Israel can’t Trust Obama

President Obama’s recent speeches highlighted his affinity for the Palestinian cause.

by Shoula Romano Horing

When President Obama announced his support for the establishment of a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines as the starting point for negotiations, he in effect adopted the PLO Phased Plan for the gradual destruction of Israel.

While Hamas adopted the position of destroying Israel in one step through constant armed struggle, the PLO, led by Fatah adopted in 1974 a new political method of achieving that goal through two steps. According to the plan, the first step is the establishment of a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders; the second step is the liberation of all of Palestine by destroying the Jewish state through armed struggle or through the “the right of return” of millions of Palestinians to Israel, thus demographically and democratically causing Israel to lose its Jewish majority and character.

In his Middle East speech, Obama divided the core issues of the negotiations into two phases. According to the order set by the president, he in effect demanded of Israel to give up its only bargaining chip of land, based on the 1967 lines with “mutually agreed swaps” in the first phase, before negotiating t other substantive questions such as the “right of return,” the Hamas-Fatah alliance, and recognition of Israel as the Jewish state.

Obama argued that by mentioning “land swaps,” he did not actually call for Israel to withdraw to the indefensible ‘67 lines, as Israel can trade off other land to avoid the ‘67 lines. But in reality the president handed the Palestinians a tremendous victory by embracing their assertion that they somehow have the implicit right to every square inch beyond the Green Line and thus must be compensated on a 1:1 basis for any adjustment. This means that if Israel wishes to keep the Western Wall or the Jewish Quarter in east Jerusalem, the Palestinians would have to agree first and then in return Israel would have to compensate them with a land swap from inside tiny Israel.

Furthermore, when the president mentioned in his speech “the fate of the Palestinian refugees”, he did not say that there will be no “right of return” to Israel proper and that the Palestinian refugees and their descendants will have to find their home in a future state of Palestine.



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Moreover, Obama did not take any firm stand concerning the issue of Hamas and Fatah reconciliation. He did not say that the US will not recognize or support a Palestinian state as long as Hamas, which is recognized as a terrorist organization by US law, is in the government or unless Hamas recognizes Israel‘s right to exist and stops terrorist acts against Israel. Thus, Israel is called on by Obama to agree to risk the possibility that Palestine will be ruled by Hamas with its rocket arsenal firing daily at the Jewish state’s main population centers from the West Bank as it does from Gaza.

Prime Minister Netanyahu came to Washington hoping to get Obama’s help in derailing the upcoming vote in the UN in September recognizing a Palestinian state. But Obama’s decision to publicly confront Israel again, with only few hours warning on the eve of Netanyahu’s visit, further weakens and isolates Israel internationally, which in turn will help fast forward the vote at the UN General Assembly.

But Israel is not alone. It has the support of the majority of the American people and the overwhelming support of a Bi-Partisan Congress as we saw from the numerous standing ovations given to Netanyahu during his address. Israel’s only solution is to bypass President Obama and to appeal directly to Congress to pressure Obama to veto the UN decision.

According to the UN charter, an American veto at the Security Council would effectively derail any attempt by the General Assembly to grant full membership to a Palestinian state. Such a vote by the General Assembly would merely be a symbolic victory without any legal leverage to harm Israel. Moreover, Israel can persuade Congress to cut its aid to the PA because of its alliance with Hamas which violates US laws.

By now, most objective observers would agree that Obama‘s heart and sympathy lie with the Palestinian cause and if elected to a second term he will work hard to be the “father” of the Palestinian state at Israel’s expense. Israel’s friends, Jews and non-Jews alike, need to work very hard during the next 17 months to help elect a Republican president who will be Pro-Israel first.

Shoula Romano Horing was born and raised in Israel. She is an attorney in Kansas City and a national speaker. Her blog: www.shoularomanohoring.com

Israel's 1967 Lines? No, Thanks

Raanan Shaked explains the real reason for Israel’s refusal to withdraw to 1967 borders.

by Raanan Shaked

To be honest, I don’t want to return to the 1967 borders. It’s too damn crowded here as it is.

I realize that this is a crappy reason for giving up on comprehensive regional peace, but I’m almost willing to bet that this is the reason why most Israelis, including professional peace fans such as myself, do not really want to return to the 1967 lines.

It appears to us that we have a very small state as it is. Indeed, as it is, everyone around here steps on each other’s foot. As it is, a residential tower is being constructed under my sink. As it is, the feeling around here on Shabbat is that there’s nowhere else to run – the cement, the dirt, the tin signs, and mostly... these Israelis – they’re everywhere! And we’re out of space.

Am I joking here? Well, not entirely. The notion of a “Jewish State” to be established on land roughly 10% of Idaho’s size was a bad joke to begin with. This is a simple calculation error: If you take into account the fact that there are some 14 million Jews in the world who are all supposed to live here eventually, and if you take into account the fact that the State of Israel’s size is what is known as “George’s farm” in Texas, you immediately understand that a “home for the Jewish people” in fact meant “slums for the Jewish people.”

I realize that the “it’s too crowded here” argument doesn’t sound impressive, yet nonetheless, it is the only reason why Israelis don’t really want to hear about the “1967 borders.” It’s not that we are actually using most of this extra territory, yet when we are being asked to crowd a little more, we feel they went a little too far.

This is the kind of psyche that Americans are unfamiliar with: For them, there is no such thing as “crowded.” They can always disappear in the endless spaces of South Dakota or in the deserts of Nevada. Space is not a problem. There’s space, and right next to it there’s more space.

In Israel we’re out of space. Not only don’t we have another state, the existing state it too small for us by two sizes. Our beloved Obama, how about you get stuck in the holiday traffic jams for an hour and a half in an attempt to make it to your vacation at the Bed & Breakfast, where 15 Israeli families with their vocal children are already waiting for you?

This Bed & Breakfast, by the way, is on the Golan Heights – territory that the 1967 lines also seek to deprive from us, and now of all times, when the Cross-Israel Highway makes the drive so much shorter! The Golan Heights – apparently the only Tuscany we shall ever be able to reach without flying there – is Israel’s only ventilation outlet and escape route these days. How did we ever manage to live without it before 1967? Well, there used to be fewer than three million people here back then and we had a whole state at our disposal, including some nature. Since then, we used all of it. Twice.

I realize that “it’s really crowded here, and besides, haven’t you been to the Golan Heights? Isn’t it lovely? Wouldn’t it be a shame to give it up?” doesn’t quite sound like the kind of argument we can present in Washington: It will melt on the plane. Yet nonetheless, at least for Israelis my age and younger – those who were born in the extended version of the State of Israel – The “1967 borders” sound a little like “go back to your room and stay there.”

It’s childish, it’s retarded, and it’s completely inadmissible. Yet still, this is what all of us think to ourselves when we are told “1967 lines” – we don’t feel like it. So at least let’s be honest with ourselves: This is not about “defensible borders” or any kind of similar security nonsense; we refuse to return to the 1967 borders simply because it seems too crowded and depressing. Besides, you can’t relocate the Golan Heights Winery to the Negev without changing the brand name.



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Obama Throws Israel to the Dogs

by Robert Spencer

America is on the verge of abandoning its most reliable ally in the Middle East, thanks to Barack Hussein Obama.

He began his betrayal with lip service to Israel’s concerns about defending itself from the relentless jihad that has been waged against it throughout the sixty-three years of its lifetime as a sovereign state: “For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist.”

Yet after saying that “Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist,” Obama called for the establishment of a Palestinian state. Yet neither Hamas nor Fatah have acknowledged Israel’s right to exist, and Obama did not make that acknowledgment a condition of the establishment of a Palestinian state. He was merely making an observation, akin to something like: “You’ll never get a good job by sleeping in the sun all day” – more on the order of a polite request, a mild nag, rather than a firm condition.

Obama also called for “two states,” explaining that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”

It was widely reported Thursday evening that Obama was calling for a return to the 1967 borders, but this is not the case. He actually called for the creation of a “sovereign and contiguous state” for the Palestinian Arabs, and said that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines.” Thus he wasn’t calling for a return to the 1967 lines, but new borders “based on the 1967 lines.”

There were, however, no 1967 lines in which Palestinian Arab territory was contiguous. For the territory of Palestine to be contiguous, that of Israel will have to be substantially reduced. Israel’s 1967 borders were indefensible, and Obama is calling for Israel to be reduced even further so that a contiguous Palestinian state can be established.

What’s more, Obama specified that the new Palestinian state should have “borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt,” while Israel should have “borders with Palestine.” The implication was that Israel, in Obama’s vision, will border on neither Jordan nor Egypt — only on “Palestine.” Yet currently Israel has substantial borders with both Jordan and Egypt. Obama was implying that his contiguous Palestine would comprise not just Gaza and Judea and Samaria, but large expanses of Israeli territory bordering on those two states.

That would leave a truncated, reduced Israeli rump state, reminiscent of the reduced and defenseless Czechoslovakia that remained after Neville Chamberlain fed the Nazi beast at Munich. And if Obama did not mean that the diminished Israel he envisioned would have no territory bordering on Jordan or Egypt, the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state including Gaza and the West Bank would cut Israel in two: Palestine’s contiguous territory would come at the expense of Israel’s.

Whatever Obama meant about Israel’s borders, the establishment of a Palestinian state will come at the expense of Israel’s security. It will not make for peace any more than the withdrawal from Gaza did. In those days the learned analysts were predicting that a withdrawal from Gaza would pacify the Palestinians and normalize their sick society. I said, in contrast, that it would just be another jihad base for more attacks on Israel. That’s what it became. And that’s what a Palestinian state would be also.

The Kuwaiti MP Jama’an Al-Harbash summed it up on Al-Jazeera on March 29, 2010. First he quoted the notorious genocidal hadith in which Muhammad predicts a Muslim genocide of Jews: “Allah willing, a war will be waged between us and them – the war foretold by the Prophet Muhammad: ‘Judgment Day will not come before you fight the Jews – with them on the west bank of the river, and you on the east bank – and the trees and the stones will say: Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.’ This war is drawing near, Allah willing.”

With eerie prescience, al-Harbash then declared of the now-toppled regimes in the Middle East that “the countries of surrender and appeasement, and those who have forsaken the holy places and the land, in their efforts to cling to their seats and pass them on [to their sons] – they will be trampled underfoot by the mujahideen.”

Finally al-Harbash explained the nature of the conflict: “This is a war of religion, not just a war between Arabs and Israelis, or a war between liberators and occupiers. This is an ideological war, an Islamic war, which will end in victory only under the banner of Jihad.”

Those who believe that will not be pacified by the creation of a Palestinian state. They will not lay down their arms and accept Israel’s existence, even its truncated, bisected existence, because the Palestinians have statehood. Not only will they not be pacified; they will be emboldened – emboldened to fight on against their bloodied and weakened adversary. Emboldened to move in for the kill.

Obama’s Thursday address thus amounted to a betrayal of Israel, and an attempt to sign its death warrant. Binyamin Netanyahu immediately issued a statement saying that he was going to seek “a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004, which were overwhelmingly supported by both Houses of Congress,” including commitments about Israel “not having to withdraw to the 1967 lines which are both indefensible and which would leave major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria beyond those lines.”

Will Obama honor this request? Unlikely. But it is good that it is going to be made. Netanyahu has made clear that Israel will not acquiesce to Obama’s betrayal and go gently into the night.

And so now more than ever, all free people must stand with Israel.

Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of ten books, eleven monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is The Complete Infidel’s Guide to the Koran (Regnery), and he is coauthor (with Pamela Geller) of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (Simon http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifand Schuster).



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