Recent events have conspired to cause the amount and nature of idiocy regarding the issue of Israel to become especially pronounced. The true genesis of this surge in idiocy is Lightworker Obama's disastrous policy approach to Israel, but the related events are, among others, Bob Turner's win in New York's 9th congressional district and Rick Perry's presidential candidacy. I'll let
John Hinderaker handle the Perry-induced idiocy and I'll tackle NY-9.
It is no secret that Jewish voters in NY-9 overturned what was one of the most ironclad rules of American politics - New York Jews vote Democrat, no matter what. See
here,
here, and
here for my take. It's a big Bidenite f***in' deal and, as you would suspect, the Obama-infatuated media is scrambling to do damage control. There is no better example than New York Magazine's latest cover article, "
The First Jewish President". First of all, savor the revival of leftism's favorite (hoary) acclamation, the bestowal of extramural ethno-racial membership status. After all, what could be more ennobling for anybody than to be considered part of an ethnic or racial group of which one is clearly not? (Lefties lap this shit up, oblivious to the fact that it makes 70% of Americans puke.)
Anyway, on to the substance of this mission to rescue Obama with the Jews. The article is dense with bile, blindness and howlers of the first order, but the basic argument is akin to consoling a battered wife with the fact that at least her abusive husband won't leave her (and then telling all her girlfriends to lay off the husband, because he professes to love her despite the beatings). Let's skip over the opening ad hominem on Bibi Netanyahu, who harbors the apparent delusion that the 1967 borders are "indefensible," and who, we are reliably told by an "administration official" (real courage there), is a "small-minded, craven politician." But let's get straight to the chestnuts. Heilemann says:
"...Abbas could credibly claim that 126 of the 193 U.N. member states support his statehood initiative. Yet despite the damage thwarting that bid might do to America’s standing in the region, the Obamans have never wavered in going balls-out for Israel."
Huh? The Obamans are scrambling, not going "balls-out" reflective of their unwavering commitment to Israel. They are trying to put a beast back in a box, a beast they unleashed with their absolutely dreadful treatment of Israel and overt encouragement of Israel's enemies. I have highlighted just some of terrible approach to Israel before:
He has thoroughly trashed the alliance between the US and Israel and abandoned them to their own fate, which has emboldened Israels enemies. Obama has signaled to the world that he and Netanyahu cannot work together and he will not be coming to Bibi's aid. Thus, aggression against Israel has ramped up at a shocking pace because Israel's enemies know that the alliance between the US and Israel is at an all-time low point and they will probably never again get an opportunity like this again to damage the Jewish state. Rocket attacks have resumed from Gaza, Assad is sending waves of rabble-rousers over the border with Israel, terrorist attacks are being launched from Egypt, and, out of the blue, Turkey is talking war over the deliberately provocative and stupid Gaza aid flotilla. All the while, Obama eggs this on with sote voce and overt rebukes and demands that Israel return to the 1967 borders, again a crazy, out of the blue, development with no basis in policy reality or recent precedent.
Chestnut number two:
"In a way, history has been cruel to Obama, forcing him to succeed the wrong Bush—the one whose support for Israel, unlike that of his father, was uncritical to the point of blindness."
Ah yes, Obama is just a victim of circumstances, Bushian circumstances to be specific (aside: more of that liberal contradiction that Bush was an idiot but somehow has such power over circumstances as to shackle greatness into impotence). It's Bush's fault that he wasn't critical, because, you know, it is necessary to be critical of Israel - they deserve it. Um, Bush
wasn't blindly solicitous of Israel, but he also understood that Israel is an ally, and an ally operating in particularly desperate conditions with aggressive and unreasonable enemies all around it. Bush had the good sense to support this ally by not making a show of any disagreements the US might have with it.
Next, Heilemann kicks the self-loathing liberal Jew + Obama-love into high gear:
"In attempting to apply tough love to Israel, Obama is trying to make a stalwart ally see that undertaking the painful and risky compromises necessary for peace with the Palestinians is the only way to preserve the Zionist dream—which is to say a future as a state both Jewish and democratic. His role here is not that of the callous assailant but of the caring and sober brother slapping his drunken sibling: The point is not to hurt the guy but to get him to sober up."
Yes, Turkey has, literally, as of two months ago gone from Israeli ally to threatening war, but Israel is the drunk in need of sobering? The mind boggles.
Channeling Walken, I'm thinking more cowbell:
"The suspicions regarding the bone-deepness of Obama’s bond with Israel were present from the start, and always rooted in a reading of his background that was as superficial as it was misguided. Yes, he was black. Yes, his middle name was Hussein. And yes, in his time in Hyde Park, his friends included Palestinian scholars and activists, notably the historian Rashid Khalidi. But far more crucial to Obama’s makeup and rise to prominence were his ties to Chicago’s Jewish milieu, whose players, from real-estate powerhouse Penny Pritzker to billionaire investor Lester Crown, were among his chief supporters and financial patrons. "
Translation: ignore Obama's choices and voluntary associations, this is all trumped by the fact that wealthy liberal Jews gave him money for the specific purpose of defeating John McCain.
More cowbell:
"This background meant that, although Obama was hardly an old hand on Israel when he became president, he was well attuned to the Jewish community and its views. “With the kind of exposure he had to Jewish backers, Jewish thinkers, in Illinois,” says deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes, “he came into office with a deeper understanding of Jewish culture and Jewish thought than, I would argue, any president in recent memory.”
Maybe, but a stretch on the face of it. Say what you will about George Bush, but last I checked, his dad was actually in the business of foreign relations with Israel. ChimpyHitler, as a practical matter alone, could have picked up more about Israel and its relationship with the US over Thanksgiving dinner than Obama could have absorbed with all his hobnobbing with "thinkers".
Heilemann goes on to morph what can only be deemed as bad chess on a global scale into some sort of airy academic notion of out-of-box thinking, what we in the real world call delusion.
"In combination with its policy of engagement with Iran, this fostered the impression that Obama’s stance amounted to punishing America’s truest friend in the region while rewarding its—and Israel’s—most lethal foe. Obama’s advisers rightly point out that engagement with Iran was never any kind of reward; it was a way of reframing the issue, of putting the focus on Iran’s bad behavior and rallying international support for taking action against the rogue state—which, of course, later occurred with the imposition of U.N. sanctions."
If you believe that Obama's approach was not in a way rewarding or reassuring to the Iranian regime, that meaningful focus was placed on Iran's bad behavior, and that sanctions have had any effect on Iran's intentions and capabilities, well, then I cannot help you.
Yet more cowbell:
"Equally important, Obama’s advisers argue, is that the idea that the administration demanded little of the Palestinians is simply false. “I called it synchronized swimming,” recalls Prince. “The Israelis would do settlements, the Palestinians would do some stuff on incitement [of violence against Israel] and security, and other Arab states would undertake a variety of measures that would be steps to normalization. It could be reopening trade offices. It could be allowing overflights. It could be opening direct cell-phone connections. All stuff the Israelis said they really wanted. We spent many more hours in meetings with Arabs about Arab steps than we did with the Israelis. We had equally tough conversations with Arabs; the president had some hard meetings. But that didn’t get reported.”
Trade offices? Cell phone connections? "Some stuff on incitement of violence"?!?!?! Cogitate on that one - not
cease to fire rockets that kill people into Israeli territory but "do some stuff on incitement of violence."
"Another blunder, and not a minor one, made by the administration revolved around Obama’s vaunted speech to the Muslim world in Cairo that June—which more than a few Jews perceived as coming at the expense of Israel, especially when Obama failed to visit Jerusalem on the same trip (or at any time thereafter). “We made a mistake,” admits one senior administration foreign-policy adviser. “Nobody thought of it as a big deal at the time, but, I mean, you’re in the neighborhood, you’re right down the street, and you don’t stop by for coffee?”
"Jews perceived"? I've got to stop here because I think you get the point about Heilemann's approach and from all this we can make some conclusions. Heilemann's central argument is so steeped in bias for Obama and against Netanyahu that he can't reasonably present Israel's concerns, and thus Netanyahu's defense of those concerns, and can't reasonably view Obama's behavior as detrimental to those concerns, which most American Jews clearly see. The article is of a typical liberal elitist ilk - "others" cannot see, either through misguided passion or cognitive incapacity, what I, enlightened and clear-thinking, can plainly see. To Heilemann, the world (or least the Jewish electorate of NY-9) is wrong and Heilemann is right, full stop, and it is a travesty that it is thus. A pretty typical, and tired, formula.
The truth is that American Jews can see clearly and reason from first principles. America needs to show and has shown, until now, extra steadfastness in its alliance with Israel based on unique circumstances. Israel used to have an unquestionably reliable friend who could, by virtue of its gravitational pull, attract other allies, at the very least allies of convenience. Israel no longer has that. The US is a somewhat reliable, hectoring friend and the lack of US gravitational pull has allowed allies, albeit of convenience, to morph quickly into antagonists. This is a diminution, an unambiguous diminution. The fact that there are at least some strands of friendship in evidence among the other, formerly strong, strands that are newly tattered is no consolation to American Jews. The Obama Media however says don't worry, the wife-beater isn't going to end the marriage.
