Barack Obama: the anti-Zionist

Were Barack Obama re-elected, I predicted two months before the Nov. 2012 U.S. presidential vote, ‘the coldest treatment of Israel ever by a U.S. president will follow.’ Well, the election’s over and that cold treatment is firmly in place. Obama has signaled in the past two months what lies ahead by:

• Choosing three senior figures — John Kerry for the State Department, John Brennan for the CIA and Chuck Hagel for Defense — who range from clueless to hostile about Israel.
• Approving a huge gift of advanced weapons — 20 F-16 fighter jets and 200 M1A1 Abrams tanks — to the Islamist government in Egypt, despite the fact that its president, Mohamed Morsi, has become increasingly despotic and refers to Jews as, ‘blood-suckers … warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs.’
• Reiterating the patronizing 35-year-old tactic relied upon by anti-Israel types to condemn Israeli policies while pretending to be concerned for the country’s welfare: ‘Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are,’ is reportedly how Obama sums up his views on Israel’s leadership.
• Ignoring evidence of Cairo importing Scud missile parts from North Korea.
• Rebuffing the 239 House members who called for closing the PLO office in Washington, in response to the PLO’s drive for state-observer status at the United Nations.

Asked about Obama’s nomination of Hagel, Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor who, despite his astringent criticism of Obama, nonetheless endorsed him for re-election, offered an astonishing response: ‘I thought that there would come a time when [Obama] would renege on … his support of Israel [but this] comes a little earlier than I thought.’ Even some of Obama’s pro-Israel supporters apparently expected him to turn against the Jewish state.

These anti-Israel steps raise worries because they are in agreement with Obama’s early anti-Zionist views. We lack specifics, but we know that he studied with, befriended, socialized and encouraged Palestinian extremists.

For example, a picture from 1998 shows him listening reverentially to anti-Israel theorist Edward Said. Obama also sat idly by as speakers at an event in 2003 celebrating Rashid Khalidi, a former PLO public relations operative, accused Israel of waging a terrorist campaign against Palestinians and compared ‘Zionist settlers on the West Bank’ to Osama bin Laden. Ali Abunimah, an anti-Israel agitator, commended Obama in 2004 for ‘his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,’ code words for distancing the U.S. government from Israel. In turn, Obama allegedly praised Abunimah for his obsessively anti-Israel articles in the Chicago Tribune, urging him to ‘Keep up the good work!’

Abunimah also claims that, starting in 2002, Obama toned down his anti-Israel rhetoric ‘as he planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene.’ Obama allegedly made this explicit two years later, apologizing to Abunimah in a form that Abunimah recollects as, ‘Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.’

We can’t know whether Abunimah’s reports are accurate. But in any event, Obama dutifully made the requisite policy changes, albeit in a reluctant manner (‘I have to deal with him every day,’ he once whined about Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu).

To give Obama his due, it must be conceded that he supported Israel in its 2008-09 and 2012 wars with Hamas. His administration called the Goldstone Report ‘deeply flawed’ and backed Israel at the United Nations with lobbying efforts, votes and vetoes. Armaments flowed to the Jewish state. The Israeli exception to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remained in place. When Ankara canceled Israeli participation in the 2009 ‘Anatolian Eagle’ air force exercise, the U.S. government pulled out in solidarity. If Obama created crises over Israeli housing starts, he eventually allowed these to simmer down. But Obama’s more recent moves suggest that things will be very different in his second term.

Netanyahu’s re-election as Israeli Prime Minister last week means continuity of leadership in both countries. But that does not imply continuity in U.S.-Israel relations. Because of the unexpectedly close election result in Israel, Netanyahu is likely to move to the left, while Obama, freed from re-election constraints, can finally express his early anti-Zionist views after a decade of political positioning. Watch for a markedly worse tone from the second Obama administration toward the third Netanyahu government.

Recalling what Obama said privately in March 2012 to the then-Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev — ‘This is my last election and after my election, I have more flexibility’ — there is every reason to think that, having won that re-election, things have now ‘calmed down’ and, after a decade of caution, he can ‘be more up front’ to advance the Palestinian cause against Israel.

I predicted in September that ‘Israel’s troubles will really begin’ should Obama win a second term. These have begun; Jerusalem, brace for a rough four years.