by Israel Hayom Staff
Stephens wrote, "The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue: Let's hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years without meaningful U.S. patronage. For now, all it has to do is get through the next 22, admittedly long, months."
George Orwell
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Photo credit: AP  |
In an exceptionally sharp critique published
on Monday, Wall Street Journal foreign affairs columnist and Pulitzer
Prize winner Bret Stephens ripped apart U.S. President Barack Obama's
foreign policy.
The op-ed, titled "The Orwellian Obama
Presidency," detailed the flaws of Obama's approach to foreign affairs.
"To adapt George Orwell's motto for Oceania: Under Mr. Obama, friends
are enemies, denial is wisdom, capitulation is victory," Stephens wrote.
"There is an upside-down quality to this
president's world view. His administration is now on better terms with
Iran -- whose Houthi proxies, with the slogan 'God is great, death to
America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, power to Islam,' just deposed
Yemen's legitimate president -- than it is with Israel. He claims we are
winning the war against Islamic State even as the group continues to
extend its reach into Libya, Yemen and Nigeria.
"He treats Republicans in the Senate as an
enemy when it comes to the Iranian nuclear negotiations, while treating
the Russian foreign ministry as a diplomatic partner. He favors the
moral legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council to that of the
U.S. Congress. He is facilitating Bashar Assad's war on his own people
by targeting ISIS so the Syrian dictator can train his fire on our
ostensible allies in the Free Syrian Army.
"He was prepared to embrace a Muslim Brother
as president of Egypt but maintains an arm's-length relationship with
his popular pro-American successor. He has no problem keeping company
with Al Sharpton and tagging an American police department as
comprehensively racist but is nothing if not adamant that the words
'Islamic' and 'terrorism' must on no account ever be conjoined. The
deeper that Russian forces advance into Ukraine, the more they violate
cease-fires, the weaker the Kiev government becomes, the more insistent
he is that his response to Russia is working."
Stephens then delved into Obama's ire for
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "The current victim of Mr. Obama's
moral inversions is the recently re-elected Israeli prime minister.
Normally a sweeping democratic mandate reflects legitimacy, but not for
Mr. Obama. Now we are treated to the astonishing spectacle in which
Benjamin Netanyahu has become persona non grata for his comments
doubting the current feasibility of a two-state solution. This, while
his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas is in the 11th year of his
four-year term, without a murmur of protest from the White House.
"It is true that Mr. Netanyahu made an ugly
election-day remark about Israeli-Arab voters 'coming out in droves to
the polls,' thereby putting 'the right-wing government in danger.' For
this he has apologized, in person, to leaders of the Israeli-Arab
community.
"That's more than can be said for Mr. Abbas,
who last year threatened Israel with a global religious war if Jews were
allowed to pray in the Temple Mount's Al Aqsa mosque. 'We will not
allow our holy places to be contaminated,' the Palestinian Authority
president said. The Obama administration insists that Mr. Abbas is 'the
best interlocutor Israel is ever going to have.'
"Maybe that's true, but if so it only
underscores the point Mr. Netanyahu was making in the first place -- and
for which Mr. Obama now threatens a fundamental reassessment of U.S.
relations with Israel. In 2014 Mr. Abbas agreed to a power-sharing
agreement with Hamas, a deal breaker for any Israeli interested in
peace. In 2010 he used the expiration of a 10-month Israeli settlement
freeze as an excuse to abandon bilateral peace efforts. In 2008 he
walked away from a statehood offer from then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert. In 2000 he was with Yasser Arafat at Camp David when the
Palestinians turned down a deal from Israel's Ehud Barak.
"And so on. For continuously rejecting
good-faith Israeli offers, Mr. Abbas may be about to get his wish: a
U.S. vote for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations. For tiring of
constant Palestinian bad faith -- and noting the fact -- Israel will
now be treated to pariah-nation status by Mr. Obama."
Stephens advised the Israeli government to "repay contempt with contempt."
"Mr. Obama plays to classic bully type,"
Stephens wrote. "He is abusive and surly only toward those he feels are
either too weak, or too polite, to hit back."
Regarding Obama's remaining time in office, Stephens
wrote, "The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On
the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue: Let's hope their
warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years
without meaningful U.S. patronage. For now, all it has to do is get
through the next 22, admittedly long, months."
Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=24401
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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