Oscar Wilde noted “true friends stab you in the front.” Which
explains why President Obama— the self-proclaimed “best friend
Israel ever had” — has decided to cut funding for the Jewish
state’s missile defense system at the same time he wants to restore
funding to UNESCO. (Israel’s best friends will remember that the
President was forced to cut support to the traditional anti-Israel
agency by federal law because the organization recognized the
Palestinian Authority as a state.)
If that wasn’t enough evidence of the President’s
“unshakeable bond” with Israel, these policy decisions come exactly
at the same time Israel is engaged in a cold, covert war against
Iran and making preparations for a possible strike against Iranian
nuclear facilities. As the song goes, “That’s what friend are
for.”
The president really believes — as a friend — that
Israel should do nothing with regard to Iran except boost its
ability to defend against a nuclear attack and focus on reaching a
peace treaty with the Palestinian authority. President Obama still
believes that the key to neutralizing Iran and its alliance with
Hamas and Hezbollah is for Israel to cut itself down to the size
and shape of the Palestinians’ liking.
What is Israel to make of the fact that as the Syrian
regime continues to murder people with the help of Iranian
technicians and military equipment, senior officials in the
administration have said almost nothing about the killing? Instead,
the administration is focusing all of its diplomatic and military
acumen on discouraging Israel from doing anything to figure out
ways to reduce the number of people that could be slaughtered by
Iranian aggression.
It is a hallmark of the administration’s “friendship” with
Israel that is knows slightly more about Israel’s strategy and
thinking on Iran than it does about when North Korean dictators
die. Israel has not decided to launch a full-scale aerial assault
on Iran nuclear sites. An attack could and would take multiple
forms. It will engage in asymmetrical activities that no one
outside of a small circle of individuals knows about. It could be
more like the raid on Entebbe than the bombing of the nuclear
reactors in Syria and Iraq. Or it could be both. In any scenario no
one outside of Israel and its covert agents in Iran, Syria, and
elsewhere will know how or when it will happen. If at
all.
There is one element of the effort to go after Iran that
is certain: No one in Israel’s chain of command believes the Obama
administration will support pre-emptive military operations,
whether they be against Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran.
It’s not just the White House being clueless about the
situation. If Iran will assist Assad in killing Syrian civilians by
the tens of thousands, what would it do to damage and destroy
Israel if it had the chance? Rather, it is the fact that the
President truly believes demanding more from Israel and little from
the Palestinians is the key to lasting peace. Which is why when
touting his administration’s military aid to Israel, it is always
about defensive systems. And it’s why he can square cutting funding
for such programs with restoring funding to UNESCO as well as a
multi-billion-grant program to support the “Arab
Spring.”
Recently the White House released a 7-minute
video
touting that “unbreakable bond.” Apart from the fact that it
full of misinformation and inaccuracies (e.g., its brazen claim
that the U.S. strongly supported Israel when it was maligned by the
UN’s Goldstone Report; or the shameless way it takes Netanyahu’s
comments after a meeting with Obama out of context), two things
stand out: It exalts as special the usual rhetoric about Israel’s
right to exist. And even then, as the American Thinker
pointed out: It is only 7 minutes long. That’s because it
overlooks all the attacks on Israel’s efforts to protect its
borders and augment its pre-emptive options. If they were included,
it wouldn’t just be a video — it would be a
mini-series.
Most telling, especially at a time when Israel clearly is
preparing to step up its ongoing assault on Iranian assets, is what
Obama has not said and done. As Martin Luther King put it:
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our
friends.”
