Key idea: Obama's moralizing appeal to Jewish and Zionist "values" is actually a sly trick/meant to weaken opposition within the American Jewish community to Obama's pact with Iran...(and) Obama is attempting to soften up domestic opposition to a policy shift whereby the administration will effectively abandon Israel at the United Nations
David M. Weinberg
Rabbi Obama's tough love
If anybody had any doubts about what is in store for Israel
over the next 19 months, U.S. President Barack Obama has
now made it clear: a long, painful political shellacking for
what he sees as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
amoral behavior.
In order to rescue the lofty values of tikkun olam (healing
the world) and Zionism from the Neanderthal conservatives
who threaten to ruin Israel, Obama is going to harangue
and muscle Israel into a course correction back to the
"true" moral values of Judaism and Zionism on which he is
such an expert. He is on a crusade (or should I say, jihad)
to save Israel from itself, no less.
That is the upshot of Rabbi Obama's smug sermonizing
over the past two weeks: in an Atlantic interview with Jeffrey
Goldberg, at Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, and in
an interview on Israeli television with Ilana Dayan, Obama is
nostalgic for the good ol' days when WASP Israelis (white,
Ashkenazi, secular and socialist, pioneers) ruled these parts
and dreamed all day long of conceding the land they
worked to the Palestinians and of bringing peace to the
Middle East.
And since Obama so agonizes for wayward Israel, and
since he is such an authority on "real" Judaism and
"authentic" Zionism, he feels morally compelled to shove his
point down the throats of Israeli Likud and Habayit Hayehudi
voters. It's all for their own good. After all, he knows what is
truly best for Israel.
It has taken almost 40 years, but we now have in the White
House a cross between the hypercritical George W. Ball
(see "How to save Israel in Spite of Herself," Foreign Affairs,
1977) and the riotousextremist Rabbi Michael Lerner of
Tikkun Magazine. Oy.
It goes without saying that the very judgmental Obama has
no such tough love to share with the Palestinians or other
radical, antiSemitic and antiAmerican Islamists in the
region.
He is not an expert on true Islam, you see, thus he
dare not reproach them about their moral values. He didn't
grow up loving and admiring Anwar Sadat, like he did loving
former Israeli premier Golda Meir and the kibbutzim.
So, Iran and the Islamic State group can rape and pillage
across the region but Rabbi Obama knows mainly how to scold and squeeze Israel.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas can accuse
Israel of genocide, assault Israel with war crime charges at
the International Criminal Court, laud terrorists in
Jerusalem, cut "unity accords" with Hamas, maintain
rejectionist positions on all the key peacemaking issues and
have his television stations, newspapers and mosque
preachers blather blood libels and other venalities about
Jews as Nazis and Satan but Rabbi Obama knows mainly
how to scold and squeeze Israel.
Out of true love, don't you know!
Obama's moralizing appeal to Jewish and Zionist "values" is
actually a sly trick. If you pitch your political views as
"values" and your opponents' position as a breach of
"values," then your threat of punishment suddenly seems
noble.
Hudson Institute expert Michael Doran theorizes that
Obama's moralizing appeal to "liberal values" is part of a
concerted attempt to distance American Jews from
Netanyahu. After all, Obama represents "American Jewish
values" better than Netanyahu! This, in turn, Doran posits, is
meant to weaken opposition within the American Jewish
community to Obama's pact with Iran.
I don't know whether the trick will work for the deal with Iran,
but it is clear to me that Obama is attempting to soften up
domestic opposition to a policy shift whereby the
administration will effectively abandon Israel at the United
Nations. Obama more than hinted at that in his Israeli
television talk.
It is also evident that "Obamazionism" is indeed accelerating
the divide between American Jews and Israel. Obama's
assailing of Netanyahu has already dangerously impacted
the discourse about Israel among American Jewry.
In a pretentious article last week entitled "A message to
centrist American Jews: Time to speak out," E. Robert
Goodkind and Martin J. Raffel of the Israel Policy Forum
engage in new agonizing about Israel, moral values and
their roles.
Just like Rabbi Obama, they have discovered a "need" to be
"true" to some conjuredup and pleasing "centrist values"; to
have "honest" (i.e., frank) conversations with Israel; and to
"speak out honestly" to advance their "longheld principles."
Just like Obama who "feels a responsibility to speak out
honestly" about what he thinks will lead to longterm security
and "to the preservation of a true democracy in the Jewish
homeland," these American Jewish leaders assert a
newfangled "obligation to act" so that Israel bows to their
supreme, honestcentrist values.
Just like Obama, they "want honesty," and they want "to
speak truth to power." They employ the term "honest" no
less than seven times.
"Honesty means telling the Israeli government that
achieving peace with the Palestinians must be an active
enterprise, not a goal grudgingly endorsed," they add. "This
involves leaving most of the West Bank," declaim these
centrist, expert, and honestyseeking Jewish leaders.
6/5/2015 Israel Hayom | Rabbi Obama's tough love
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=12777 3/3
Unfortunately, I'm not making this headstrong stuff up. It is
amazingly arrogant: We know better than the Israelis who
live in Israel what is better for Israel and Jewish values.
Alas, this sentiment dovetails neatly with the "saving Israel
in spite of herself" discourse that Obama is inciting.
I say to Rabbi Obama and the IPF leaders: Spare us your
honest exhortations. Enjoy your selfsatisfying centrist
values, but don't fool yourself into thinking that you're doing
Israel any favors by declaring the parameters of what
withdrawals and other Israeli foreign and defense policies
"must be."
I say no thanks to your tough love. I encourage you to
"confront your values" and reengage Israeli democracy
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