The White House refused to give Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon an audience with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice during his trip to the United States this week, senior American officials confirmed Friday. The reason for the cold shoulder was a number of statements Ya’alon made six months ago, in which he criticized the Obama administration and Kerry in particular.
“Given some of his comments in the recent past, it should come as no surprise that he was denied some meetings,” a senior U.S. official told Haaretz. During his visit, Ya’alon met with Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. A senior American official told the Associated Press that the White House wanted to instruct Power to decline meeting with Ya’alon but that they had only learned of the meeting after she had consented.
Apparently the meeting with Power consisted of her berating him about Israeli building in Jerusalem. There’s more:
During his visit to the U.S., Ya’alon tried to clear the air between him and the administration. Just before he left and following Economy Minister Naftali Bennett’s statements attacking John Kerry, Ya’alon issued a statement in which he praised U.S. support of Israel. During his visit to the American capital Ya’alon gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he claimed that the crisis between him and Kerry was over. “We overcame that,” he said.
Ya’alon was surprised to learn that U.S. officials leaked reports of their denying him an audience with senior officials, but he has no intention of starting another public quarrel with the Obama administration.
Could anything be more juvenile? These are supposedly professionals! The intention was to weaken Ya’alon here in Israel, but it probably had the opposite effect. According to Ha’aretz, Ya’alon was informed a week ago that his meeting requests would not be honored, but US officials waited for the most opportune time to leak it to the press.
Just more evidence, if more is needed, of the US administration’s contempt for Israel.
I have a message for the crowd of middle-school pupils that Obama has selected as advisers and staff:
You don’t get it, but Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Iranian regime, Bashar al Assad, and other Islamist radicals that you either support or fail to oppose are your enemies. They would love to cut off your head, Susan Rice, and yours too, Zbig Brzezinski. Today Israel is sitting right on the seam line between civilization and barbarism, and if you know what’s good for you, you will hold your Israel-hating noses and support her.
This despicable strategy that the Obama Administration and the EU have of beating on Israel when a Jew builds a home, or defends himself or questions bad ideas is sickening to watch. On hard right-wing sites, in almost casual manner, guests and hosts discuss whether the conduct of US foreign policy is inept or malevolent. The argument for malevolent gets stronger and stronger. Not recognizing the danger of the forces they support, and the pressure being applied to Israel makes the Administration appear foolhardy and careless. They do not even bother to make the argument how what they’re doing is for the benefit of all Americans–it’s always dealt with as an administrative forced-feeding. The malfeasance–if it’s not good for most of us, it’s wrong to make it policy, right–certainly seems deliberate.
My fantasy is that the Republicans created Obama, back in time, and conspired to have him be President, and made sure he’d be re-elected. Their aim was to make things so bad that the general populace would do anything to have a responsible person in office in Obama’s stead. Like a vaccine.
Tiny Israel has to make it to the Obama Administration finish line, hopefully without a Samantha Power-Andrew Young style betrayal at the UN (don’t count that out), and with whatever plans it has in place for the day after the Iran deal the diplomats are trying to force down our throats is announced as being the best thing for us. Ya’alon can suffer a lot more from neglect and ill will and calumny, so long as Israel has freedom to act when this nightmare of a Presidency is over or the moment of truth is borne in upon it before then. This is my great hope.
From the very beginning this Administration has criticized and sought to humiliate Israel in a way it has to no other country. How many insults and rejections from Turkey have been ignored, how many rebuffs from various Arab allies has the U.S. not commented on?
All this is part of a pattern , and perhaps a coordinated strategy between the U.S. and Europeans to discredit and isolate Israel.
This discrimination against the Jewish state on the government level reenforces the worldwide increase in anti- Semitism.
What is worrisome is that this Administration has two more years to go.