And So It Begins: Obama Is "The First Jewish President"

I have always followed a rule: never allow someone to become your priority while you become his or her option. For President Elect Barack Obama and the entire Democrat Party leadership in this country, the Hip Hop generation has never been a priority, we have always been an option and that option is used mostly to get out the vote during elections.
Why President Elect Barack Obama is not the first Hip Hop President, by Rosa A. Clemente

If you weren't sure if people were thinking about the 2012 election, here's a clue:

Yes, it's time once again to prove Obama's bona fides on Israel and reassure the Jewish community that Obama is their man!


More to the point, the question actually is why Jews (and Israelis) cannot see that that Obama is Israel's best friend, ever:

In that New Yorker article, John Heilemann writes, Barack Obama is the best thing Israel has going for it right now. Why is that so difficult for Netanyahu and his American Jewish allies to understand?

Again and again, when Israel has been embroiled in international dustups—over its attack last year on a flotilla filled with activists headed from Turkey to Gaza, to cite but one example—the White House has had Israel’s back. The security relationship between the countries, on everything from intelligence sharing to missile-­defense development to access to top-shelf weapons, has never been more robust. And when the Cairo embassy was seized and Netanyahu called to ask for Obama’s help with rescuing the last six Israelis trapped inside the building, the president not only picked up the phone but leaned hard on the Egyptians to free those within. “It was a decisive moment,” Netanyahu recalled after the six had been freed. “Fateful, I would even say.”

All of which raises an interesting, perplexing, and suddenly quite pressing question: How, exactly, did Obama come to be portrayed, and perceived by many American Jews, as the most ardently anti-Israel president since Jimmy Carter? [emphasis added]

I really have no idea how to measure how 'robust' the intelligence sharing and weapons sharing is going--though the idea that since Obama has come to office, Israel has become even more in need of these weapons does suggest itself.

Dan Senor addressed the question of Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote. He wrote that there is more than an issue of a "messaging problem" or someone going around distorting what Obama is saying. He gives a list of examples where Obama sent a clear negative message to the Jewish community all on his own.


Here are 3:

• February 2008: When running for president, then-Sen. Obama told an audience in Cleveland: "There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel." At the time, Likud had been out of power for two years. 

This is a straw man--not the least because Obama was taking a swipe at a government that was not even in power. Olmert was Prime Minister at the time and bending over backwards to make a deal with Abbas--whose rejection of all Israel's offers was not noted by Obama. This poor grasp of basic facts reminds me of Obama's ongoing reference to Israel as nothing more than a refuge from the Holocaust, a meme he eventually corrected.

• September 2009: In his first address to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama declared (to loud applause) that "America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements," connecting rocket attacks on Israeli civilians with living conditions in Gaza. There was not a single unconditional criticism of Palestinian terrorism.

This emphasis on the settlements of course allowed Abbas to make the settlements a precondition for the first time to coming the negotiating table. One can argue that this is just an example of Obama's failure in Middle East policy, but the fact remains this unforced error does not endear Obama to Israel. 

• March 2010: During Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel, a Jerusalem municipal office announced plans for new construction in a part of Jerusalem and the president launched a weeks-long offensive against Israel. Yet, shortly after Biden left the West Bank, when the Palestinian Authority honored Dalal Mughrabi, responsible for one of the deadliest Palestinian terror attacks in history that killed 38, including 13 children and an American, Obama was silent. 

 If Obama is going to claim that Jews and Israelis should not expect 100% support of every policy, surely we can expect Obama in return not to go over the deep end in blasting Israel. More to the point, perhaps Obama could equally criticize Abbas for inciting hatred against Israel. On this crucial point, Obama has given Abbas a free pass--instead expecting Israel to negotiate with a man whose term as PA president ended over 2 years ago.

Senor has other examples.

But given the Obama administration credit--their argument for taking credit for accomplishments is much improved from November 2009, when claims by the administration about their accomplishments were easily rebutted during a daily press briefing with State Department spokesman Ian Kelly: 

QUESTION: Could you give us just a brief synopsis of the progress that Senator Mitchell has made in his months on the job?


MR. KELLY: Well, I think we have – we’ve gotten --

QUESTION: Yeah, maybe if the --


MR. KELLY: -- both sides to agree on this goal. We have gotten both sides --


QUESTION: Ian, they agreed on the goal years ago. I mean, that’s not --


MR. KELLY: Well, I think that we – this government --


QUESTION: You mean you got the Israel Government to say, yes, we’re willing to accept a Palestinian state? You got Netanyahu to say that, and that’s his big accomplishment?


MR. KELLY: That is an accomplishment.


QUESTION: But previous Israeli administration – previous Israeli governments had agreed to that already.


MR. KELLY: Okay, all right.


QUESTION: So in other words, the bottom line is that, in the list of accomplishments that Mitchell has come up with or established since he started, is zero.


MR. KELLY: I wouldn’t say zero.


QUESTION: Well, then what would you say it is?


MR. KELLY: Well, I would say that we’ve gotten both sides to commit to this goal. They have – we have – we’ve had a intensive round or rounds of negotiations, the President brought the two leaders together in New York. Look --


QUESTION: But wait, hold on. You haven’t had any intense --


MR. KELLY: Obviously --


QUESTION: There haven’t been any negotiations.

MR. KELLY: Obviously, we’re not even in the red zone yet, okay.
QUESTION: Thank you.


MR. KELLY: I mean, we’re not – but it’s – we are less than a year into this Administration, and I think we’ve accomplished more over the last year than the previous administration did in eight years.
QUESTION: Well, I – really, because the previous administration actually had them sitting down talking to each other. You guys can’t even get that far.


MR. KELLY: All right.


QUESTION: I’ll drop it.


MR. KELLY: Give us a chance. Thank you, Matt.

Bottom line, it's that time of year again, and just as Obama and his people tried (and succeeded) during the 2008 campaign  to convince the Jews that Obama was Israel's best friend--now we are going to get the same treatment.

Personally, I imagine that the accusations of twisting Obama's message on Israel will be in reverse proportion to Obama's actual accomplishments vis-a-vis Israel.

So we are going to hear a lot about this.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Obama.