n an attempt to squelch rumors
that he is pro-Palestinian, or
god forbid Muslim, Barack Obama
made it clear in the final
Democratic Presidential debate
on Tuesday that he is anything
but. After being prodded by
NBC’s Tim Russert on the issue,
Obama said he has long been a
“stalwart friend of Israel’s,”
believing the country to be one
of the United States’ “most
important allies in the region,”
and even going as far as to call
the security of Israel
“sacrosanct.”
The hallowed confirmation that
he would maintain the US’s
lopsided support for Israel came
the same day seven Palestinians
were killed by Israeli air
strikes in Gaza. Since “peace
negotiations” resumed in
November, Israeli military
forces have reportedly killed
over 200 Palestinians.
Speaking to a group of 100
pro-Israel supporters in
Cleveland this week, Obama
assured the crowd that as
president he would keep Iran in
the crosshairs to protect
Israeli interests.
“Now the gravest threat … to
Israel today, I believe, is from
Iran. There the radical regime
continues to pursue its capacity
to build a nuclear weapon and
continues to support terrorism
across the region,” he
explained. “Threats of Israel’s
destruction can not be dismissed
as rhetoric. The threat from
Iran is real and my goal as
president would be to eliminate
that threat.”
After reiterating that he’d end
the war in Iraq first, Obama
then promised he would turn his
attention to the country’s
neighbor. “My approach to Iran
will be aggressive diplomacy: I
will not take any military
options off the table.”
In fairness, Obama did mention
something few Democrats in
Washington dare to utter, “I
think there is a strain within
the pro-Israel community that
says unless you adopt a
unwavering pro-Likud approach to
Israel that you’re anti-Israel
and that can’t be the measure of
our friendship with Israel.”
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After pointing out the
obvious, however, Obama
praised Israel’s most
recent invasion of
Lebanon, the pro-Israel
tilt on Capital Hill,
and his quest for Israel
to remain a Jewish
State. |
After pointing out the obvious,
however, Obama praised Israel’s
most recent invasion of Lebanon,
the pro-Israel tilt on Capital
Hill, and his quest for Israel
to remain a Jewish State.
“[Any] negotiated peace between
Israelis and the Palestinians is
going to have to involve the
Palestinians relinquishing the
right of return as it has been
understood in the past,” he
averred. “And that doesn’t mean
that that there may not be
conversations about compensation
issues.”
How gracious, but what does
Obama plan to do with the over
1.4 million non-Jewish Arabs
that live in the country?
Continue to treat them like
second-class citizens or just
boot them out? Obama has called
Israel a “democracy,” but as the
former editor of the Harvard
Law Review you’d think he
would know what the term
actually means. Sure Israeli
Arabs can vote, but they can’t
hold office if they are
democratic secularists who want
civil rights for all of the
country’s citizens. They have no
constitutional protections
(Israel has no formal
constitution) and can only own
land in certain locales as a
consequence of unfair laws that
grant special treatment to
Jewish residents.
Simply put, as Jimmy Carter took
so much heat for rightly
observing, Israel is an
apartheid-ridden country where
the Arab population is not
exactly welcomed with open arms.
Barack Obama won’t confront this
reality, nor will he end
Israel’s violent incursions into
the occupied territories or halt
the US military threats toward
Iran. The Obama campaign may
pledge to bring “hope” and
“change” to the White House, but
when it comes to what the
Democratic frontrunner calls our
“special relationship” with
Israel, that promise is an
out-and-out lie.
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