US-Israel Relations Definitely Not a Chuckling Matter

I usually try to keep my items "light." But, with what's being done to Israel by the US, this is no longer possible. The facts are simple. Israel has always maintained that Jerusalem was a part of Israel. The PA disputes this, but Israel's case is remarkably strong.

That having been said, it was entirely logical that the Jerusalem mayor would seek to develop city land. Indeed, its plans to do so had been made clear over a period of several Israeli administrations.

The hubbub over development in Jerusalem was instigated by Obama when he began making statements having a bearing on Israel's final borders. The issue of final borders was one that was taken out of sequence in the steps Israel and the PA were planning to follow. The PA had little chance of changing the sequence, but here comes Obama and he decides to hand the Abbas a "gift." But the gift was more than changing the order in which differences were to be negotiated, it was in his making comments having a bearing on the final solution that were very harmful to Israel's position.

The Netanyahu administration may have chosen a rather blunt cudgel to express its displeasure with the liberties that the Obama administration was taking with Israel's sovereignty, but, truth be told, Mitchel was showing less respect to Israel than he had when working with the people of Northern Ireland.

This administration is following Bush's policies in Iraq and in Afghanistan. Iraq may yet come out an improved country. With Afghanistan, it's still too early to make predictions. But, Israel is neither an Iraq or an Afghanistan. And, yet the Obama administration is showing this paradigm of democratic nationhood less respect than the cutthroats that surround it.

Obama is bowing to Abbas not because his administration doesn't recognize the PA as the corrupt collection of grifters that it is, but because they think that to make gifts of Israel's sovereignty will win the US points with the Saudis. They seem oblivious to the fact that the Saudis will do no such thing. Nothing will placate the Saudis other than the elimination of Israel, or putting Israel in such position that its population will find it impossible to endure.

In this drama, the Saudis are Haman and Obama is King Achishvarous. Regrettably I see no Queen Ester on the horizon or anyone resembling Uncle Mordicai.

Jews, who, despite their love for Israel, chose Obama over McCain, are beginning to see the tragic error they made. I, too, believe in a woman's right to choose and in the need for gun registration and the outlawing of machine guns for civilians. But must Israel be the sacrificial lamb for these liberal causes. And, yet, that is precisely what it has come down to.