Israel in the News Jul/Aug 2009

Israel to Be Alone in World?

ARUTZ-7—Warnings abound that the Obama administration’s policies will leave Israel to face Iran and Hamas alone.

The warnings are summed up in recent articles by the West’s two main pro-Israel female commentators: Melanie Phillips and Caroline Glick. Phillips warns, “Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus.” She cites the report that Obama’s national security adviser told a European foreign minister that Obama will be “forceful” with Israel and plans to impose, with the EU and moderate Arab states, “a satisfactory endgame solution” upon Israel.

“This is all not only evil,” Phillips says, “but exceptionally stupid….The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear program stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran….A Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.”

After expressing incredulity at the American demands for further Israeli concessions in the light of the utter failure of the disengagement, Phillips writes that U.S. Jews are reacting “with a total absence of spine….Almost 80 percent of American Jews voted for Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel. They did so because their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose existence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardize their standing with America’s elite.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must therefore take Israel’s message to “the ordinary American people,” she concludes: “He must tell the American people the terrible truth: that America is now run by a man who is intent on sacrificing Israel for a reckless and amoral political strategy which will put America and the rest of the free world at risk.”

Caroline Glick, writing in The Jerusalem Post, states, “The Obama administration is ratcheting up its anti-Israel rhetoric and working feverishly to force Israel into a corner.”

Yet another milestone in the U.S. path towards abandoning Israel is the “humiliating reception” President Shimon Peres received from Obama.

In addition, another point was raised by Glick and Eli Lake of The Washington Times: U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller told the UN that Israel and others must adhere to the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), thus effectively abrogating a 40-year-old U.S.-Israeli understanding that the U.S. would remain silent about Israel’s nuclear program because it understood that it is defensive, not offensive in nature. The statement also erases “any distinction between nuclear weapons in the hands of U.S. allies and democratic states and nuclear weapons in the hands of U.S. enemies and terror states,” Glick wrote.

“The fact that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, all chance of peace between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and the Arab world will disappear,” Glick continues, “is of no interest to Obama and his advisers. They do not care that the day after [Hamas said it was] suspending its attacks against Israel from Gaza, the Iranian-controlled terror regime took credit for several volleys of rockets shot against Israeli civilian targets from Gaza.”

Abdullah to Bibi: Accept PA State!
ARUTZ-7—Jordan’s King Abdullah II, hosting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demanded he “immediately declare his commitment to a two-state solution, [declare] acceptance of the Arab peace initiative and to take necessary steps to move forward toward a solution.” He also said Israel must open all crossings into Gaza, which was taken over by the Hamas terrorist organization two years ago.

After King Abdullah’s discussions with President Obama in Washington in April, the monarch warned that war will break out within the next 18 months if Israel does not accept the Saudi Arabian 2002 Peace Plan, based on shrinking the size of Israel to that which existed in 1949. The plan also calls for the right of approximately five million foreign Arabs to immigrate to Israel on the basis of their families having once lived there, prior to fleeing during the 1948 War of Independence.

The election of President Obama, who was heavily backed by dovish American Jews, has built a nearly universal platform of support for PA demands.

Call for Biological Attack Aired
ARUTZ-7—Al-Jazeera recently aired footage of Kuwaiti professor Abdallah al-Nafisi. In the video, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Nafisi expresses ardent support for terrorism and suggests that terrorists use biological warfare against the United States in order to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Nafisi also suggests that Muslims pray for the success of white supremacist groups that seek to carry out attacks within the U.S.

In addition, Nafisi attacks those in the Arab world whom he perceives as traitors, to laughter and applause from his audience. Among those in the Arab world who should be silenced using “any means possible” are journalists who oppose terrorism, anyone who supports dialogue with Jews, and senior Palestinian Authority officials Saeb Erekat and Mahmoud Dahlan, Nafisi says.