Maccabeats With President Obama

Carefully parsing Obama’s words to AIPAC: What exactly did he promise?

Here’s what President Obama said in his AIPAC speech, and how I think it should be interpreted:

America’s commitment to Israel has endured under Democratic and Republican Presidents, and congressional leaders of both parties.

Don’t use Israel against me in the coming election; don’t make it a political tool. Liz Cheney is wrong, Jane Harman is right (details here).

[A]s President of the United States, I have kept my commitments to the State of Israel. At every crucial juncture – at every fork in the road – we have been there for Israel. Every single time.

Obama is now in trying to erase the memories of past skirmishes with the Israeli government. Settlements? Do not appear in the speech. West Bank – ditto. Obama was with Israel on Goldstone, on Durban, on delegitimazation. He really was, and does deserve to get credit for it.

So if during this political season you hear some question my Administration’s support for Israel, remember that it’s not backed up by the facts.

This speech was a bit defensive on Obama’s Israel-support credentials. And don’t forget to vote Obama.

That’s why – just as we encourage Israel to be resolute in the pursuit of peace – we have continued to insist that any Palestinian partner must recognize Israel’s right to exist, reject violence, and adhere to existing agreements.

That’s the only mention in this speech of some, well, minor past disagreements between the Obama administration and Israel.

A nuclear-armed Iran is completely counter to Israel’s security interests. But it is also counter to the national security interests of the United States.

There is a difference between “completely counter” and “also counter”. That’s an important differentiation Obama is making.

[W]e would use all elements of American power to pressure Iran and prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon. That is what we have done.

There’s something strange about this line. Not “all elements” were used until now, but Obama says that is “what we have done” in the past tense. If “all elements” Obama can think about were already used, this means that military action has been taken out of the equation.

[O]ur policy of engagement – quickly rebuffed by the Iranian regime – allowed us to rally the international community as never before.

We were not naïve, we were smart.

I firmly believe that an opportunity remains for diplomacy – backed by pressure – to succeed.

Can Obama be clearer?

Iran’s leaders should have no doubt about the resolve of the United States, just as they should not doubt Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.

Here Obama is using Israel by way of convincing both America’s allies and Iran that he might not be able to hold Israel back forever.

I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say. That includes all elements of American power.

But hey, didn’t the President say a minute ago that “all elements of American power” have been already used?

[A] military effort to be prepared for any contingency.

Sorry, but this is a lawyerly way of presenting threat. As the Iranians listen carefully to Obama’s speech their conclusion will probably be this: Obama might let Israel act, but has no intention of acting (militarily) himself.

I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.

But I do not say that force is necessary against Iran to defend US interests (See: “also counter”).

[T]here is too much loose talk of war. Over the last few weeks, such talk has only benefited the Iranian government, by driving up the price of oil.

Israel should stop hinting at war. If it doesn’t, people might come to the conclusion that rising gas prices are Israel’s fault.

Bottom line: The US and Israel share a goal – stopping Iran. But this is not the speech that will give Netanyahu good enough reason to be cool. In one of the best articles written recently on this topic, Yossi Klein Halevi asked if Israel can “trust the administration to act militarily against Iran.” When “Obama tells Israel to give sanctions time”, he wrote, ”what he is really saying is: Trust me to stop Iran militarily when you no longer can.” His speech today was aimed at giving Israelis good reason to trust him based on past supportive deeds - while promising very little.

What’s Missing From Obama’s AIPAC Speech? Red Lines on Iran and Palestinians

President Obama’s charm offensive with Jewish voters was again in evidence today during his speechto the AIPAC conference. The president’s bragging of his “deeds” left little doubt that his desire to be seen as the Israel’s best friend ever in the White House is due to fears of a decline in support from Jewish voters this year. Obama’s doubling down on his tough rhetoric on Iran — he specifically disavowed any thought of “containing” Tehran — and the complete absence in the speech of any of any interest in pressuring Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians– (a hallmark of his administration’s policies during his first three years in office) was a signal defeat for Jewish leftists like the J Street lobby that once hoped to wean the Democrats from AIPAC.

But even more significant was the fact that despite his repeated vows to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, there was little indication that Obama is prepared to make the leap from talking about the danger to actually doing something. His call for continued efforts towards negotiations on the issue undermined all the hard line rhetoric intended to appease wavering Jewish Democrats. Though his campaign will spin this speech as more proof that Obama has “Israel’s back,” Iran’s leaders may read it very differently and assume they are free to go on building their weapon with little fear the U.S. really is contemplating the use of force.

The first conclusion to be drawn from the speech is that Obama’s all-out effort to create more distance between the U.S. and Israel and to hound the Israelis to make concessions on borders, Jerusalem and settlements is dead for the moment. A re-elected Obama may take up this dead-end argument with Israel again this year, but for now, all that is forgotten. This is a crushing blow to J Street, who wrongly interpreted the 2008 election as signaling the end of the pro-Israel consensus in this country. Obama’s focus on Iran shows not only is he aware of the potential for a significant loss in his percentage of the Jewish vote this year, but that he must ignore those left-wingers calling for a less tough stand on Iran if he is to maintain the Democrats’ Jewish advantage.

But this renewed charm offensive should not be mistaken for a coherent strategy on Iran. The ayatollahs have been listening to Obama’s tough talk about them for years. But unlike those who may take the president’s claims about all his administration has done on the issue at face value, they have not forgotten years of Obama’s effort to “engage” them as well as a feckless diplomatic campaign that has not scared them much. The president’s Jewish admirers may believe his assertion that Russia and China have joined his coalition to isolate Iran, but the ayatollahs know that both countries are opposed to any further sanctions and that China stands ready to buy the oil the U.S. and Europe might boycott later this year.

Moreover, their ears must have lit up when in the course of a speech aimed at proving how little daylight exists between the administration and Israel, they heard the president continuing to argue in favor of further diplomacy. The Iranians regard any further negotiations as merely another opportunity to run out the diplomatic clock as they get closer to realizing their nuclear ambitions. The assumption that reliance on sanctions or more talking can get the Iranians to back down is without substance.

They also noticed what Obama’s Democratic cheerleaders will diligently try to ignore: the absence in the speech of any indication that the United States is willing to lay down “red lines” that mark the limit of how far Iran may go without obligating Washington to take action. Though the president deprecated the “loose talk” about war that has been heard lately, the only way to avoid such a conflict is to demonstrate to Iran that if it continues, as it has, to increase its efforts toward nuclear capability, it will bring down upon itself the wrath of the West.

Obama rightly restated the proposition that an Iranian nuclear weapon posed a threat to the United States and the West as much as it does to Israel. The logic of Obama’s rhetoric about the folly of containment — a point many in his administration don’t seem to accept — ought to point him toward abandoning his faith in a diplomatic effort that was doomed even before he began repeating the mistakes of the Bush administration on Iran.

Despite all the happy talk about Obama emanating from Israeli sources at AIPAC, Prime Minister Netanyahu understands that a policy of waiting for the U.S. to take action on Iran is tantamount to a decision to sit back and wait for Tehran to announce it has a bomb. Though there is no telling yet what Netanyahu’s decision on striking Iran may turn out to be, Israel’s friends can take little comfort from the president’s speech.

DID OBAMA MAKE A RACIAL SLUR AGAINST RICH JEWS? CHECK OUT POINT 35 IN THIS VIDEO.......

The Tsuris Barack Obama is the best thing Israel has going for it right now. Why is that so difficult for Netanyahu and his American Jewish allies to understand?

The last time Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu shared each other’s company, you could say that the encounter did not go well—if by “not well” you mean abysmally. This was on May 20, the day after Obama gave his big speech on the Arab Spring, in which he unleashed a tsunami of tsuris by endorsing the use of Israel’s 1967 borders “with mutually agreed [land] swaps” as the basis for a two-state solution with the Palestinians. Obama and Netanyahu were seated in the Oval Office for what was supposed to be one of those photo ops devoted to roasting rhetorical chestnuts about the solidity of the U.S.-Israel alliance. Instead, while Obama watched silently, looking poleaxed, Netanyahu lectured him—for seven and a half minutes, on live television—about the folly, the sheer absurdity, of suggesting Israel ever return to what he called the “indefensible” 1967 lines.

Obama was furious with Netanyahu, who in choosing to ignore the crucial qualifier about land swaps had twisted Obama’s words beyond recognition—the kind of mendacious misinterpretation that makes the presidential mental. The seniormost members of Obama’s team felt much the same. Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Bob Gates, Bill Daley, the former Mideast-peace envoy George Mitchell: All were apoplectic with the prime minister, whose behavior over the past two years had already tried their patience. “The collective view here is that he is a small-minded, fairly craven politician,” says an administration source deeply involved in its efforts to push the parties to the negotiating table. “And one who simply isn’t serious about making peace.”

But this week, when Barack and Bibi arrive in New York for the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly, they will not be going toe-to-toe but standing arm-in-arm. For months, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has been threatening to mount a bid for statehood recognition at the U.N. The Obama administration has been scrambling furiously to fashion a compromise with Abbas to forestall that application—at this writing, to no avail—and has pledged to veto the bid should it come before the Security Council.

For both Israel and the U.S., the timing could hardly be more miserable. With the Middle East apparently hurtling headlong into crisis, Israel finds itself increasingly isolated, beleaguered, and besieged: its embassy in Cairo invaded by Egyptian protesters, its relations with Turkey in tatters, its continued occupation of (and expansion of settlements within) the Palestinian territories the subject of wide international scorn. How wide? Wide enough that 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.

And not for the first time, either. Again and again, when Israel has been embroiled in international dustups—over its attack last year on a flotilla filled with activists headed from Turkey to Gaza, to cite but one example—the White House has had Israel’s back. The security relationship between the countries, on everything from intelligence sharing to missile-­defense development to access to top-shelf weapons, has never been more robust. And when the Cairo embassy was seized and Netanyahu called to ask for Obama’s help with rescuing the last six Israelis trapped inside the building, the president not only picked up the phone but leaned hard on the Egyptians to free those within. “It was a decisive moment,” Netanyahu recalled after the six had been freed. “Fateful, I would even say.”

All of which raises an interesting, perplexing, and suddenly quite pressing question: How, exactly, did Obama come to be portrayed, and perceived by many American Jews, as the most ardently anti-Israel president since Jimmy Carter?

This meme, of course, has been gathering steam for some time, peddled mainly by right-wing Likudophiles here and in the Holy Land. But last week, it took center stage in the special election in New York’s Ninth Congressional District, maybe the most Jewish district in the nation and one held by Democrats since 1923. When the smoke cleared, the Republican had won—and Matt Drudge was up with a headline blaring REVENGE OF THE JEWS.

Obama’s people deny up and down that the loss of a seat last occupied by Anthony Weiner portends, well, pretty much anything for 2012. But the truth is that they are worried, and worried they should be, for the signs of Obama’s slippage among Jewish voters are unmistakable. Last week, a new Gallup poll found that his approval rating in that cohort had fallen to 55 percent—a whopping 28-point drop since his inauguration. And among the high-dollar Jewish donors who were essential to fueling the great Obama money machine last time around, stories of dismay and disaffection are legion. “There’s no question,” says one of the president’s most prolific fund-raisers. “We have a big-time Jewish problem.”

Bibi Netanyahu and Barack Obama at the White House in May.   (Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

The sources of that problem are many. 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. Obama’s team has made its share of errors in the conduct of its diplomacy and in allowing misperceptions to take hold: that its tough-love approach to Israel has been all the former and none of the latter; that its demands on the Palestinians have been either negligible or nonexistent. And many Jewish voters, like those Wall Street financiers (and, to be sure, the overlap between those groups isn’t trivial) who flocked to Obama and were then chagrined when he called them out as “fat cats,” have all too often focused more on the president’s words than his deeds—and come away with the impression that he doesn’t seem to “feel Israel” in his bones.

For Obama, such assessments would be funny if they weren’t so frustrating and absurd; and for the Jews who know him best, they are simply mystifying. In the last days of the 2008 campaign, the former federal judge, White House counsel, and Obama mentor Abner Mikva quipped, “When this all is over, people are going to say that Barack Obama is the first Jewish president.” And while that prediction has so far proved to be wildly over-optimistic, there is more truth in it than meets the eye.

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.

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. In 2008—after herculean efforts by his campaign to reassure the Jewish Establishment that he was, er, kosher and stamp out the sub-rosa proliferation of the lie that he is a Muslim—he won 78 percent of the Jewish vote, four points higher than John Kerry’s total four years earlier.

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.”

Like all those presidents, Obama placed a high priority on pursuing a deal to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Where he departed from his predecessors was on a number of premises. When there were differences between America and Israel, Obama wanted to address them: “We’re not gonna be saying one thing in public and another in private,” he told his team. And in the effort to bring the parties to the negotiating table, pressure would be applied equally to both sides.

Obama also believed that it was critical to begin the process immediately; thus on his third day in office did he name Mitchell to his post. “Our view of Bush was, yeah, Annapolis was great, but he started in his last year in office, and that was just too late,” recalls former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. “So our theory coming in was that [Obama] was gonna put his foot on the gas from day one.”

The problem with that theory was the situation on the ground: During Obama’s transition, the Israelis and the Palestinians had been at war in Gaza. So Mitchell began traveling in the region, searching for a series of measures that might change the climate sufficiently to get the two sides talking again. What he heard uniformly from the Arab states was that a halt to the construction of Israeli settlements was key. “The idea came from the Palestinians first and the rest of the Arabs second—and I mean all of them,” says Jonathan Prince, a senior State Department aide who worked with Mitchell. “We were told it was the only way to give the Palestinians political cover to get them back to the negotiating table.”

2008: Obama + Jewish support = good.   (Photo: Dennis Brack-Pool/Getty Images)

The American push for a settlement freeze would be the first flash point in Obama’s relations with Israel and also a turning point in his standing with Jewish voters at home. With Netanyahu having just reassumed the prime-ministership in a coalition government that included several ultraconservative parties, he resisted Obama’s call for a freeze. American Jews, meanwhile, saw the administration as aggressively pressuring Israel but treading softly on the Palestinians. 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.

Regarding the call for a settlement freeze, the Obamans defend the decision without a trace of apology. Beyond the political rationale behind the demand, the settlements have been deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice, are supported by no country in the world, and have been opposed by every American president since Richard Nixon. “We were enunciating twenty-plus years of U.S. policy,” observes Emanuel. “The difference was we weren’t just lip-synching it.”

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.”

Lazy journalism can be cited for the lack of coverage of those efforts, but Obama and his people bear fault, too. “Because no administration had been that clear and unambiguous with Israel on settlements, that was news,” says Emanuel. “But there was a sense that it was one-sided. We had an obligation—and this is where we deserve a yellow card—to explain what we were doing with the Palestinians or Arabs, to put more air in the tires on that side. Not tone down what we said on settlements, but work harder so there was more recognition of the parity that existed with the Arab violations.”

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?”

By the end of 2009, the cumulative effect of these episodes was plain. On the right, the claim that Obama had shown his true colors was de rigueur; as the conservative pundit John Podhoretz put it, “The turn against Israel that so many predicted during the 2008 campaign is coming to pass.” Among Jewish voters more broadly, Obama’s approval ratings had plunged by more than twenty points. In the 21 months since then, his pursuit of peace has run through the usual stop-and-start cycles, but three things have stayed constant: on the Palestinian side, a partner unable to deliver; on the Israeli side, a partner unwilling to; and in the Israeli prime minister’s office, a man with whom Obama’s relationship started off scratchy—and went downhill from there.

To Netanyahu’s way of thinking, he had reason to be wary of his counterpart even before they first met. In 2008, Obama had declared to a campaign crowd in Ohio, “There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel.”

Putting aside the substantive validity of the argument, it’s not difficult to imagine how that sounded to Netanyahu, whose ascension to the prime-ministership for the second time both coincided with and augured moments of dark existential crisis in Israel. On one hand, there was Iran, making rapid advances toward nuclear capability. On the other, there was Hamas, which in the years after Ariel Sharon had withdrawn from Gaza had turned the place into a staging area for rocket fire into Israel—dampening the Israeli public’s appetite for further territorial compromise with the Palestinians. And then there was Netanyahu’s surpassingly volatile governing coalition, which was held together by far-right nationalist, fundamentalist, and even proto-fascistic elements (cf. Avigdor Lieberman).

2011: Now not so good.   (Photo: Coleman Photo/Graphix)

It was Netanyahu’s coalition partners that provoked the great contretemps of 2010 with the U.S.: the cold-cocking of Joe Biden. Arguably the administration’s staunchest Zionist and a longtime friend of Netanyahu’s—a signed photo of Biden from his Senate days sits on Bibi’s desk—the vice-president arrived in Israel that March to promote the “proximity” peace talks that the sides had just agreed to undertake. There he was ambushed with a surprise announcement by the Interior Ministry, which is controlled by the fundamentalist Shas Party, of the building of new settlement blocs in contested East Jerusalem. Netanyahu was apparently as blindsided as Biden was.

The Obamans were livid at Biden’s flagrant ill-treatment. Hillary Clinton administered a now-famous 43-minute telephonic blistering to Netanyahu, and, according to Jeffrey Goldberg on Bloomberg.com, Bob Gates “told several people that if he had been Biden, he would have returned to Washington immediately and told the prime minister to call Obama when he was serious about negotiations.”

Thirteen days later, Netanyahu traveled to Washington and met with Obama at the White House. The president expressed his anger about the Biden incident. Within days, media outlets around the world were filled with Israeli-sourced stories about Obama’s rudeness to Netanyahu: that there had been no photo op, no joint statement, and that 44 had walked out of their meeting and left Bibi stewing in a West Wing meeting room while the president had dinner with his family. Were the stories true? Obama’s people dispute the details. But the damage to his reputation with many American Jews had already been done; the “snub” to Netanyahu took its place atop the growing list of administration affronts to Israel.

It’s often said that Netanyahu has an exquisitely calibrated feel for American politics and great savvy in working its press corps. Both are true and both have helped him enormously in resisting the pressure brought to bear by Team Obama. But the administration has also sabotaged itself, in particular by frequently failing to speak with one voice to Israel.

Through much of 2009 and 2010, Obama’s people were divided over just how hard to lean on Netanyahu when it came to negotiating with the Palestinians. On one side were many central figures who favored the tough-love approach: Obama, Clinton, Mitchell, Emanuel. On the other were Dennis Ross, the president’s special assistant on the Middle East, and Tom Donilon, his national-security adviser. “The underlying argument of Dennis and Tom was that you’ll never get the Israelis to do anything by pushing them,” says one official. “The contrary argument is, there’s no evidence you’ll ever get them to do anything withoutpushing them.”

For Netanyahu, however, the internal division within the administration was a gift. Wary of Emanuel and senior adviser David Axelrod—Netanyahu was quoted in the Israeli press calling them “self-hating Jews,” though he later denied it—he turned to those in the White House who were more sympathetic. “What you had was Bibi doing this go-to-mommy, go-to-­daddy thing,” says the same official. “Which meant there was never a real, effective, tough negotiation with Israel, because every time you tried to say something tough, he’d go to someone else who would tell him, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ ”

Netanyahu’s penchant for forum shopping goes a long way toward explaining the bilateral conniption that erupted this past May. After briefly negotiating face-to-face last fall, the Israelis and the Palestinians were again at loggerheads. For weeks this spring, the administration debated internally how to modify U.S. policy in light of that breakdown as well as the dawning of the Arab Spring and the wave of instability engulfing the region.

With the new Republican Congress having invited Netanyahu to address a full joint session—making him only the fourth foreign leader (along with Yitzhak Rabin, Nelson Mandela, and Winston Churchill) to have been granted the privilege more than once—Obama was planning a major speech on the Middle East ahead of Bibi’s. The question was whether the president should lay out a framework for a two-state solution, including principles on borders, security, Jerusalem, and refugees. Clinton and Mitchell were in favor of including all four; Ross and Donilon were in favor of including none, and until a few days before the speech, it appeared that they would have their way. But in the end, Obama opted for two: principles on borders and security.

Everyone knew that the language on borders would stir up a hell of a fuss, though in truth there was nothing terribly controversial about what Obama said. The 1967 lines plus land swaps has been for decades the geographic template for any plausible two-state solution, and was employed (almost fruitfully) by Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat in 2000 and (again, almost fruitfully) by Bush, Ehud Olmert, and Abbas in 2008. The trouble was that its explicit embrace by Obama caught Netanyahu by surprise, almost certainly because Dennis Ross had assured him privately that it wouldn’t be in the speech.

Netanyahu threw a nutty. Before he departed Israel for Washington, his office issued a statement saying that the “Prime Minister expects to hear a reaffirmation from President Obama of U.S. commitments made to Israel in 2004 … commitments [that] relate to Israel not having to withdraw to the 1967 lines.” The statement was extraordinary on multiple levels: in its sheer presumptuousness (“expects”?); in its willful misreading of Obama’s words (ignoring the part about land swaps); and in its total neglect of the many hard-line pro-Israel positions the president had advanced, including a scornful rejection of the Palestinian statehood bid at the U.N., sharp criticism of Israel-denying Hamas, skeptical questioning of its new alliance with Israel-accepting Fatah, and harsh condemnation of Iran and Syria.

The next day, Netanyahu delivered his on-camera lecture to Obama. What enraged the president and his team wasn’t the impudence on display; they could live with that. It was the dishonesty at the heart of the thing. “I’ve been in more than one meeting with Bibi where he used the same language to describe the outlines of a deal,” one official says. “It’s outrageous—attacking the president for something he didn’t say, claiming he was putting Israel’s security at risk for stating out loud a position Bibi himself holds privately.”

But Netanyahu knew he could get away with it—so staunch and absolute is the bipartisan support he commands in the U.S. Garishly illuminating the point, on the night before his speech to Congress, the prime minister attended the annual AIPAC policy conference in Washington, where he was the headline speaker at the event’s gala banquet. Before he took the stage, three announcers, amid flashing spotlights and in the style of the introductions at an NBA All-Star game, read the names of every prominent person in the room, including 67 senators, 286 House members, and dozens of administration and Israeli officials, foreign dignitaries, and student leaders. (The roll call took half an hour.) When Harry Reid spoke, he obliquely but unambiguously chastised Obama for endorsing the use of the 1967 lines as the basis for a peace deal: “No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else.” The ensuing ovation was deafening—but a mere whisper compared with the thunderous waves of applause that poured over Netanyahu.

The next day came his speech to Congress, in which he spelled out demands that were maximal by any measure: recognition by the Palestinians of Israel as a Jewish state as a precondition for negotiations, a refusal to talk if Hamas is part of the Palestinian side, an undivided Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and absolutely no right of return for Palestinian refugees. Taken as a whole, his whirlwind Washington visit provided a strong dose of clarity: With Barak having moved his newly formed Independence Party into Netanyahu’s governing coalition, its new stability has reduced to near zero the incentives for him to take the risks required for peace.

In the eyes of some observers, Netanyahu’s performance over those days suggested something else: that he was taking sides in the 2012 race. As Time’s Joe Klein sharply noted, Netanyahu “has now, overtly, tossed his support to the Republicans.” With cover from Bibi, Mitt Romney pronounced that Obama had “thrown Israel under the bus.” Michele Bachmann tweeted that his “call for 1967 borders will cause chaos, division & more aggression in Middle East and put Israel at further risk.” Tim Pawlenty (remember him?) called Obama’s policy “a disaster waiting to happen.” And Ron Paul declared, “Unlike this president, I do not believe it is our place to dictate to Israel how to run her affairs.”

So much pandering, so little time! Republicans sucking up to Israel, and by extension Jewish voters, is nothing new; and in the past, it has come to naught. Might this election be different? Some political professionals think so. The perception of Obama as harboring antipathy to Israel, they argue, makes 2012 a ripe opportunity for the right Republican to swipe a larger than usual share of Jewish votes and/or pick the Obama campaign’s pocket. Skeptical? I would be, too, except for one thing: the sight of the Obamans scrambling to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Exactly one month after his Oval Office awkwardfest with Netanyahu, Obama made the mile-and-a-half trip from the White House to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel to have dinner with several dozen wealthy Jews. His appearance had twin objectives: to rake in more than $1 million and to calm their jangled nerves. Unlike many conservative Jews, the big-ticket Democrats in the room, who had paid $25,000 to $35,800 a head to be there, didn’t believe that Obama was hostile to Israel. Yet it’s fair to say they had their share of qualms and a ton of questions.

Obama fielded them all. With the press in the room, his statements were conventionally bromidal: “The most important message I have … is that even as we try to manage what is going to be a very difficult and challenging situation over the next twelve months, the next 24 months, the next decade, that one inviolable principle will be that the United States and Israel will always be stalwart allies and friends. That bond isn’t breakable.” Behind closed doors, his answers were more nuanced, but still designed to soothe—­especially regarding his relations with Netanyahu. You can’t ask me to agree with everything the government of Israel is doing, Obama argued, since not everyone in Israel agrees with what the government is doing.

Obama won’t be alone in making this argument to Jewish donors. In addition to deploying Axelrod and DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, his campaign has hired an official outreach director to try to fix its Jewish problem: Ira Forman, the former head of the National Jewish Democratic Council. Forman is known for an encyclopedic knowledge of Jewish politics and a history in waging trench warfare against Republican Jewish groups. But none of that will prepare him for the job he is taking on. “A lot of what he’ll be doing is coaxing and persuading,” says a Jewish Obama megabundler. “A lot of people who raised a ton of money for the president last time are very short on enthusiasm for doing it again.”

The hiring of Forman is a tacit acknowledgment that the White House has badly handled the continual care and feeding required to keep major donors sweet—and all the more so in this case. The first White House liaison to the community was Susan Sher, who at the time was chief of staff to Michelle Obama. “Lovely woman, but she knew nothing about Israel,” says an Obama bundler, who some time ago attended a dinner with Sher and a clutch of A-list tribesmen: Mort Zuckerman, HBO co-chief Richard Plepler, WashingtonPost columnist Richard Cohen. “It was kind of insulting to have this woman talking to these people who know this issue backward and forwards. And then there was no follow-up. Nothing.”

Both the nature and scale of Obama’s Jewish problem—at least where donors are concerned—are tough to pin down. A recent poll by the Republican firm McLaughlin & Associates found that among Jewish donors who gave to Obama in 2008, just 64 percent have already donated or plan to donate to him this time. Complicating the picture is the fact that Jewish buckrakers cite a variety of complaints with Obama: Some object to his rhetoric on Wall Street, some to his economic policies, and some to his handling of Israel. Then there’s the nature of fund-raising on behalf of an incumbent, which allows for much higher donations to the national party ($30,800) than to the campaign itself ($5,000). “Because you can raise so much from fewer people, it can mask a falloff in the number of donors,” says another bundler. “The president’s totals are healthy now, but you won’t know if you have a problem until later.”

Campaign coffers are one thing, albeit of huge importance for an incumbent who plans on filling them with roughly $1 billion. But the ballot box is quite another. And here it is easy enough to minimize the potential impact of Obama’s Jewish problem—or at least it was, until NY-9.

Not that Obama’s surrogates aren’t giving it the old college try. Within hours of Bob Turner’s victory over David Weprin, Wasserman Schultz—whose congressional district in South Florida is replete with Jews—was doling out the party line. “This is a special election that is purely reflective of who showed up to the polls and the makeup of the district,” she told the Washington Post, pointing in particular to its heavy concentration of Orthodox Jews. “There isn’t any comparison between districts like mine and New York 9.”

No doubt it is true that the district that was once the seat of Weiner, Chuck Schumer, and Geraldine Ferraro is unusual (and, as that list suggests, not just demographically). Not only is it roughly one-third Jewish, but of those Jews, roughly a third are indeed Orthodox. And Orthodox Jews are, to put it mildly, no one’s idea of a swing-voter group; instead they have become reliably Republican. (Among the Orthodox, a lowly 14 percent would reelect Obama.) Which would strongly suggest that the district is no coal mine, and its Jews are not canaries.

On the other hand, thanks in large part to the indefatigable Ed Koch, who endorsed Obama in 2008 but has now become one of his loudest (and loopiest) critics on Israel, the NY-9 election was framed to an unusual extent as a referendum not just on Obama but on his supposed betrayal of the chosen people. All over TV and the web was Koch, doing a squawky imitation of Romney, saying that the “Obama administration is willing to throw Israel under the bus in order to please the Muslim nations.” And, as state GOP chair Ed Cox pointed out to Politico’s Ben Smith, Koch’s appeal wasn’t to the Orthodox but to, in Smith’s paraphrase, “a still-more-sizable population of non-­Orthodox Jews in old-line neighborhoods like Forest Hills.” Who, in fact, aren’t all that different from the older Jews in Wasserman Schultz’s district.

Even in the face of the most pessimistic (for Obama) reading of NY-9, Democrats will comfort themselves with two facts. The first is that, for all the outsize attention they command—and the earsplitting volume of the collective megaphone they wield—Jews make up about 2 percent of the national electorate. Too small a proportion, that is to say, to matter much to the overall popular vote.

Yet presidencies are not won nationally, but state by state (hello, Electoral College!). And there are at least two critical swing states in which the Jewish vote is large enough to be pivotal. The most obvious is Florida, where Jews make up about 5 percent of the electorate. But they also account for 4 percent of the vote in Pennsylvania, which Kerry won in 2004 by fewer than 200,000 votes. Without both of these states in his column, Obama will find it punishingly hard to be reelected.

The second ostensibly comforting fact for Democrats has to do with the trend lines of recent presidential-election history: Obama’s 78 percent of the Jewish vote, Kerry’s 74 percent, Al Gore’s 79 percent, Clinton’s 78 and 80 percent in 1996 and 1992, respectively. The implication here is that, in the end, the Jews will come home to Obama—mainly because they are overwhelmingly liberal and have nowhere else to go. And chances are this will prove true. But it’s worth pointing out that the last presidential incumbent who was thoroughly stigmatized, fairly or not, as being anti-Israel was Jimmy Carter—who in 1980 claimed just 45 percent of Jewish votes, with 15 percent going to John Anderson and the rest, 39 percent, to Ronald Reagan.

The trouble for Republicans is that, in the extant crop of candidates, there is no one who bears even a passing resemblance to Dutch. Though Rick Perry is as avidly pro-Israel as any politician alive—“If you’re our friend, we are with you,” he says. “I’m talking about Israel. Come hell or high water, we will be standing with you!”—his positions on almost every other issue are anathema to virtually every Jew to the left of Eric Cantor. And Perry’s theocratish tendencies have been criticized even by some who are pretty far right; the Christian rally he held in Houston not long before jumping into the race, “The Response,” was derided by Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League as a “conscious disregard of law and authority” because of the way it traversed the spheres of church and state.

Mitt Romney is an entirely different case. Within the Republican donor class, Romney is the strong favorite. He has actively courted the AIPAC crowd, staking out hawkish positions on Iran and pillorying Obama on Israel. The day before he opened his Florida headquarters earlier this month, Romney dropped in on a local AIPAC meeting in Tampa and was greeted with a standing O. But when it comes to winning over independent Jews or queasy Democratic ones, Romney may have done too effective a job in transforming himself from a pro-choice, pro-gay-rights moderate into a more conventionally conservative candidate. “He’s a phony,” a cheeky Democratic operative notes. “But for a lot of Jews, he may turn out to be just a little too convincing.”

Regardless of how Romney or Perry would play among Jewish donors and voters, both would likely make Obama’s approach to Israel a big part of a general-­election campaign. “Israel,” writes Marc Tracy on the Jewish-life website Tablet, “is the easiest way to come from the right and cast Obama as a dove; as out-of-step with American values; as otherwise untrustworthy on foreign and national-security affairs. Obama can’t, after all, be soft on Al Qaeda—he killed Osama bin Laden. He can’t be soft on dictators—the Arab Spring happened on his watch. He can’t be lacking in experience—he has been commander-in-chief these past years. He wasn’t coddling Pakistan or China or Russia, and he didn’t normalize relations with Cuba. But on Israel (and, by extension, Iran), Obama can be effectively painted … as having not stood up for democratic friends against evil foes.”

This argument may or may not prove effective, but either way, it’s perfect bullshit—as the administration’s hell-bent efforts to head off the Palestinian bid for statehood at the U.N. amply demonstrates. The evil foe in this case, to be clear, isn’t Abbas and the Palestinians. It is anything that poisons the prospects for peace, which the White House justifiably believes granting full statehood or even observer-state status in this way would likely do: by emboldening the Palestinians and making the Israelis feel cornered; by pushing both parties into the positions, in other words, in which they tend to behave worst. Israel would impose punitive measures in the West Bank. Congress would cut off funding for the Palestinian Authority, possibly causing it to collapse. Violence would escalate. Talks would be impossible. Total nightmare.

Obama is under no illusions about the short-term prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. The convulsions rippling across the region pose gargantuan complications. So does the alliance between Fatah and Hamas; in his own speech at ­AIPAC in May, Obama affirmed that “no country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction.” But equally problematic is Netanyahu, whose consistent failure to rise to the occasions presented him over the past years put him in a position to adopt as his own the tagline that the great Israeli diplomat Abba Eban famously applied to the Palestinians: that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

The premise of Obama’s approach to Israel all along has been straightforward. Given the demographic realities it faces—the growth of the Palestinian population in the territories and also of the Arab population in Israel itself—our ally confronts a fundamental and fateful choice: It can remain democratic and lose its Jewish character; it can retain its Jewish character but become an apartheid state; or it can remain both Jewish and democratic, satisfy Palestinian national aspirations, facilitate efforts to contain Iran, alleviate the international opprobrium directed at it, and reap the enormous security and economic benefits of ending the conflict by taking up the task of the creation of a viable Palestinian state—one based, yes, on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed upon land swaps, with East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.

The irony is that Obama—along with countless Israelis, members of the Jewish diaspora, and friends of Israel around the world—seems to grasp these realities and this choice more readily than Netanyahu does. “The first Jewish president?” Maybe not. But certainly a president every bit as pro-Israel as the country’s own prime minister—and, if you look from the proper angle, maybe even more so.

Full Text Of Obama's Speech To AIPAC Via the White House: Remarks of President Barack Obama at AIPAC Policy Conference--As Prepared for Delivery Washington, DC Sunday, May 22, 2011

Good morning!  Thank you, Rosy, for your very kind introduction.  But even more, thank you for your many years friendship.  Back in Chicago, when I was just getting started in national politics, I reached out to a lot of people for advice and counsel, and Rosy was one of the very first.  When I made my first visit to Israel, after entering the Senate, Rosy – you were at my side every step of that very meaningful journey through the Holy Land.  And I want to thank you for your enduring friendship, your leadership and for your warm welcome today.

Thank you to David Victor, Howard Kohr and all the Board of Directors.  And let me say that it’s wonderful to look out and see so many great friends, including Alan Solow, Howard Green and a very large delegation from Chicago.

I want to thank the members of Congress who are joining you today—who do so much to sustain the bonds between the United States and Israel—including Eric Cantor,  Steny Hoyer, and the tireless leader I was proud to appoint as the new chair of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

We’re joined by Israel’s representative to the United States, Ambassador Michael Oren.  As well as one of my top advisors on Israel and the Middle East for the past four years, and who I know is going to be an outstanding ambassador to Israel—Dan Shapiro.  Dan has always been a close and trusted advisor, and I know he’ll do a terrific job.

And at a time when so many young people around the world are standing up and making their voices heard, I also want to acknowledge all the college students from across the country who are here today.  No one has a greater stake in the outcome of events that are unfolding today than your generation, and it’s inspiring to see you devote your time and energy to help shape the future.

Now, I’m not here to subject you to a long policy speech. I gave one on Thursday in which I said that the United States sees the historic changes sweeping the Middle East and North Africa as a moment of great challenge, but also a moment of opportunity for greater peace and security for the entire region, including the State of Israel.

On Friday, I was joined at the White House by Prime Minister Netanyahu, and we reaffirmed that fundamental truth that has guided our presidents and prime ministers for more than 60 years—that, even while we may at times disagree, as friends sometimes will, the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable, and the commitment of the United States to the security of Israel is ironclad.

A strong and secure Israel is in the national security interest of United States not simply because we share strategic interests, although we do both seek a region where families and their children can live free from the threat of violence.  It’s not simply because we face common dangers, although there can be no denying that terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons are grave threats to both our nations.

America’s commitment to Israel’s security also flows from a deeper place —and that’s the values we share.  As two people who struggled to win our freedom against overwhelming odds, we understand that preserving the security for which our forefathers fought must be the work of every generation.  As two vibrant democracies, we recognize that the liberties and freedom we cherish must be constantly nurtured.  And as the nation that recognized the State of Israel moments after its independence, we have a profound commitment to its survival as a strong, secure homeland of the Jewish people.

We also know how difficult that search for security can be, especially for a small nation like Israel in a tough neighborhood.  I’ve seen it firsthand.  When I touched my hand against the Western Wall and placed my prayer between its ancient stones, I thought of all the centuries that the children of Israel had longed to return to their ancient homeland.  When I went to Sderot, I saw the daily struggle to survive in the eyes of an eight-year old boy who lost his leg to a Hamas rocket.  And when I walked among the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem, I grasped the existential fear of Israelis when a modern dictator seeks nuclear weapons and threatens to wipe Israel off the map.

Because we understand the challenges Israel faces, I and my administration have made the security of Israel a priority.  It’s why we’ve increased cooperation between our militaries to unprecedented levels.  It’s why we’re making our most advanced technologies available to our Israeli allies.  And it’s why, despite tough fiscal times, we’ve increased foreign military financing to record levels.

That includes additional support – beyond regular military aid – for the Iron Dome anti-rocket system.  This is a powerful example of American-Israel cooperation which has already intercepted rockets from Gaza and helped saved innocent Israeli lives.  So make no mistake, we will maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge.

You also see our commitment to our shared security in our determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.  Here in the U.S., we’ve imposed the toughest sanctions ever on the Iranian regime.  At the United Nations, we’ve secured the most comprehensive international sanctions on the regime, which have been joined by allies and partners around the world.  Today, Iran is virtually cut off from large parts of the international financial system, and we are going to keep up the pressure.  So let me be absolutely clear – we remain committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.  

Its illicit nuclear program is just one challenge that Iran poses. As I said on Thursday, the Iranian government has shown its hypocrisy by claiming to support the rights of protesters while treating its own people with brutality.  Moreover, Iran continues to support terrorism across the region, including providing weapons and funds to terrorist organizations. So we will continue to work to prevent these actions, and will stand up to groups like Hezbollah who exercise political assassination, and seek to impose their will through rockets and car bombs.

You also see our commitment to Israel’s security in our steadfast opposition to any attempt to de-legitimize the State of Israel.  As I said at the United Nation’s last year, “Israel’s existence must not be a subject for debate,” and “efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the United States.”

So when the Durban Review Conference advanced anti-Israel sentiment, we withdrew.  In the wake of the Goldstone Report, we stood up strongly for Israel’s right to defend itself.  When an effort was made to insert the United Nations into matters that should be resolved through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, we vetoed it.

And so, in both word and deed, we have been unwavering in our support of Israel’s security. And it is precisely because of our commitment to Israel’s long-term security that we have worked to advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Now, I have said repeatedly that core issues can only be negotiated in direct talks between the parties.  And I indicated on Thursday that the recent agreement between Fatah and Hamas poses an enormous obstacle to peace.  No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction.  We will continue to demand that Hamas accept the basic responsibilities of peace: recognizing Israel’s right to exist, rejecting violence, and adhering to all existing agreements.  And we once again call on Hamas to release Gilad Shalit, who has been kept from his family for five long years.

And yet, no matter how hard it may be to start meaningful negotiations under the current circumstances, we must acknowledge that a failure to try is not an option. The status quo is unsustainable. That is why, on Thursday, I stated publicly the principles that the United States believes can provide a foundation for negotiations toward an agreement to end the conflict and all claims – the broad outlines of which have been known for many years, and have been the template for discussions between the United States, Israelis, and Palestinians since at least the Clinton Administration.

I know that stating these principles – on the issues of territory and security – generated some controversy over the past few days. I was not entirely surprised. I know very well that the easy thing to do, particularly for a President preparing for reelection, is to avoid any controversy. But as I said to Prime Minister Netanyahu, I believe that the current situation in the Middle East does not allow for procrastination. I also believe that real friends talk openly and honestly with one another. And so I want to share with you some of what I said to the Prime Minister.

Here are the facts we all must confront. First, the number of Palestinians living west of the Jordan River is growing rapidly and fundamentally reshaping the demographic realities of both Israel and the Palestinian territories. This will make it harder and harder – without a peace deal – to maintain Israel as both a Jewish state and a democratic state.

Second, technology will make it harder for Israel to defend itself in the absence of a genuine peace.

And third, a new generation of Arabs is reshaping the region. A just and lasting peace can no longer be forged with one or two Arab leaders. Going forward, millions of Arab citizens have to see that peace is possible for that peace to be sustained.

Just as the context has changed in the Middle East, so too has it been changing in the international community over the last several years. There is a reason why the Palestinians are pursuing their interests at the United Nations. They recognize that there is an impatience with the peace process – or the absence of one. Not just in the Arab World, but in Latin America, in Europe, and in Asia. That impatience is growing, and is already manifesting itself in capitols around the world.

These are the facts. I firmly believe, and repeated on Thursday, that peace cannot be imposed on the parties to the conflict. No vote at the United Nations will ever create an independent Palestinian state. And the United States will stand up against efforts to single Israel out at the UN or in any international forum. Because Israel’s legitimacy is not a matter for debate.

Moreover, we know that peace demands a partner – which is why I said that Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with Palestinians who do not recognize its right to exist, and we will hold the Palestinians accountable for their actions and their rhetoric.

But the march to isolate Israel internationally – and the impulse of the Palestinians to abandon negotiations – will continue to gain momentum in the absence of a credible peace process and alternative. For us to have leverage with the Palestinians, with the Arab States, and with the international community, the basis for negotiations has to hold out the prospect of success. So, in advance of a five day trip to Europe in which the Middle East will be a topic of acute interest, I chose to speak about what peace will require.

There was nothing particularly original in my proposal; this basic framework for negotiations has long been the basis for discussions among the parties, including previous U.S. Administrations. But since questions have been raised, let me repeat what I actually said on Thursday.

I said that the United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state.

As for security, every state has the right to self-defense, and Israel must be able to defend itself – by itself – against any threat.  Provisions must also be robust enough to prevent a resurgence of terrorism; to stop the infiltration of weapons; and to provide effective border security. The full and phased withdrawal of Israeli military forces should be coordinated with the assumption of Palestinian security responsibility in a sovereign, non-militarized state. The duration of this transition period must be agreed, and the effectiveness of security arrangements must be demonstrated.

That is what I said.  Now, it was my reference to the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps that received the lion’s share of the attention. And since my position has been misrepresented several times, let me reaffirm what “1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps” means.

By definition, it means that the parties themselves – Israelis and Palestinians – will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. It is a well known formula to all who have worked on this issue for a generation. It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last forty-four years, including the new demographic realities on the ground and the needs of both sides. The ultimate goal is two states for two peoples. Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people; each state enjoying self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace.

If there’s a controversy, then, it’s not based in substance. What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately. I have done so because we cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades, to achieve peace. The world is moving too fast. The extraordinary challenges facing Israel would only grow. Delay will undermine Israel’s security and the peace that the Israeli people deserve.

I know that some of you will disagree with this assessment. I respect that. And as fellow Americans and friends of Israel, I know that we can have this discussion.

Ultimately, however, it is the right and responsibility of the Israeli government to make the hard choices that are necessary to protect a Jewish and democratic state for which so many generations have sacrificed.  And as a friend of Israel, I am committed to doing our part to see that this goal is realized, while calling not just on Israel, but on the Palestinians, the Arab States, and the international community to join us in that effort. Because the burden of making hard choices must not be Israel’s alone.

Even as we do all that’s necessary to ensure Israel’s security; even as we are clear-eyed about the difficult challenges before us; and even as we pledge to stand by Israel through whatever tough days lie ahead – I hope we do not give up on that vision of peace. For if history teaches us anything—if the story of Israel teaches us anything—it is that with courage and resolve, progress is possible. Peace is possible.

The Talmud teaches us that so long as a person still has life, they should never abandon faith. And that lesson seems especially fitting today,

For so long as there are those, across the Middle East and beyond, who are standing up for the legitimate rights and freedoms which have been denied by their governments, the United States will never abandon our support for those rights that are universal.

And so long as there are those who long for a better future, we will never abandon our pursuit of a just and lasting peace that ends this conflict with two states living side by side in peace and security.  This is not idealism or naivete. It’s a hard-headed recognition that a genuine peace is the only path that will ultimately provide for a peaceful Palestine as the homeland of the Palestinian people and a Jewish state of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless Israel, and God bless the United States of America. 

Why Doesn't Obama Call for Democracy In Saudi Arabia?

Has anyone noticed that President Obama’s newfound affection for democracy in the Middle East has not resulted in a call for an end to the autocratic regime of Saudi Arabia? We also have heard of no serious protests in Saudi Arabia -- although we will see what the planned "day of rage" for March 11 will bring --despite the fact that the country is one of the most serial abusers of human rights in the world and practices a policy of apartheid toward Saudi women. How can this be explained?
Obama’s failure to speak out against Saudi Arabia reflects a 70-year-old policy of U.S. administrations ignoring Saudi abuses against not only their own people, but American citizens. In fact, the only president to stand up to the Saudis was John Kennedy when he demanded that the kingdom abolish slavery in the early 1960s. And, contrary to the State Department Arabist views that you can’t impose our values on the Arabs, the Saudis complied.
Every other U.S. president has been afraid to confront the Saudis because they have been led to believe by diplomats more sympathetic to Arab interests than American values, that oil supplies could be jeopardized. 
The Saudis have cleverly played on our fears by warning the oil would be threatened by our relations with Israel, then the threat of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser followed by the Soviet Union and now Iran. 
The truth is our oil supplies have never been in danger because the prime motivation for Saudi policy is to guarantee that the royal heads remain connected to the royal shoulders, and the Saudis decided very early in their history that the United States was the only country that could guarantee their security.

In the 1960s, we sent troops to defend the helpless Saudis from Egyptian troops in Yemen. Thirty years later, despite selling them $60 billion worth of arms, we had to send 500,000 troops to save them from Saddam.Obama recently agreed to sell $60 billion more in weapons they don’t need and can’t use to appease the Saudis who still know it will require U.S. troops to save them again from threats from Iran.
In 1973, the Saudis used the American resupply of Israel during the Yom Kippur War as a pretext for embargoing oil to the West. Privately, however, the Saudis said that the American airlift was proof of the need to be an ally of the U.S., because they believed only American could rescue them in that fashion – as we did in 1991.
Now why doesn’t Obama call for democracy in Saudi Arabia? One reason is fear. While the administration is happy to ignore warnings about the possibility of a radical Islamist regime taking power in Egypt, the administration is petrified of that happening in Saudi Arabia. But could a different regime be worse than the Sauds who undermine American interests and values in the region and threaten our security as the leading sponsors of international terror.
Oil, of course, is the entire reason for our interest in Saudi Arabia. What would a different regime do with the oil if not sell it to us? Drink it? Our fear of losing access to oil, however, has allowed the Saudis to blackmail us for 70 years. They act like pushers, manipulating the supply of oil to discourage us from pursuing alternative energy sources. Thus, when prices peaked at $149 per barrel, the Saudis said the ideal price of oil was $70-$80. The average price last year - $79 per barrel. The Saudi oil minister recently made a similar remark and pledged to increase supply to make up for price spikes created by turmoil in Libya and elsewhere in the region. The message to Obama is that the Saudi monarchy will help his reelection bid by minimizing the oil shock to the U.S. economy. Why rock the boat by pushing for democracy?
Meanwhile, inside Saudi Arabia, the king is staving off any democratic insurrections the way his family has kept power since the establishment of the kingdom - by buying loyalty. The Sauds have stayed in power by marrying their rivals and paying them off. This is why there are thousands of princes who all drink from the royal trough and benefit from oil profits as well as the commissions they receive on deals made with foreign countries. To further ensure that Saudis don’t get too inspired by events elsewhere, the king has announced minimal political reforms while pledging $35 billion in new government benefits. He has also banned demonstrations.
The Saudis are certainly scared. They saw Obama abandon a long-time ally overnight. They already believe he is weak and have doubts whether he will keep their heads on their shoulders because of his failure to take military action against Iran. They also see the restive Shiite population in their neighbor Bahrain making trouble for the Sunni government there which may embolden their own Shiites, who will be egged on by Iran.
Rather than reassure the Sauds, now is an ideal time to, for the first time since Kennedy, insist on changes in the regime. Democratization is only one important step. The U.S. should demand an end to support for terrorist groups and the financing of radical Islamic schools and mosques. Obama should insist on ending the apartheid policy toward women and other human rights abuses. Finally, he should pressure them to take measures to demonstrate their willingness to make peace with Israel.
It has always been the case the Saudis needed us more than we needed them and this is a unique opportunity to use the political, economic and military leverage we have to insist that they show a commitment to our values and interests for the benefit of their people and our security.