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Have the Obama administration's Middle East policies created stress for
our friends at the
National Jewish Democratic Council? One possible
clue is that their blog just began regular cross-posting of blog posts
from a site called
"Neurotic Democrat."
But more straightforward evidence can be found in a series of
increasingly ludicrous "Fact sheets" that are about as convincing as
the Wizard of Oz thundering "Pay no attention to that man behind the
curtain."
Last year,
NJDC assured Jewish voters,
“Obama believes Israel’s Security is Paramount” and highlighted Obama’s
pledge to AIPAC leaders that if he was elected the U.S. would continue
to “stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel."
But it hasn't exactly worked out that way. And Jewish voters who
believed NJDC's assurances about Obama must be unsettled -- if not
alarmed -- by the headlines they see on a near-daily basis.
- The New York Times describes
President Obama’s policy as “one of the biggest shifts in American
policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in three decades.”
- The Washington Post reports
that Obama has taken “the toughest line against the continued expansion
of Israeli settlements since the administration of President Jimmy
Carter” adding that “his recent language about settlements is the
starkest of any U.S. president in three decades, and tougher than most
of his public rhetoric since emerging on the national scene.”
- The Christian Science Monitor observed that "what seemed good enough for George W. Bush is not acceptable to Barack Obama."
- Slate’s Jacob Weisberg concludes, “this crew is serious about pressuring Israel.”
And Democrat Politicians are
distancing themselves from the administration’s pressure-Israel tactics…
- Rep.
Anthony Weiner (D-NY): "There’s a line between articulating U.S. policy
and seeming to be pressuring a democracy on what are their domestic
policies... I would have liked to hear the president talk more about
the Palestinian obligation to cut down on terrorism.”
- Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL): “To expect Israel to have the same
policy outside the security fence as inside the security fence is
unrealistic; it’s counterproductive."
Just today, Jackson Diehl, the Post's not-at-all right-wing Deputy Editorial Page Editor, has weighed in with
a very measured column,
in which he wonders why President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton
seem set on the "odd adventure" of "a protracted confrontation with
Israel".
How does NJDC attempt to sustain its claim that "
U.S. policy on settlements has essentially not changed from the previous George W. Bush administration"?
Laughably, NJDC links constantly to
a single news report,
written before Bush administration officials and top members of
then-Prime Minister Sharon’s team reached their understanding on
settlements. But the single snapshot that news story provides ignores
all that transpired subsequent to its publication. Diehl notes without
apparent fear of contradication that the Bush administration "agreed to
define loosely" the term settlement "freeze."
And the New York Times has published
an exhaustive account of the history NJDC doesn't want you to know about.
In May 2003 [then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and top aide Dov
Weinglass] met with [Elliott] Abrams and Stephen J. Hadley of the
National Security Council and came up with the definition of settlement
freeze: “no new communities were to be built; no Palestinian lands were
to be appropriated for settlement purposes; building will not take
place beyond the existing community outline; and no ‘settlement
encouraging’ budgets were to be allocated... Condoleezza Rice, the
national security adviser at the time, signed off on that definition
later that month and that the two governments also agreed to set up a
joint committee to define more fully the meaning of “existing community
outline” for established settlements...
In April 2004, President Bush presented Mr. Sharon with a letter
stating, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already
existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect
that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and
complete return to the armistice lines of 1949... That letter, Mr.
Weinglass said, was a result of his earlier negotiations with Bush
administration officials acknowledging that certain settlement blocks
would remain Israeli and open to continued growth...
The Israeli officials said that no Bush administration official had
ever publicly insisted that Israel was obliged to stop all building in
the areas it captured in 1967. They said it was important to know that
major oral understandings reached between an Israeli prime minister and
an American president would not simply be tossed aside when a new
administration came into the White House.
What to make of NJDC's determination to play such a weak hand so
brazenly? Call it the audacity of hope. As audacious as it is, they
hope that pro-Israel voters will be easily misled by their silly
sleights-of-hand and cherry-picked news clippings. They are hoping
that Jewish voters' committment to Israel is shallow and their focus on
its well-being is fleeting. No wonder
an
administration that requires such self-negation from its pro-Israel
supporters has lost the confidence of 94 percent of Israelis.