Barack Obama’s Advisors, Not His Past Associations, Tell You How He Feels About Israel
October 18, 2008 / 6:01 pm • By Dr. Melissa ClouthierRead this editorial by David Bedein, and I’ll tell you why you should care about Israel after you’ve finished:
Yet there is a way to gain insight into Sen. Obama’s policies towards Israel. Not by tabulating votes on the Senate floor and not by counting how many superlatives that he uses on Israel.
Instead, by paying attention to the three high ranking former U.S. State Department officials whom the Senator has hired: Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and Daniel Kurtzer. The policy which characterizes all three of them is their consistent promotion of the PLO as a supposed peace partner with Israel for the past 20 years, no matter what the reality was.
This is the threesome that defined the PLO as a peace partner even after the PLO would not ratify the Oslo “declaration of principles” in October 1993.
This is the threeesome that attested to the fact that, in 1996, the PLO had cancelled its covenant to destroy Israel, when it had not done so.
This is the threesome who insisted on arming the PLO to fight Hamas even though the PLO made it clear from the outset that it would never engage Hamas in any full-scale war
And this is the threesome who promote a PLO state, come what may.And this is the threesome who main committed to mobilizing Jewish Americans to support a PLO state, come what may.
From Sen. Obama’s appointment of Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and Daniel Kurtzer, it is easy to discern where the Senator stands - for the renewal of the Oslo process once again, this time with the teeth of an American administration that would impose a Palestinian state, even though it remains at war with the State of Israel.
The role played by Daniel Kurtzer has not been forgotten - as the man who wrote tough speeches for former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker when he pressured Israel 20 years ago.
What about Sen. Obama’s sensitivity to the consquences of Arab terror?
After all, during his visit to the shell-shocked Israeli town of Sderot near Gaza, he met families whose homes and lives have been devastated by Arab missile attacks.
It was in Sderot where Sen. Obama looked into the eyes of each of these families and told them that he would never forget the consequences of what terror had done to people in Israel.
Yet on the very next morning, Sen. Obama addressed a crowd in Berlin in which he depicted how nations around the world had suffered from the consequences of terror. The senator named each of these nations. Yet he forgot to name Israel.
A short term retention span which deleted Israel as a nation whose people suffered the conseqeunces of terror could not have been a coincidence.
Sen. Obama gives prepared speeches.
The time has come to put aside platitudes and to stop judging Sen. Obama’s attitude towards Israel from those who have endorsed him. His choices of advisors speak for themselves.
Indeed.
But why should an American care about what an American president thinks of Israel? Israel is the lone democracy in a region of the world plagued by dictators and tyrants. Israel promotes things like freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion. Israel stands for these freedoms in the face of unimaginable odds. America was attacked on her own soil once, on September 11, 2001 in a spectacular an horrifying way. Israel is attacked every, single, day with little fanfare and even less world interest and yet soldiers on in the dogged pursuit of freedom when they would be well within their rights to obliterate Gaza and those who fund the terrorists there and be done with it.
When an American president pretends that there is equivalence between Israelis and the PLO, say, it reveals his moral compass. It reveals, in fact, that he lacks one. When an American leader views the terrorist organizations as the victims of Israel instead of the arm and tool in the hands of surrounding Arab states who victimize Israel, it further reveals his lack of judgment. And it also reveals how he will view the enemies of America.
If an American president blames Israel for existing and therefore inciting the non-stop terrorism, what will his reaction be to American’s being attacked? Wait, we already know the answer to that. When Americans fight back against terrorists, this is how Barack Obama responded:
