Where does Israel rank on the list of the United States of America’s best friends? Third? Fifth? Tenth?
Many students of history and politics would say that Israel is our nation’s BEST friend. The Jewish state is — and has been for the nearly 68 years since it was founded in 1948 — a beacon of democracy and humanity in the Mideast. While Israel has allowed its substantial Arab minority to vote, its neighbors’ dictators and monarchs have tried to destroy Israel and have treated their population with contempt.
Few nations on the planet have the moral, political, and cultural values that are as close to ours as Israel. The nation has also been a strategic ally in an area that has historically been fertile ground for some of America’s enemies, including the old Soviet Union and modern-day Iran.
The U.S.-Israel relationship has been close for decades regardless of whether the American president was a Democrat or a Republican or whether the Israeli prime minister was a member of the liberal Labor or conservative Likud party.
But how has that relationship been under President Obama…
American president Barack Obama should have continued the USA’s successful tradition of having a close relationship with Israel. He has NOT!! Right from the start of his administration in 2009 he has pursued other priorities such as strengthening the nation’s relationship with Arab and Muslim nations and standing up to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on issues vital to Israel’s security such as its relationship with Iran — a nation whose leaders have vowed to destroy Israel and have sought the nuclear weapons to do so.
Do you want to guess how often our leader has visited Israel? Since the nation is one of our best friends, it should rank really high on his list of most visited nations you would think. It doesn’t. In fact, Obama has visited Israel ONCE — in 2013. As of the end of 2015, he has visited 25 nations at least twice, according to the “List of presidential trips made by Barack Obama.” He’s visited Saudi Arabia three times and the nations of Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Turkey twice each.
Altogether, President Obama has made 43 international trips to 52 nations. He’s traveled at least 480,000 miles as president, according to this article in The Washington Post, but he wouldn’t travel a few hundred miles to Israel when he was already in Egypt.
“Obama Abandoned Israel”
The fact that President Obama has only visited Israel once in seven years doesn’t by itself mean he is an enemy of Israel, but Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. from 2009 to 2013, listed this fact as one of several pieces of evidence that prove Obama is anti-Israel in a 2015 column for The Wall Street Journal. The column was entitled “How Obama Abandoned Israel” and subtitled “Netanyahu and the president both made mistakes, but only one purposely damaged U.S.-Israel relations.”
Oren accused Obama of “pointedly skipping Israel” on a June 3-June 7, 2009, trip that included stops in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and France. Remember, our leader didn’t visit Israel until 2013. Oren wrote that what Obama did in Egypt was inexcusable. In a speech he entitled “A New Beginning,” Obama reached out to the Muslim world and made it clear that the United States was now less interested in supporting a beacon of democracy and more interested in playing footsie with Arab dictatorships. The speech also violated diplomatic protocol, wrote Oren.
“Israeli leaders typically received advance copies of major American policy statements on the Middle East and could submit their comments,” Oren emphasized. “But Mr. Obama delivered his Cairo speech, with its unprecedented support for the Palestinians and its recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear power, without consulting Israel.”
Oren also wrote in the column that:
* Obama has abandoned the “two core principles” of the American-Israeli alliance. One of the principles was the “no daylight” principle that meant the two nations could never disagree in public because doing so would “encourage” their enemies. The second principle was “no surprises,” a principle Obama violated in his Cairo speech and by “demanding a settlement freeze” although diplomats from the two nations hadn’t discussed this.
* Obama has been more pro-Palestinian Arabs on some issues than many important Palestinian Arabs themselves. “The White House routinely condemned Mr. Netanyahu for building in areas that even Palestinian negotiators had agreed would remain part of Israel,” Oren wrote.
* Obama changed 40 YEARS of U.S. policy when he endorsed the pre-1967 Six Day War borders between Israel and its enemies as the “basis for peace-making.” For those who don’t know, Israel was about 10 miles wide in some parts before Egypt mobilized its forces near the border and, thus, spurred Israel to attack to preserve its very existence. Look at this map. The West Bank was part of Jordan before the war.
* Obama was for months in 2014 “secretly negotiating” with Iran — Israel’s “deadliest enemy,” according to the ambassador. He should know. The negotiations resulted in a nuclear weapons pact that Israel’s leaders — and many of its citizens — believe endangers Israel’s existence.
As for Obama’s only visit to Israel, even the very liberal newspaper The Guardian criticized it. The trip was a maintenance trip without a peace plan, according to this article.
“Foreign policy analysts in Washington questioned why Obama was visiting the region with so little to offer, with one describing it as pointless and another as a “maintenance trip,” the article reported. “Another described it as top-heavy with tourist venues and photo-opportunities and short on substance.”
How anti-Israel is President Obama? “Obama and Israel,” an article by Discover the Networks, a website run by noted American conservative activist David Horowitz, lists dozens of examples of behavior that show he is anti-Israel. The most alarming information in the article is how many ties Obama has to anti-Semites. The article is an incredible 24,287 words.
Given all the facts about Obama, it is no surprise that a poll shows that “only 9 percent of Jewish Israelis believe that the Obama administration is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian,” according to the “Obama and Israel” article.”
