Monday, April 19, 2010

Israel Under a Cloud (Though Not a Mushroom One For the Moment)

Israel--62 years young and not getting much 'birthday love' from the Obama gang. An editorial in the JPost casts a baleful look at the scene:
...As we today make the abrupt annual shift from mourning our fallen soldiers to celebrating the independence for which they gave their lives, however, internal challenges are complicated by a new and largely unexpected diplomatic danger: our blighted relations with the US.

Israel at 62, aware of the demographic threat to our democracy of retaining the entire West Bank, is consensually supportive of a Palestinian state, provided this historically unprecedented entity does not threaten us militarily, or require our withdrawal to the vulnerable pre-1967 borders, or flood us with refugees. To advance these vital terms, we need the US at our side.

Israel at 62 lives in the shadow of an Iranian regime that seeks our demise; that arms, trains, funds and inspires Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon; and that is speeding serenely ahead toward nuclear weapons. Here, too, we look to America to marshal sufficient economic – and if all else fails, military – pressure to deter the mullahs from this path or force them from power.

And Israel at 62 suffers growing pariah status, singled out for demonization in diplomatic forums, in legal arenas and in the media – its historic legitimacy undermined, its defensive measures assailed, its very right to survive questioned. Iran is central to this assault, bolstered by the bizarre partnership of the radical Left and the fascist Right in much of Western Europe and beyond. Here, once more, we depend on the US’s upright moral compass and the fundamental ethics of its citizens to counterbalance the United Nations and other skewed forums.

BUT AFTER a year in office, the Obama administration has placed our strategic partnership under a shadow. By coldly escalating the Ramat Shlomo-housing dispute into an ongoing, full-scale crisis, Washington has diverged from the tone of previous administrations on the status of Jerusalem, and it has damagingly publicly questioned fundamental aspects of our alliance...
You got oil, Jews? You got the numbers, Jews? You part of the sainted, downtrodden Third World, Jews? Then quit yer bellyaching. As far as Barack Hussein Obama is concerned, you're a mere bagatelle--and therefore completely expendable.

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