The Truth About Obama’s Pressure on Israel

There's some considerable debate flying under the wire regarding some recent editorial comments on the Middle East peace process. See for example, the Los Angeles Times, "Obama's Evenhanded Mideast Policy," and the New York Times, "The Settlements Issue."

Well, check out Jonathan Tobin's response on this, "Editorials Skewer the Truth About Obama’s Pressure on Israel":

Yesterday the Washington Post stated the obvious when it noted that under President Obama, America’s relations with the state of Israel had deteriorated. In contrast to the administration’s desperate efforts to curry favor with Venezuela, Russia, and Iran, the focus of American foreign policy in the past seven months has been to heighten tensions with the Middle East’s sole democracy.

A day later, as if on cue, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times responded with their own editorials in support of Obama’s blundering.

The L.A. Times’s stance, titled “Obama’s evenhanded Mideast policy,” is a straightforward defense of an abrupt change toward Israel while disingenuously claiming that Obama’s friendship with it ought not to be questioned. The editorial endorses the downgrading of the U.S.-Israel alliance from one of close cooperation and support to a more equivocal relationship, in which Israel would be subjected to pressure to conform to specific ideas about achieving peace. Considering “evenhanded” a good approach means ignoring the isolation that would ensue if the United States abandons Israel: the Jewish state would be effectively left without an ally in the region and surrounded by a hostile Islamic culture that still rejects its legitimacy even in those few states that have officially come to terms with it.

But the claim of evenhandedness is itself a falsehood since it is very clear that Obama’s public pressure on Israel far outweighs Washington’s gentle urgings that the Palestinians should cease their support for the infrastructure of terror and to halt the official incitement of hatred toward Jews and Israel that is the hallmark of Palestinian political culture. Nor has the administration’s call for Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations to tone down their hostility toward Israel been either energetic or successful.

The L.A. Times goes as far as to say that Obama is right to scrap George W. Bush’s commitments to Israel, which recognized that a complete withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines would be unrealistic in any peace agreement. Israel paid for this promise in hard currency through a complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 and was rewarded for this concession with the creation of a sovereign terrorist Hamasistan that remains free to bombard southern Israel with rockets. If Obama repudiates this promise, why should Israelis trust him when he makes his own guarantees about their country’s safety once a Palestinian state is put in place?

But even more to the point, the notion that as a prerequisite for peace, the U.S.’s demand for an absolute freeze to all building over the green line in both the West Bank and Jerusalem is as absurd as it is unfair. Israel has proved time and again that it will uproot settlements in exchange for peace or even for the false hope of quiet, as was the case with Gaza. The demand for a freeze does not advance negotiations; it is a substitute for talks, since squeezing Israel in this manner predetermines the outcome in favor of the Palestinians. That is not a negotiation but rather a dictate.

There's more at the link.

See also, The Astute Bloggers, Israpundit, Power Line, and Yid With Lid.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.