OBAMA SEEMS DETERMINED TO THROW ISRAEL UNDER THE TRAIN

I have always been a strong supporter of Netanyahu, but his actions in dealing with the Obama administration since he was elected prime minister have left me sorely disappointed.
　
OBAMA HJOLDS ISRAEL IN CONTEMPT
By Caroline B. Glick
　
Jewish World Review
Nov. 19, 2010
　
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must have given Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu quite a reception. Otherwise it is hard to understand what possessed him to accept the deal he accepted when he met with her last week.
　
Under the deal, Netanyahu agreed to retroactively extend the Jewish construction ban ended on September 24 and to carry it forward an additional 90 days.
　
Clinton's demand was, "not one more brick" for Jews, meaning, no Jew will be allowed to lay even one more brick on a home he is lawfully building even as the US funds massive Palestinian construction projects. The magnitude of this discriminatory infringement on the property rights of law abiding citizens is breathtaking.
　
The 90 day freeze is supposed to usher in a period of intense negotiations between Israel and Fatah. But those negotiations will not get off the ground because PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas has no interest in talking, and will never accept any peace offer made by Israel.
　
But the Obama administration doesn't care. They aren't worried about the Palestinians accepting a deal. What they want are more Israeli land surrenders. And Clinton convinced him to agree that the next round of negotiations will be devoted strictly to a discussion of the breadth and depth of Israeli land surrenders.
　
The Palestinians won't have to recognize that Israel has a right to exist. They won't have to dismantle terrorist organizations. They won't have to stop teaching their children to aspire to become suicide bombers. They won't even have to stop their negotiations towards reconciling with Hamas.
　
Netanyahu claims that the Americans agreed to continue respecting Jewish property rights in Jerusalem. The Obama administration has refused to confirm this claim. Yet rather than use the US demurral as a justification for walking away from a bad deal, reports indicate that Netanyahu told his lawyers to figure out fancy wording to hide the American refusal.
　
Netanyahu boasts that he received three major payoffs from Obama in exchange for his agreement to ban Jewish construction and discuss land surrenders with a negotiating partner that refuses to peacefully coexist with the Jewish state. First, he claims that Obama agreed not to renew his demand that Jews be denied their property rights. Second, he says the administration agreed to sell Israel twenty more F-35s. Finally, he says Obama agreed to wait a year before signing onto anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Security Council.
　
The first payoff is nothing more than the foreign policy equivalent of buying the same dead horse twice. Obama led Netanyahu to believe he had set aside his demand that Jews be denied property rights last November, when Netanyahu announced the first construction freeze. Yet Obama repeated his demands even before the last freeze ended. Obama has no credibility on this issue. Demonstrating this, Obama is now refusing to put this pledge in writing
　
The F-35 deal is simply bizarre. Israel needs the F-35 to defend against enemies like Iran. Yet the administration claims that its agreement to sell Israel the F-35s is contingent on Israel signing a peace deal with the Palestinians. In other words, the Obama administration is now giving the PLO power to veto American military assistance to Israel by continuing to say no to peace.
　
More than anything, the F-35 payoff exposes the degree to which Obama holds Israel in contempt. This is a President who is fighting Congress tooth and nail to pass a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The administration argues that the arms are necessary to enable Saudi Arabia to deter Iran from attacking it. That would be the same Saudi Arabia that despite its massive arsenal, has never had the courage or the competence to fight its own battles.
　
On the other hand there is Israel — the US's most reliable, courageous, and competent strategic ally in the region, and even more a target of Iranian aggression than Saudi Arabia. Rather than arm Israel with all the means it requires to fight Iran, the Obama administration is downgrading military assistance by conditioning its sale of the F-35s on an Israeli agreement to commit strategic suicide by surrendering its defensible borders and capital city to its sworn enemies.
　
Finally there is the administration's pledge to support Israel at the UN for a year. What this pledge actually means is that a year from now, the Obama administration will present the deal as an excuse to abandon what has been the policy of every US administration since Lyndon Johnson and stop blocking anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council.