Krauthammer On Obama's Anti-Israel Policy Turn

Several days ago, I opined on Obama's decision to create a crisis with Israel over the fact that the country's housing authority announced approval to build 1,600 new housing units in an area of Jerusalem that is uncontested and outside of all agreements to freeze building in settlements. Obama did this while ignoring the fact that, at the same time Israel was announcing the new housing, the PLO was naming a town square in honor of a terrorist responsible for the mass murder of Israelis. So one sided was the selective outrage against our ally that it almost doesn't do it justice to call it a mere double standard.

I pointed out in that post that anyone who takes anything said by Muslim states regarding Israel at face value is a fool utterly ignorant of history and out of touch with reality:

The simple truth is that the Muslim States' single goal as to Israel is its destruction. It is the truth against which all complaints from Muslim states as regards Israel must be evaluated. And as long as Muslim states see the destruction of Israel as even a remote possibility, they will work around every edge to make it an eventual reality - making one complaint or outrageous claim after another. And in Obama, the Muslim States have found a useful idiot indeed.

Today, Charles Krauthammer addresses this same issue, making many of the same points. particularly the fact that Muslims have not to date - and doubtfully will not in the future - engage in good faith to achieve peace in the Middle East. Their version of peace involves the destruction of Israel. This from Krauthammer:

. . .Clinton's spokesman then publicly announced that Israel was required to show in word and in deed its seriousness about peace.

Israel? Israelis have been looking for peace -- literally dying for peace -- since 1947, when they accepted the U.N. partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state. (The Arabs refused and declared war. They lost.)

Israel made peace offers in 1967, 1978 and in the 1993 Oslo peace accords that Yasser Arafat tore up seven years later to launch a terror war that killed a thousand Israelis. Why, Clinton's own husband testifies to the remarkably courageous and visionary peace offer made in his presence by Ehud Barak (now Netanyahu's defense minister) at the 2000 Camp David talks. Arafat rejected it. In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered equally generous terms to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Refused again.

In these long and bloody 63 years, the Palestinians have not once accepted an Israeli offer of permanent peace, or ever countered with anything short of terms that would destroy Israel. They insist instead on a "peace process" -- now in its 17th post-Oslo year and still offering no credible Palestinian pledge of ultimate coexistence with a Jewish state -- the point of which is to extract preemptive Israeli concessions, such as a ban on Jewish construction in parts of Jerusalem conquered by Jordan in 1948, before negotiations for a real peace have even begun.

Under Obama, Netanyahu agreed to commit his center-right coalition to acceptance of a Palestinian state; took down dozens of anti-terror roadblocks and checkpoints to ease life for the Palestinians; assisted West Bank economic development to the point where its gross domestic product is growing at an astounding 7 percent a year; and agreed to the West Bank construction moratorium, a concession that Secretary Clinton herself called "unprecedented."

What reciprocal gesture, let alone concession, has Abbas made during the Obama presidency? Not one.

Indeed, long before the Biden incident, Abbas refused even to resume direct negotiations with Israel. That's why the Obama administration has to resort to "proximity talks" -- a procedure that sets us back 35 years to before Anwar Sadat's groundbreaking visit to Jerusalem.

And Clinton demands that Israel show its seriousness about peace?

Now that's an insult.

So why this astonishing one-sidedness? Because Obama likes appeasing enemies while beating up on allies -- therefore Israel shouldn't take it personally (according to Robert Kagan)? Because Obama wants to bring down the current Israeli coalition government (according to Jeffrey Goldberg)?

Or is it because Obama fancies himself the historic redeemer whose irresistible charisma will heal the breach between Christianity and Islam or, if you will, between the post-imperial West and the Muslim world -- and has little patience for this pesky Jewish state that brazenly insists on its right to exist, and even more brazenly on permitting Jews to live in its ancient, historical and now present capital?

Who knows? Perhaps we should ask those Obama acolytes who assured the 63 percent of Americans who support Israel -- at least 97 percent of those supporters, mind you, are non-Jews -- about candidate Obama's abiding commitment to Israel.

There are all sorts of moral and historic reasons why we should support Israel. But there is also an equally strong pragmatic reason. Israel is the front line of a war that the Salafi and Khomeinist Muslims are waging against the non-Muslim - and Muslim, for that matter - world. In this existential fight, as the old saying goes, we can hang together . . . or we can hang seperately.

Peace is not impossible in the Middle East, but it is not possible so long as Muslim regimes, and in particular, Iran, are doing their best to manipulate the issue and insure that no peace ever occurs. Regime change must occur in Iran and the theocracy ended as step one - something that would likely starve Hamas and Hezbollah.

Two, Palestinians need to be held to the exact same standards to which the left holds Israel and America. For but one example, the moment the PLO renamed the square in honor of a terrorist, all future aid to the PLO should have been put on hold. To put this in some further perspective, realize that it has been sixty years since Israel was created and the Palestinians still do not have a functioning economy. A small portion of the that can be blamed on Israel, but the majority of it rests squarely on the shoulders of the Palestinans themselves. There is a parasitic community, surviving in destitution on aid while the power brokers get rich. They keep their population focused on destroying Israel rather than creating their own communities.

Lastly, the next time a missle lands in Israel, America needs to be giving full moral support to Israel to respond appropriately. And as a collary, the administration needs to be vocal in denouncing the lefts efforts in the press and the UN to tie Israels hands and criticize it for defending itself. The next Goldstone Report should be utterly vilified by the U.S. administration.

The bottom line, there will be no peace in the Middle East until it is forced upon the Muslim states. The inexplicable actions of the Obama Administration seem not merely unlikely to make such peace possible, but indeed, seem far more likely to lead to increased, perhaps existential violence.