Robert Malley. He devoted his career to anti-Israel activism and propaganda.
One of my readers (you know who you are) argues that Barack Obama has one overriding policy objective to his presidency, an agenda to which he subordinates every other issue, foreign and domestic: to put an end to the Jewish state. Obama, he thinks, was supported throughout his career by Israel’s enemies, who succeeded beyond their wildest dreams when their anti-Israel ‘Manchurian Candidate‘ reached the pinnacle of American politics.
Nah, I always say, you’re paranoid. Yes, he is the least pro-Israel president ever. But to think that the President of the United States is fixated on one tiny state in the Middle East? That would be crazy.
But as time goes by and I note Obama’s incompetence about and inattentiveness to other issues, as well as his invariably taking the path that will be most painful to Israel, especially when that path doesn’t advance — or even harms — US interests, I begin to wonder.
One of the big mysteries for me has been his support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The Ikhwan is closely associated with anti-American radicals, burns churches and murders Christians, and has close connections with terrorist organizations like Hamas. When the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi was in power, he expressed a desire to ‘reconsider’ the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, something that the US has said is a foundation for peace in the region.
The present Egyptian regime, led by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi strongly supports continuing the treaty. It opposes Hamas. And al-Sisi has recently spoken out against radical Islam in the most remarkable and courageous way. And yet, the US still supports the Brotherhood and gives Sisi the cold shoulder.
Ask yourself how this advances any American interest. I can’t see how it does, but it certainly would be a disaster for Israel if the Hamas-supporting Brotherhood were to replace the pragmatic Sisi.
I’ve written about Obama’s one-sided actions during the recent Gaza conflict. What American interest is served by protecting Hamas? Even if you think that an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty is possible (or desirable), it is made less likely by empowering Hamas.
Speaking of the Palestinian issue, John Kerry recently announced that the US will have another go at forcing Israel to cede control of strategic territory in Judea/Samaria to the unstable and unwilling Palestinian Authority. What American interest is served by opening up another front for war and terrorism? Why is the expenditure of effort even justified when there are so many more deadly conflicts underway in the region and the world?
There are numerous other examples, but of course nothing quite matches the Obama policy of rapprochement with Iran, which will ultimately have the effect of legitimizing Iran’s deployment of nuclear weapons, and which in the short run will empower it in its conventional aggression in the region. If there is one really good way to maximize damage to Israel, this is it.
The Iranian regime makes no secret of its intentions to take over the entire region. It already has effective control of Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and much of Iraq. It is developing long range missiles which could target Europe or, at some point, even the US. The ideology of the regime hasn’t changed, and there is a thread of apocalyptic violence in Shiite theology that can’t be entirely discounted. Allowing it to obtain nuclear weapons cannot be in America’s interest.
Given all of this, Obama’s latest act is anticlimactic, but telling. Almost as if to make a statement about the future direction of policy toward Israel, the White House has appointed his advisor Robert Malley as “White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region” on the National Security Council.
Malley, whom many know as the guy who continues to insist — despite statements to the contrary by former President Clinton and his Middle East Envoy Dennis Ross — that the failure of the Camp David and Taba talks in 2000-1 was Israel’s fault and not that of Yasser Arafat, has devoted his career to anti-Israel activism and propaganda. It’s hard to think of anyone much worse from Israel’s point of view unless Obama were to recruit in Gaza.
Moving Malley up isn’t likely to change much. His predecessor, Philip Gordon, was not particularly pro-Israel. But it is emblematic of the one-sided approach taken by the administration, what my reader calls the “laser-like focus” on Israel which characterizes an administration which is bumbling and inconsistent on almost everything else.
Can it be proven that Obama is a Manchurian Candidate? No — at least not unless the LA Times releases the tape of Rashid Khalidi’s dinner party. But as Hillary Clinton might put it, “what difference at this point does it make?”
Well, as I’ve told you all along, you’d eventually come around to my point of view.
However, I do need to add a clarification: I don’t think that Obama’s overriding purpose was simply to “destroy” Israel. I think his purpose was to get Israel to capitulate on the issue of a Palestinian state based on a Saudi-based formula of complete withdrawal to pre-’67 lines. If this could be accomplished without “destroying” Israel, then OK. But if it means the ultimate rendering of Israel to be non-viable as a Jewish state – and everyone knows that it probably would – then so be it. How does this “serve” U.S. interests? If the U.S. is seen as responsible for finally bringing Israel to heel, and likely ensuring her ultimate dismantlement, then the U.S. wins the gratitude of the Moslem world, and we buy ourselves a cheap exit from the War on Islamist Terror at Israel’s expense. That is the “logic” behind the policy, such as it is.
Yes, it is amazing how on this one issue, he is as clever, persistent, and calculated as anyone can be. I’ve taken to calling him ‘The Lawyer for the Palestinians-in-Chief who occasionally dabbles in being President of the United States if it doesn’t interfere too much with his golf game or watching ESPN.’
And it wasn’t just him. This was part of a larger program with a number of actors. He’s just the most obvious and visible part. His handlers really knew what they were doing.
The bad guys have tried to field outrageous anti-Israel candidates in the past; Pat Buchanan was a good example of this. But they had no mass appeal, and most significantly, they had no appeal to Jewish voters.
Sometime in the last ten or fifteen years, it dawned on the bad guys that what they really needed was a liberal Democrat who would have irresistable appeal to Jewish American voters, based on domestic policy. That their MC was black was an even bigger plus; Jews here just could not resist voting for the “first black president”.
The Jewish votes were not needed to win the election, however. The money helped, but even without Jewish votes, he’d have certainly won in ’08, and probably in ’12 as well. That wasn’t the point. The point was that if Jews could be convinced to support him, it would be that much harder for them to credibly speak out against his anti-Israel policies. Jews may not decide presidential elections, but historically, the “Israel lobby” has been fairly influential, and could be most effectively short-circuited in this fashion. The impact could be summed up by a comment made to me by a Tea Party acftivist several years ago (on the eve of the ’12 election): “I’ll start worrying about Israel when the Jews stop supporting Obama.” If even the Jews would vote for someone so obviously anti-Israel as Obama, then why should any other Americans be that concerned about Israel’s welfare? In short, if Jews here could be convinced to support Obama…it would
make it infinitely easier for him to screw Israel in plain sight.
The good news, to the extent that there is any, is that looking at the past six years, it seems that Obama’s little ‘program’ has turned out to be much harder and more complicated than he ever imagined that it would be. He hasn’t got that much time left, and he is getting frantic (which can be very dangerous in itself, however). Fortunately, we also now have Congress squarely in our corner. This helps somewhat.
The bad news is that central to his program, his “trump card”, if you will, was to hold the Iranian nuclear issue over Israel’s head as the ultimate coercive tool. I don’t think Obama necessarily intended to allow Iran to get nukes all along, but since he threatened to let them if Israel didn’t capitulate on the Palestinian issue, he now has to follow through on his threat. When he said he “wasn’t bluffing” about Iran, that is what he really meant. It is no coincidence that as we approach what appears to be the final “decision point” on Iran with this pending agreement…Kerry is bringing up the Israeli-PA negotiations again. The message is clear: “OK, Israel. This is your last chance. Give us what we want or we let Iran go nuclear.”
Israel simply has got to hit Iran in defiance of Obama. There is no choice. I have said this for years. If Netanyahu doesn’t win re-election, it is in G-d’s hands, because then there is no way Israel will act. I am confident Netanyahu will act if he wins and can form a government with ministers whom he can trust. Many fear that it may be too late, and perhaps it is, but I suspect it isn’t too late. Time must be running short though, or Netanyahu would not have made the recent trip here to give the speech that he did.
What a mess.