Obama In Israel
Gog is supposed to land in Israel 3 times..are we embarking on the 2nd time? Is Obama willing to take his place in history and assume his destiny? Any secretly Islamic self proclaimed Imam Mahdi should, no?
May it be so:
Former President George W. Bush waited until his eighth year in office to touch down in Israel. His father, George H.W. Bush, didn’t go at all. Neither did Ronald Reagan.
But for President Barack Obama, the call of Israel has always been more urgent.
Continue ReadingJewish leaders have been pressing Obama since he took office to carve out time for Israel, arguing that a trip is needed to repair missteps in the relationship with the key U.S. ally. But the window — and the expectations — for a visit are quickly diminishing, leaving a potential missed opportunity for a president who has been dogged by questions about his commitment to Israel.
“It is an error,” said former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who made peace with Obama in September after being sharply critical of his record on Israel and agreed to support his reelection. “If he didn’t go this year and he didn’t go next year, it would result in an even greater reduction in Jewish support.”
Complaints about Obama stem from the perception that he has been too tough on Israel in his pursuit of Middle East peace — concerns that peaked last spring when the president gave a speech calling on Israel to embrace the country’s pre-1967 borders, with “land swaps” as a basis for peace talks. Although that approach was long what American negotiators had contemplated, Republicans accused Obama of abandoning Israel.
The White House gave “serious consideration” to a summer trip to Israel, said former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), a lead liaison for the Obama campaign with the Jewish community.
But domestic distractions piled up, and there are no longer any plans in the works, at least at this point. Obama travels to France, about a five-hour flight from Israel, for the opening of a conference Thursday of the world’s largest economies. And next week, he leaves on a nine-day trip to Hawaii, Indonesia and Australia. The winter holiday season is typically off-limits for foreign travel.
If Obama doesn’t go next year, he would break with the precedent set by his two most recent Democratic predecessors, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, both of whom made the trip during their first term.
The White House wants to reserve a trip for a time when the president can advance the peace process, according to people familiar with administration thinking, but there is no immediate prospect of a breakthrough. And once the calendar ticks over to 2012, a presidential trip to Israel could be viewed as an overtly political exercise, further dampening the likelihood of a trip.
Still, the political lure may be hard to resist heading into a tough reelection fight in which Republicans intend to stoke doubts about Obama’s record on Israel, which he last visited in 2008 as a presidential candidate.
“For other presidents it might have been a less glaring omission than for a president who chose to make these issues a centerpiece of his foreign policy and has had such a difficult time showing that his ‘unique approach’ has succeeded at all, if not set back the prospects for peace,” said Joshua Block, senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and a former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “In many ways, he is in a greater need of going to Israel.”
At a June fundraiser with Jewish supporters, Obama faced pressure on this very question.
A donor asked the president whether he realized that he needed to go to Israel “now” or at least in his first term, according to a source familiar with the event. Obama responded that he would visit the country, but the time had to be right and he didn’t want to go purely for a political benefit, the source said.
J Street, a liberal Jewish group, launched a petition last spring urging Obama “to go to Jerusalem” and detail his plan for achieving a two-state solution for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
“It’s time for a presidential visit to Israel,” the petition stated.
“I got a big smile,” Rothman said of Obama’s response. “I don’t think the president gets enough credit for all that he has done for Israel.”
Wexler, an early Obama backer and president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, said he fielded the question frequently — until about two months ago.
Continue Reading“The focus was, ‘Where does the president stand on Israel?’ and to the extent that there were questions, the trip to Israel was a part of that narrative,” Wexler said in an interview. “But that narrative has been answered in the strongest of terms.”
First, Obama took a personal role in ensuring that Israeli diplomats caught in an early September siege of the country’s embassy in Cairo were brought to safety. Then, later that month, Obama delivered a speech at the United Nations strongly condemning the Palestinian Authority’s quest for statehood through a U.N. resolution. After that, Newsweek revealed that Obama had secretly agreed in 2009 to sell 55 bunker-busting bombs to Israel, making good on a request first pursued during the George W. Bush administration.
“Those three items are so powerful in terms of the impressions made in the American-Jewish community that a trip to Israel would be gravy,” Wexler said.
An administration official said not visiting Israel in the first term “isn’t unusual,” but “that doesn’t change the fact that the bilateral relationship is very strong.” The official cited the president’s numerous one-on-one meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama’s support in ensuring Israel’s security, including $205 million in aid for a short-range missile defense system known as Iron Dome.
His popularity in Israel does appear on the rise. A May survey of Israeli Jews found only 12 percent thought U.S. policy was pro-Israel and 40 percent viewed it as pro-Palestinian. A survey taken after the U.N. speech showed that 54 percent thought Obama’s policy was favorable to Israel and 19 percent said it was pro-Palestinian. The Jerusalem Post commissioned both polls, but they were conducted by different firms with different methodologies, making direct comparisons difficult.
In America, Obama’s support among Jews has declined over the past three years, mirroring his drop in support among all voters, according to the Gallup Poll. He won 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008, and although he is expected to win a majority again next year, some worry he won’t perform quite as well.
A group of Obama’s closest Jewish supporters — including Wexler, senior campaign strategist David Axelrod and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz — launched an offensive earlier this year to counter Republicans such as presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who said Obama “threw Israel under the bus.”
“Much of the narrative that was out there was trumped up by Republicans,” Wasserman Schultz said. “I reject the notion that there was widespread concern other than it was from Republicans who cared more about partisanship than Israel. … Presidents go to Israel at some point in their presidency. The president will be no exception.”
David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, said Obama’s trips earlier in his presidency to Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia “only make Israelis want the visit more.” But now Obama should wait until he can advance the peace process, Harris said.
Block disagrees, saying there are many reasons to visit Israel, even if it’s simply to show support for a key ally in a volatile region. Obama has moved the relationship in a positive direction in recent weeks, and a visit would only reinforce the trend, Block said.
“If he doesn’t do it,” Block said, “he is missing an opportunity to underscore that our relationship with Israel goes well beyond simple questions of the peace process, and it leaves him open to criticism that he didn’t go.”
Moshiach and Gog V' Magog in 5772?
Posted in: 5772,Geulah,Politics
0 comments :
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.