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| Candidate Obama at Jerusalem's Western Wall. President Obama has not returned to Israel. |
Obama’s State of the Union Speech -Barry Rubin
“Our iron-clad commitment to Israel’s security has meant the closest military cooperation between our two countries in history.”
This is a carefully constructed sentence which I find makes me even more suspicious about Obama’s commitment toward Israel. Why? Because it is true that the bilateral military cooperation is as good as it has ever been. But all other areas of relations are terrible.
This sentence tells me that Obama understands that and wants to accentuate the positive without doing anything to improve the negative. He thinks U.S.-Israel relations are good enough and will not—even if, or especially if, elected to a second term.
Another point to notice is Obama’s failure to mention–much less highlight–the Israel-Palestinian “peace process.” They’ve given up on that one, at least for 2012.
[PJ Media]
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2 comments:
The comments seem at odds. At the beginning we hear that it was carefully constructed to show there will be no corrective action and that everything is as good as it is going to get--which some Israeli supporters feel has not been enough. At the end they say it appears by leaving out the peace process that the administration has given up on it. These appear to be mutually conflicting because it was the desire and indeed, frustration, at the peace process that caused a lot of the rhetoric that caused the strain. The surrender to giving up for a while on the process should mean better relations as Obama fulfills his commitment to continue to strengthen Israel and keep it secure.
I believe that Barry Rubin's implication was that Obama would not bring up the peace process now because pushing it would be electorally harmful to maintaining Jewish votes.
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