Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me - (Barack Hussein Obama)-

Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me
by Naomi Ragen on July 28th, 2012


I have never felt more challenged than I did four years ago when I did my
best to enlighten my American list-members to some of the dangers of hopping
on presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama’s bandwagon. But nothing
swayed his Jewish supporters: not the fact that he had radical left-wing
political mentors, nor his Islamic heritage and education, nor even his
close 20-year relationship with the virulently anti-Semitic Reverend
Jeremiah Wright. They weren’t even worried about his anti-Israel advisers,
like Zbigniew Brzezinski, Simon Malley and Samantha Power, who once
suggested the US invade Israel.
In fact, the response of my staunchly pro-Israel list to these revelations
astounded me: “As a Jew, I am offended by what you have written about Barack
Obama… You are tedious and unwelcome in the lives of Americans who are
hopeful for the change that is due us,” wrote Susan.
“We wish no harm to our homeland, but we live in another country,” wrote
Judi. “We too have issues of importance. I cannot believe for a moment that
Senator Obama would place Israel in a position of harm.”
“This is my home first, and if I don’t protect my back yard I will lose my
ability to further support Israel. You need to do a reality check,” wrote
Robert.
“Obama knows how important Israel is and will most likely be more a champion
to Israel than McCain,” wrote Samuel. Over a thousand of my American
list-members wrote nothing at all, simply unsubscribing to my list in silent
protest to my anti- Obama stance.
I tried to understand them. During his campaign, Obama promised an
“unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security” and “support for secure,
recognized, defensible borders.” “Israel’s security,” he told numerous
Jewish groups, “is sacrosanct.”
Unlike some of my Jewish list members, Hamas spokesman Ahmed Yousef wasn’t
convinced: “If Obama wins the election… I do believe he will change the
American foreign policy in the way they are handling the Middle East,” he
told WABC radio host John Batchelor and World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein. It
turns out that he was right and the Jews who voted for him were wrong.
Obama is hoping that this time around his Jewish voters won’t remember that.
“If during the political season you hear some question of my
administration’s support for Israel, remember, it’s not backed up by the
facts,” Obama, as president, told the 71st General Assembly of the Union of
Reform Judaism on December 16, 2011.
Really? Well, let’s review the facts, especially given the short memories of
most voters.
Obama began his administration by reaching out to Muslims, giving his first
formal interview to Al-Arabiya. Next, he bowed deeply to the King of Saudi
Arabia and visited Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, skipping Israel. He used
fulfilling his promise of giving his first foreign policy address in an Arab
capital to distance America from Israel: “The US does not accept the
legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.
It is time for these settlements to stop,” he told cheering crowds in Cairo.
But worse was still to come. “The aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted
in a tragic history that cannot be denied. It is also undeniable that the
Palestinian people, Muslims and Christians, have suffered.”
By adopting the rhetoric of Arab anti-Semites that the desire of the Jews to
live in their homeland started with the Holocaust and has no other roots,
Obama, in the words of Charles Krauthammer, “In three minutes… did more to
delegitimize the existence of Israel than any president in American
history.”
Worse, comparing what the Jews suffered in the Holocaust to the treatment of
Palestinians under Israeli rule was downright despicable. Or “outrageous and
embarrassing,” according to Oklahoma’s Senator James Inhofe.
Obama followed up with an incessant campaign questioning Israel’s desire for
peace. We, who lived through two intifadas, who saw our families and friends
and neighbors blown to bits to satisfy the world’s desire to see Israel
“make sacrifices” for a fake peace, were horrified. Obama lectured Israeli
leaders that they “must engage in serious self-reflection on their
commitment to peace.”
The absolute gall!
Obama went one further, adopting the old Arab demand that Israel cease
building on any land claimed by Palestinians, refusing to understand that if
Israel did that, there would be nothing left to negotiate.
“Settlements have to be stopped,” Obama said, and Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton relentlessly echoed: “He wants to see a stop in settlements, not
some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.”
Under Obama, American foreign policy adopted the nonsensical idea that all
Middle East conflicts would be solved if only Israel gave in to Palestinian
demands. In this fantasy, the incessant brainwashing of Palestinian children
to hate and kill, the atom bomb in Iran, the murderous control of Gaza by
Hamas, which denies any solution short of pushing Jews into the sea, were
not allowed in, nor was the fact that the disengagement from Gaza resulted
not in peace, but in terrorist bomb-launchers replacing Jewish lettuce
growers.
The incessant demands of the Obama administration on Israel were never
balanced by equal demands on Palestinians. This carte blanche led not to
peace, but to increasing Palestinian intransigence.
After all, how could President Mahmoud Abbas allow himself to be seen as
less hawkish than Obama? Indeed, Netanyahu’s capitulation to American
demands by declaring a 10-month settlement freeze did not bring Abbas to the
negotiating table.
It simply whetted his appetite. The sky, it seemed, was the limit.
Abbas was proven right during the March 2010 visit of Vice President Joe
Biden. When building plans for Ramat Shlomo, already a large neighborhood in
northern Jerusalem, were announced, the Americans inexplicably exploded.
Hillary Clinton called it “insulting,” even though Jerusalem had never been
under a settlement freeze. The Israeli envoy to the US said that US-Israel
ties were the worst they’d been in 35 years. At the very time Israel was
being lambasted as an obstacle to peace, Mahmoud Abbas was publicly honoring
the terrorists of the 1978 coastal road massacre which took 37 Israeli
lives, with never a peep out of the White House – a fact not lost on Abbas,
who continued to refuse to negotiate with Israel during the entire 10-month
settlement freeze.
No matter. While Netanyahu got shuffled into side doors at the White House
and Obama refused to dine with him, Abbas was an honored guest with photo
ops and a smiling president gifting him with an extra hundred million
dollars to build “environmental housing” for Palestinians.
This attitude of the US administration had a domino effect on other Arab
countries. Turkey, with whom Israel had always had warm relations, thousands
of Israeli tourists filling Antalya hotels, suddenly turned hostile. Headed
by its new Islamist Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, called affectionately by
Obama his “closest friend in the Middle East,” it sent six ships to break
Israel’s legitimate sea blockade of terrorist Gaza, including one with armed
terrorists who met Israeli soldiers with knives and clubs, stabbing, beating
and throwing them overboard.
Yet even before investigating, the US refused to veto the Turkish resolution
condemning Israel. A furious US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta demanded
Israel “restore good relations with Egypt and Turkey,” while former defense
secretary Robert Gates called Israel “an ungrateful ally harming American
interests.”
In the spring of 2011, Obama said: “We believe in borders based on the 1967
lines,” finally breaking all precedents of previous US administrations,
which recognized that the 1967 lines were not defensible borders but simply
armistice lines where the guns had stopped.
Obama’s support for indefensible borders, sometimes called “the lines of
Auschwitz,” is yet another open wound, as is the attempt of Abbas to bypass
negotiations with Israel, unite with Hamas and bring his case for statehood
directly to the terror-friendly UN. Moreover, Obama’s timid pussyfooting
with Iran has given it the time to purify enough fuel for five atom bombs,
all proof positive that the Obama administration has pushed the Middle East
further from peace than ever.
As summed up by Liz Cheney: “There is no president who has done more to
delegitimize and undermine the State of Israel than President Barack Obama.”
And for those American Jews who say they have an obligation to put America
first, how’s that working for you so far with Obama heading the nation? In
this coming election, Israeli and American interests seem to coincide. Obama
managed to do so much harm while taking more vacations and playing more golf
than any other president in US history.
I shudder to think what another four years might bring.