My late mother loved that joke about the cowboy who gets shot
full of arrows by a band of Indian braves. When his buddies find
him in terrible condition, they ask him if it hurts.
“Only when I laugh,” he answers.
One thing you learn quickly when living in Israel: the security
of the State of Israel is a laughing
matter. Citizens trying to survive in the trying political
atmosphere over there learn to chuckle the doomsayers into
oblivion. They guffaw, they cackle, they bellow, and they howl with
laughter at every amusing situation that arises in the military
realm.
Today they are all laughing again… at President Obama. Well, not
at his policies officially. Nah, they would never do a thing like
that. They view him with “the highest respect,” as Jackie Mason
says. They are only laughing because his limo got towed.
Apparently the genius who is in charge of getting the President
from place to place was not aware that the limousine runs on
diesel, not regular gas. This fellow issued an executive order to
start the Keystone Kops Pipeline, but the Kops refused to go on
petrol. The Presidential party was forced to abandon the auto
stationary and hitch another ride.
Now the last thing a serious commentator should do would be to
see a metaphor in this fiasco. It would be ridiculous to advance
the notion that the arresting of forward progress due to an
intrinsic misconception as to the nature of the object, the
subject, the energy and the catalyst is somehow symbolic of the
failure of vision that is the Obama Mideast policy.
Yet we can hardly help but to ponder all the wizardry that has
led to this point. The great Cairo speech designed to bring us
closer to the Muslim world. The confession that the CIA should not
have interfered in the Iranian government in the 1950s, when there
is still no evidence that ever happened. The Syrian morass, the
rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Benghazi killings,
none of these make us look any smarter or nicer. The Iranians have
shown no sign of letting our famous “crippling sanctions” slow them
down any.
All in all, that region has certainly grown no safer or
friendlier since the United States elected a guy middle-named
Hussein. Nor has the famously peripatetic Hillary Clinton era in
the State Department made any visible inroads on any front. If all
that incompetence provides any occasion for concern, wait until the
Kerry-Hagel axis takes hold.
The good news for Israel is that the President does not like to
undertake adventures that do not lead to quick results. There are
no quick fixes in Israel, so the process is too unwieldy and
unrewarding. To date he has limited his mangling of the
relationship to such petty gestures as walking out on Netanyahu in
the White House to go eat supper.
Now to liven things up, the White House leaked word that Obama
would try to win the hearts of young Israelis by going over
Netanyahu’s head to address them directly. In that vein, Obama
decided to snub the Knesset and speak to students at a convention
center. His State Department put out a video in advance of the trip
and put up a map showing Israel with Jerusalem and the Golan
Heights lopped off.
This kind of death of a thousand cuts may work in places where
folks take themselves too seriously but not in Israel. This is the
country where Jimmy Swaggart got off the plane after a sex scandal
to be greeted with a sign proclaiming “Pro-Israel is the best
position.” I was there myself when James Baker landed and was met
by this banner: “Baker, go make your own bread…”
They figure they can outlast a guy like Obama. They can hold his
car at the impound lot for four years. They can keep him waiting
for a foursome at the golf course in Caesarea. They can nod their
heads attentively while he explains to them that no President
before him has read so extensively about Judaism. And they can give
him a crate of Jaffa oranges as a door prize.
As for anything substantive changing, now that is cause for a
good laugh right there. It’s like the old joke about the pale man
with the pointy teeth entering a man’s bedroom at night. The man
lifted his silver cross but the vampire just laughed and kept
approaching.
“Did they sell me fake silver?” the man wondered.
“Oh, no, my brother-in-law only sells genuine artifacts. The
only problem is I am Jewish…”
Photo: UPI
