Barry Rubin: How Is Obama's Middle East Policy Endangering Israel? Let Me Count the Ways

How Is Obama's Middle East Policy Endangering Israel? Let Me Count the Ways

By Barry Rubin


Think about this: In the year 2012 the overwhelming majority of Muslims in the Middle East will be governed by radical Islamist regimes that believe in waging jihad on Israel and America, wiping Israel off the map, suppressing Christians, reducing the status of women even more than it is now, and their right as true interpreters of God's will to govern as dictators. (Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia, and Turkey) President Obama does not see this as a problem.

Recently a reader sent me a note from an Obama supporter responding to some of my articles. He says--like the administration--that Obama has not done a single thing to damage Israel's security. I have written this response. The other person's statements are in bold.

--Obama did cause the Palestinians to drop their U.N. maneuver of obtaining statehood without a negotiated peace.


The PA announced that it was going to do this gambit around October 2010. Obama did nothing until almost a year later. He made no threat nor put any pressure on the PA. He had to take this stand or else veto in which case that would have been costly to him in the Arab world for sure. It is good that he did this but it was the absolute minimum, not some great concession to Israel. In other words, the Palestinian Authority broke all of its commitments to negotiate peace with Israel, the Obama Administration did nothing, blamed Israel, and after a year stopped the PA from formally wrecking everything so that we all went back to the previous situation. And this is proof of great support for Israel?

--If Obama was so anti-Israel why did he do that?

Continue reading How Is Obama's Middle East Policy Endangering Israel? Let Me Count the Ways 

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). His latest book is Israel: An Introduction, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2012. You can read more of Barry Rubin's posts at Rubin Reports, and now on his new blog, Rubin Reports, on Pajamas Media

Technorati Tag: Israel and Middle East and Obama and Election 2012.