Ex-Israeli Ambassador: Obama Manufactured Crisis with Israel
March 25, 2016
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/262286/ex-israeli-ambassador-obama-manufactured-crisis-daniel-greenfieldDaniel Greenfield
I've been writing about this for a while. It's good to see it being said openly. Especially now that Obama tried to fake yet another diplomatic crisis because of another manufactured Israeli "insult".
Former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren says that Obama and his administration intentionally worked to create distance between the historic allies.
“Obama chose to create the crises [between Israel and the US],” said Oren.
“There were differences of opinion with America, as there have been for years. The disagreement regarding Jerusalem has been around since 1948, the disagreement over the settlements since 1967. The thing is he chose to deal with these disagreements publicly. He chose to put diplomatic distance between the US and Israel.”
Among [Netanyahu’s] advisers, there were differences of opinions on how to deal with Obama, and sometimes we made mistakes. But we never did so intentionally. On the other side, however, [in the Obama administration] there was a clear effort made to create diplomatic distance and at times even to create diplomatic crises.”
As an example of such a crisis, Oren cites the infamous diplomatic dustup during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel in March 2010, calling it a “fabricated crisis” intentionally created by the Obama administration regarding a routine approval announcement for construction inside an established neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Obama manufactures these crises, these "insults" by Israel to make him seem like the victim so that when he attacks Israel, he's only "fighting back." This is the Islamic terror strategy against Israel. It's certainly disturbing that Obama chose to adopt it.
Making it about some sort of "personal insult" also mobilizes a key portion of the Democratic base who otherwise wouldn't care about the details of foreign policy in Israel, Black Democrats, who are extremely sensitive to any perceived insult to Obama.
The fake "snubs" weaponize this section of the Democratic base and then make it very difficult for pro-Israel Democrats to defy Obama.
Obama racializes his conflict with Israel.
Obama has also not had much patience for Netanyahu and other Middle Eastern leaders who question his understanding of the region. In one of Netanyahu’s meetings with the president, the Israeli prime minister launched into something of a lecture about the dangers of the brutal region in which he lives
Finally, the president interrupted the prime minister: “Bibi, you have to understand something,” he said. “I’m the African American son of a single mother, and I live here, in this house. I live in the White House. I managed to get elected president of the United States. You think I don’t understand what you’re talking about, but I do.”
His associates shamelessly racialize the conflict...
Rice, reflecting her generally more combative mind-set, would say to Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, that in reacting to the Joint Plan of Action, Netanyahu’s posture was outrageous. In her view, the Israeli leader did everything but “use ‘the N-word’ in describing the president.”
All this makes Obama seem like the victim, rather than the aggressor. Snubs and insults are manufactured. And that provides cover for Obama's support for terrorism and hostility to Israel.
