by Sarah Honig
pressure is all about attempting to make
Lonely, vulnerable, affection-craving
Though unpleasant and untactful, de Gaulle was at least honest, which is more than can be said for Barack Obama.
It doesn’t take a paranoid conspiracy-theory promoter to speculate that the pressure brought to bear by the
Why?
Because that would weaken and demoralize
Along that line too we may conclude that Obama, having wasted more than a year’s worth of invaluable time, doesn’t really intend to prevent
Why?
Because then it would be putty in his hands and he’d presumably earn the undying gratitude of the Arab/Muslim world.
That’s why, rather than engage in dialogue, Obama spoils for a fight – all the while professing to be our best friend. And we credulously repeat his assurance and use it as a cogent rationalization for why we mustn’t displease him. Who can afford to upset a devoted friend? Especially when friends are so rare.
IT ALL calls to mind an old Plains Indian admonition that “what looks true by the glow of the camp fire isn’t always true in sunlight.”
Native Americans, after all, learned from bitter experience to mistrust the compassionate posture of the Great Father in
Our own tribal myth, often repeated around our proverbial camp fire, persistently portrays various White House residents as trusted friends, who presume to know better than we what’s best for us. Thus Obama presses for benevolent eugenics – needless to say for our own good – when insisting we forthwith freeze all construction and effectively end natural growth in what he calls settlements, including significant swaths of
This hardly began with the 1,600 Ramat Shlomo apartments. Already months ago, Obama’s radical ideologues looked exceeding askance on blueprints for a new hotel and shopping center near the Old City. They’re into the nitty-gritty of daily metropolitan minutiae. They know the devil is in the details and no detail, no matter how outwardly trivial, escapes their scrupulous attention. They’ll relentlessly breathe down our supposedly sovereign neck and show us who’s boss – friendly like.
But who are we to quibble and second-guess? Our best friends may indeed be shrewd beyond our inferior comprehension. Or it might be that what looks like friendship isn’t what it seems.
If we examine the history of Israeli-American relations in the non-distorting sunlight, we may conclude that the US consistently deprived Israel of victory, indirectly encouraged Arab attacks, instigated terrorism and gave incentive to Arab intransigence. What’s euphemistically labeled a “peace process” was always the process to divest
Way back in 1948, despite Harry Truman’s hesitant de facto recognition of newborn
The US-brokered 1970 Israeli-Egyptian truce hinged on American guarantees that no heavy weaponry would be advanced. On the cease-fire’s first night, however, the Egyptians moved dozens of anti-aircraft missiles to the
Recurrently imposed cease-fires – whenever
Ronald Reagan frequently noted that without
But what about American assistance? Contrary to popular lore, the equivalent of what Israel contributed to the US immeasurably surpasses, even in monetary terms, the sum total of what America gave Israel from the 1970s on (prior to that we got nothing, yet miraculously managed to thrive).
Moreover, American aid costs us big time and 75 percent of it must be spent stateside. It coerces
LAST SUMMER the Pentagon nixed Israel Aerospace Industries participation in a tender to supply military aircraft to
It’s not that we have better friends than
It enjoins: “Beware the friend who covers you with his wings, only to injure you with his beak.”
Sarah Honig was The Jerusalem Post’s long-time political correspondent (as well as for years of the now-defunct Davar). She headed the Post’s Tel Aviv bureau, wrote daily analyses of the political scene as well as in-depth features.
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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