of the government [in Egypt], they [the Egyptians] will not besiege Gaza. They will not arrest Palestinians. They will not give cover to Israel to launch a war….Israel is disturbed by this. It knows the strategic environment is changing. Iran is an enemy. Relations are deteriorating with Turkey. With Egypt, they are really cold. Israel is in a security situation they have never been in before.”
Even though Israel has faced worst strategic situations and the Islamists are badly divided, Haniyeh has put his finger on the central strategic factor today. Radical Islamists who want to open a new round of battle against Israel now rule or are likely to do so very soon in Egypt, Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, and Turkey.
Here is where the problem with the United States comes in. Obama does not really view this trend as a threat. He spent the first half of his term engaging with Iran and its ally Syria. Obama and his administration regards the Islamists as people who are either already moderate or are likely to become so by governing.
This is, of course, the opposite of the Israeli assessment. In Syria, the U.S. government even helped organize and supports an external opposition leadership in which Islamists form the majority even though it is doubtful that this reflects their level of support within the country.
To put it bluntly, the U.S. government does not even recognize the existence of the number-one threat to Israel.
And to make matters worse, the government that Obama looks to for advice, guidance, and interpretation of the region is not Israel but the Islamist regime in Turkey. That government’s sharp turn to a highly emotional anti-Israel policy has not cost it anything at all in terms of its relations with the White House, something that would have been unthinkable under any previous president.
That is why Israel, as well as the Middle East generally, is going to be an important issue in this year’s presidential election. To preserve relations with the United States, Israeli leaders will neither do nor say anything about that contest. Yet nothing could be more obvious than that Obama’s reelection would be extremely damaging for Israel’s security.
Reading all of the above just makes me realize all the more that Israel is G-d’s land, and don’t let me be responsible for going against Him. Obviously, I am not a writer, but I do know what the Bible says, and I know that the last battle belongs to Him, and I don’t want to stand before Him and be found ‘wanting.’ Only when Jesus returns will all these things come to where they belong.
Good Morning Yamit, well done. “In 1920, the gullible but mercurial Ford acquired a forged typescript convincing him of an evil….” Perhaps Ford, and his accomplices were not so gullible perhaps it started with the panic of the capitalists from the events in Russia and their failure to eradicate communism in Russia after the revolution. I believe that another factor is that the holocaust of the jews was pre planned, financed and supported by these industrialists partly as a means to stop communism. They were in panic over the Russian revolution and saw intellectual jewry as being the cause and were afraid that these jewish ideas would spread throughout the world. I believe they saw their last stand to keep europe being in germany. The simple solution was to wipe out the jews and in fact they succeed in wiping out half. Really all the assets of these protagonists belong to the jews rather than to the current heirs and shareholders. Another idea whose time has not yet come.
I saw Edwin Black speak a year or two ago. Was a good talk. The only topic he doesn’t really address is how the legacy of the State Department’s virulent antisemitism carries forward into the present, such as its big-lie campaign against Israel, its lies about US-Israel relations, or its penchant for lying about the legality of Jewish rights to own land in Palestine.
Interestingly, IBM is at the forefront of helping the government tabulate and keep track of the pigmentation levels of Americans. The more things change…
I agree that if the Democrats stay in power, then the future of U.S.-Israeli relations is bleak.
However, I don’t agree with the analysis that Democrats will become a “permanent majority”. I don’t have them handy at the moment, but I’ve seen recent polls, showing that those self-identifying as Democrats is down, while Republicans are up. There is also a very large indepedent segment, disillusioned with both parties, that is up for grabs every four years.
Look at Congress. Republicans control the House now, and may well control the Senate in 2012, even if Obama is re-elected (because he is only going to get re-elected, in my view, by a plurality, not a majority). If the Senate turns, Obama could well be impeached during his second term.
It can go either way. If the GOP nominee runs a skilled campaign and defeats Obama, and from there, provided good enough leadership to get re-elected – “Reagan”-style – the U.S. of four years from now could easily wind up both majority GOP and more pro-Israel than ever before. Don’t get me wrong; I’m hardly saying this WILL happen, only that it is very plausible.
As to a patron, I agree with Alexis on Russia. Wouldn’t trust them at all, no way, never.
Lieberman is dreaming if he really thinks that.
India is too gutless, due to their large Moslem minority.
China is the best of the lot, but there are big risks there, too. As to the oil issue, that is not such a big deal. The Arabs have to sell the oil, they really can’t blackmail effectively with it as it is their only source of income. For decades, we in the U.S. imported – and still import today – gobs of Saudi oil, and they’ve had to tolerate America’s relationship with Israel all the while. The ’73 embargo hurt them more than us. China has no Moslem minority that has any clout, and no Arab government is going to try to dictate to them what they can or cannot do, who their friends will be.
The danger with China is that they are unstable politically and economically, and their human rights record is pretty bad. Does Israel really want to be identified with that sort of regime as their primary strategic partner? On the plus side – and I see this as the biggest plus in China’s case – they just aren’t anti-Semites. That particular derangement seems incomprehensible to them; if anything, they are philo-Semitic.
I have a relative who is a big-shot China specialist in academia. She speaks fluent Mandarin, has written a few books on them, travels there frequently I mentioned to her once that I had heard that the Bad Guys were trying to circulate The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in China to stir up anti-Jewish/Israeli sentiment. She laughed and observed to me that knowing the Chinese, even if they believed what was in The Protocols, rather than recoil from it, they’d marvel in admiration of the cleverness of the Jews, thinking, “We need to do something like that!”
Do your own search. Google: Rubin yamit82 Israpundit 2010 and 2011
Sure I have, but I do not have a think tank that purports to be expert in International and political relations. I do not make a living by voicing opinions in the public and private domains. Rubin has a following that he influences through his commentaries. That gives him power I don’t have. If he is wrong on such critical issues as the article above compared to previous opinions then everything he states should be viewed with critical skepticism. Comparing me with him is like comparing apples and oranges. My opinions don’t much matter to anyone except myself, if I err no harm done, not so Rubin and those like him.
Obama was raised abroad and has no real affinity for America. Obama was raised abroad in largely Islamic countries and thus has no affinity or understanding of Israel. Obama was raised by his grandmother after his Leftist parents abandoned him, thus he has no real affinity for anyone but himself.
Obama is seriously damaged goods and has managed to inflict that damage on the US and Israel.
If the damage Obama has done wasn’t so serious, Obama would be a pathetic figure, as it is, he has become a real tragedy.
Additionally, this Hindu metaphor should remind us that India is our natural enemy.
India can replace America as our main ally.
Thank you for posting this important article!
I’m reminded, of all things, of the Bhagavad Gita. If I remember correctly, it tells the story of an epic battle: the hero Arjuna on one side, and his brothers or cousins on the other.
The god Krishna offers assistance to both sides: they can choose the form this assistance will take. The brothers or cousins choose to have all of Krishna’s armies. Arjuna chooses the alternative: to have Krishna drive his chariot.
This sounds like the position of Israel. All the armies of the world may soon be arrayed against us. As long as our chariot is guided by HaShem–Who set up these circumstances and this battle in the first place–we’re on the winning side.
May we remember from Whom we take our guidance.
Please provide a link to the article where Rubin prizes Obama.
Thank you in advance.
Bland: this is a problem?
Good luck with that. Last I heard, Russia was actively courting an alliance with Iran. But who knows? Things change all the time…
Yamit82, you’ve never made a mistake? Rubin seems to be seeing very clearly now, and he’s corrected his misassessment of the big O.
I agree with everyone here except Sam Fistel, who is too generous to the pre-Carter Democratic Presidents.
What does any of this say, other than the fact that Zionists tend to congregate on Israpundit and the others congregate elsewhere? For all the fur that flies here, we’re about as different from each other politically, as two Southern Baptists sitting next to each other in the same church; and the same can be said about any other blog.
Opposing comment: Echo.
Opposing comment: Echo.
Opposing comment: Echo.
Opposing comment: Echo.
Welcome to the Internet Age 🙁
Op-Ed: American Corporate Complicity Created Undeniable Nazi Nexus
IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM’s strategic alliance with Nazi Germany — beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
Excerpt: IBM organizes the Holocaust
http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Books/Article.aspx?id=137210
The Nazi nexus
By EDWIN BLACK
(Jerusalem Post, April 3, 2009) Adolf Hitler was completely responsible for the Holocaust. But Hitler had help. When zealous Nazis were motivated to wage war against an imaginary generation-to-generation Jewish conspiracy, when Nazis created ghastly extermination plans to help ensure their master race would rule the world, when the German military was enabled to smash across Europe with lightning speed in heavy Blitz trucks, bomb mercilessly from the air in advanced JU-88s and create carnage across the seas with deadly torpedoes, when Josef Mengele saw the scientific need to undertake heinous medical experiments on twins in Auschwitz, when the Reich was enabled to identify the Jews everywhere in Europe and then systematically pauperize and destroy them, when all these terrible things were done, the shape and scope of the horror was pivotally determined by major American industrial giants.
Now the dots can be connected. They create an undeniably Nazi nexus between iconic American corporations and the greatest crime of the 20th century: the Holocaust.
Who gave Hitler the initial basis for transmogrifying centuries of outgroup religious hatred into a new 20th-century political anti-Semitism? It was Henry Ford, acting directly through the Ford Motor Company. In 1920, the gullible but mercurial Ford acquired a forged typescript convincing him of an evil international Jewish cabal determined to subjugate the world through devious manipulation of the world’s governments, newspapers and economic systems. The revelations were contained in the notorious and fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
To purvey this new brand of Jew hatred to the world, Ford purchased a failed newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which serialized the Protocols for 91 weeks. His company then published the series as a book, The International Jew. Using the techniques of mass production, Ford was able to escalate the Protocols from a negligible, randomly circulated irritant to a national sensation of 500,000 copies. Devoting the national sales force and the assets of the Ford Motor Company to the task made Henry Ford the first to organize political anti-Semitism in America. Indeed, he was the hero of anti-Semites the world over.
In Germany, where Ford was venerated, The International Jew was translated and published in February 1921. It enjoyed six editions in two years with thousands of copies in print. Ford’s book quickly became the bible of German anti-Semites and early incarnations of the Nazi party. Nazis shipped the work throughout the country “by the carload.” Among the many Germans massively influenced by the book was Hitler. He read the work at least two years before Mein Kampf was written.
It shows. In Mein Kampf, chapter 11, Hitler wrote, “The whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie [as] shown incomparably by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion… With positively terrifying certainty, they reveal the nature and activity of the Jewish people and… their ultimate final aims.” Hitler described Ford as his hero. No wonder Ford received Hitler’s German Eagle medal in a lavish Berlin ceremony. The medal was reserved for foreigners who rendered special service to the Reich.
Isolation: “The United States will turn on Israel, slowly and subtly.”… written in 1990
The second to last sentence should read “The US was more of a haven for Nazi and other war criminals who had the blood of Jews on their hands than any other country in the world.
I don’t agree with Samuel Fistel. The truth is the US has pretended to be friendly to Israel while favoring the Arabs. The US is never going to risk displeasing their masters in Saudi Arabia. The US didn’t sell any weapons to Israel until after the 1967 war. The very incompetent General Eisenhower, who as a strategist wasn’t fit to clean the boots of the top generals of the Red Army or German army was hostile to Israel. LBJ refused to lift a finger when Israel was blockaded and the USS Liberty was deliberately attacked because LBJ was using it to send vital information to Syria and Egypt. In 1973, the US knew about the planned attack on Israel but didn’t inform Israel until 1 hour before the attack. Then the arch Capo Kissinger deliberately held up resupplying Israel . It was non Jew Alexander Haig who finally arranged the resupply. The Camp David accords cost Israel billions including lucrative Sinai oil fields for which Israel got nothing in return. The Financial Aid which was to cover the costs of Israel evacuating the Sinai was really used not to help Israel but to prove to the masters of the US that Israel was under the thumb of the US because of the aid. The aid did not help Israel. Israel could have sold weapons to China every year and made a profit which would have exceeded what the US give in CREDITS. The CREDITS hurt Israel’s domestic weapons industry. When has the US ever did anything except prevent Israel from finishing off their enemies. Ronald Senility Reagan saved Yassir Arafat just as Israel was about the capture him. So what has really changed. Since oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia the US government has favored the Arabs while certain Presidents may have pretended to be an ally of Israel in order to win votes and obtain campaign contributions. The US was more of a refuge for Nazi War criminals and war criminals from the Ukraine and other nations thand provided sanctuary for Jew killers after WWII. The US never helped Israel. What ally would make their ally passively suffer an ballistic missiles attacks on civilians as the Bush 41 with the ugly Sec of Defense Baker with the very badly done hair transplant who famously said F–k the Jews.
Over the years I have told my elderly mother, you know it is inevitable that one day the whole world is going to turn against Israel. She keeps saying, I pray that will never be. I pray that Australia will always stand with Israel. I keep telling her, we are now. But one day it will just be Israel and Hashem against the whole world. I wonder how that will turn out?
The future of US-Israeli relations:
If things change for the worse, but very slowly, people don’t realize it until too late, and then wonder what happened. Today’s Obama-Democrats are entirely different from the old Truman, Kennedy, and LBJ Democrats who liked Jewish Israel. Obama and today’s Democrats are in lock-step with the liberal European Jew-haters.
The Democrats will soon become a permanent majority, either in 2012 or 2016. Soon after that, America will cut Jewish Israel loose.
Israel will have difficulty finding a new patron. China and India are both entirely dependent on muslim oil. Russia is a strange possibility. Russia currently hates Jews and Jewish Israel. But the muslims also strongly hate the Russians (who have killed innumerable muslims in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Dagestan).
Russia’s only remaining muslim client is Syria, and the longer Russia keeps Assad in power, the more the arabs will hate Russia when they finally overthrow Assad.
Avigdor Lieberman seems to think that, because of his Russian origins, he will be able to bring Putin and Russia over to the Israeli side when Russia loses Syria. But I’m not sure that Russia will ever be able to overcome its virulent Jew-hatred.
One thing about pundits like Rubin, their readers have short memories which allow them to say anything. Not so long ago I criticized Rubin for his praise of Obama and his confidence that America would stand behind Israel.