The following is a guest post by local Messianic leader Ron Cantor, a concerned Jewish immigrant from America who today resides in Tel Aviv. You can read more about Ron and his ministry at www.cantorlink.comIS OBAMA GOOD FOR ISRAEL?
Seems like a silly question, right? But a Jewish person who is involved in the Obama campaign told someone close to me that the answer to that question is, yes, Obama is better for Israel than Mitt Romney.I said to my friend, “This Jewish person wants to believe that Obama is better for Israel than Romney, because he is a Democrat, but no unbiased person could genuinely believe that.” I get it—the person is liberal and could not bear to vote Republican. So, despite the mountain of evidence that shows Obama’s hostility toward Israel and Netanyahu, he must convince himself that Obama is good for the Jewish state. He chooses to believe Obama’s positive statements on Israel, while ignoring his negative actions.
My name is Ron Cantor and I am an Israeli-American who is deeply concerned over the overwhelming Jewish support that the most anti-Israel US president in history continues to enjoy. If Israeli Jews could vote, they would choose Romney by a 3-to-1 margin[1]. Israeli Arabs, however, would choose Obama by a similar margin.
Below are a few highlights that reveal President Obama’s naivete when it comes to the Middle East and his contempt for Netanyahu, if not Israel herself.
1) NETANYAHU’S TREATMENT AT WHITE HOUSE
In May of 2009, just a few months after Barack Obama was elected President, he met for the first time as President with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The President’s treatment of the leader of one of America’s closest allies was deplorable, and filled with disdain.Netanyahu was quietly led into the White House through a side door. He was treated more like a secret mistress than an esteemed friend. There was no photo-op with Netanyahu (highly unusual), but when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (who denied the Holocaust in his PhD dissertation) visited, he was treated as “an honored guest with photo-ops and a smiling president gifting him with an extra hundred million dollars.”[2]
After he was unable to get Netanyahu to commit in writing regarding Jewish settlements, a frustrated Obama left the meeting and went to dine with his family. Edward Klein gives this account: “‘I’m going upstairs,’ the president told Netanyahu, according to my sources. ‘Call me when you’re ready to talk substance.’ Netanyahu and his entourage were then left to cool their heels in the Roosevelt Room. At one point, the Israeli delegation asked for something to drink and food. They were served non-kosher food, which some of them wouldn't eat.”[3] I can only wonder if Abbas was served food that was not halal, lawful for Muslims to eat.
2) HIS SPEECH IN CAIRO
The newly elected Obama sought to make good on a campaign promise, which was, “to give a major address to Muslims from a Muslim capital during his first few months as president.”[4] His goal was to “repair ties that were severely damaged under his predecessor George W. Bush.”[5] (For the record, ties were severally damaged when 19 Middle Eastern Muslim terrorists turned jets into missiles, killing nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11!) The speech was titled "A New Beginning."The problem with the speech wasn't the wording per se, but the naivete of the President to think that radical Islam’s anger toward the West is because of George W. Bush or American arrogance. (In France he actually declared that “there have been times where America has shown arrogance.”) He still fails to understand that the issue is not our arrogance, but their religious fanaticism.
Take for example Malala Yousufzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani girl who campaigned for the right of girls to be educated. The Taliban shot the young teen, nearly killing her. She isn’t American or Israeli—she’s Muslim! More Muslims die at the hands of Islamic radicals than Westerners.
Or we can look to Benghazi. The insistence for nearly two weeks by Obama and his team that the attacks in Libya were not a planned assault against America (because, hey… we’re all friends now!), but the result of “hurt… religious feelings of Muslims”[6] reveals that they still don’t get radical Islam.
If Christians began to burn down buildings and kill people because of the plethora of Hollywood attacks against them and their values, would the President even think of rebuking Hollywood? Mrs. Clinton told the grieving father of Ty Woods, the Navy Seal who was killed while protecting American diplomats in Benghazi, not that they would capture the murderers of his son, but that they would jail the filmmaker! He was incredulous.
3) PUBLICLY DEMANDING ISRAEL GO BACK TO '67 BORDERS
On May 19th, 2011 the President went on TV and called for Israel to return to the suicidal borders of 1967. Just to give some perspective, as I write this I am four miles from the Mediterranean Sea to the right. To the left, I am about five miles from the border that President Obama wants me to embrace. Yes, a nine-mile distance from our eastern border to our western border—and if I were a few miles north, it would be even narrower!Some may say, “But you stole that land!” Not true. First of all the pre-67 borders were not sacred by any means. When Israel declared statehood in 1948, we were attacked by five Arab nations. The borders were defined simply by where everyone was when the attacking Arab nations cried uncle. These were called the 1949 Armistice Agreements, between Israel and Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. But make no mistake, this was no peace treaty. Had the Arabs been winning the war they would have annihilated us in our infancy. None of those nations recognized Israel as a state or the borders as permanent. It was merely to stop the fighting.
Secondly, we gained the West Bank when Jordan attacked Israel in the middle of the Six Day War. Our government had given Jordan assurances that we would not attack her if she stayed out of the war. However, King Hussein, believing the false reports that Egypt was marching on Tel Aviv, decided that he, too, wanted more land. They attacked and Israel pushed Jordanian forces out of Judea and Samaria, over the Jordan River. Why would we give that land back and return to an eight-mile width?
4) HILLARY THREATENED BIBI
When Israel decided to build housing in our capital, Obama was angry. He sent Secretary of State Clinton to deal with it. In a bureaucratic blunder, a low-level official granted the permits for those apartments on the very day that Joe Biden arrived. Netanyahu quickly apologized to VP Biden. However the President was infuriated and instructed Clinton to read him the riot act.“The following day, during a 43-minute harangue, Hillary delivered a set of ultimatums to Netanyahu. Prefacing each remark with the phrase ‘I have been instructed to tell you,’ Hillary demanded that Israel release a substantial number of Palestinian prisoners as a token of goodwill; lift its siege of Gaza; suspend all settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem; accept that a symbolic number of Palestinians be given the ‘right of return’ to Israel under a future peace treaty; and agree to place the question of the status of Jerusalem at the top of the peace-talks agenda.”
Now get ready for this next part…
“‘If you refuse these demands,’ Hillary told Netanyahu, according to our sources, 'the United States government will conclude that we no longer share the same interests.'”[7]
This was all about Israel’s desire to build apartments in Jerusalem, our capital. My dear readers, can there be any doubt that relations between Israel and the US have chilled since Obama entered the White House? Even Bill Clinton, who rolled out the White House red carpet for the notorious terrorist, Yasser Arafat, didn’t use such language with the Israeli Prime Minister.(During President Clinton’s two terms in office, Arafat was invited to the White House more than any other international political figure.[8])
5) OBAMA’S CONVERSATION WITH THE FRENCH PRESIDENT
I am far less concerned with Obama’s rhetoric when speaking from a teleprompter to people he is seeking to appease, than I am with what he says when he thinks no one is listening.During the G20 Summit in 2011, French President Sarkozi privately said to Obama, “I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar.” Sarkozy was not aware that his mic was still on! And neither was President Obama, as he fired back, “You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him even more often than you.”
6) YES TO THE ‘PIMP WITH A LIMP’… NO TO ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER
In September of this year, Netanyahu asked to meet with Obama while he was in New York for the annual UN meetings. Obama said he was too busy. The president has time for not only Leno and Letterman, but also to do radio with Miami’s “Pimp with a Limp.” The very word pimp is connected to prostitution and is more commonly used today in a way that is disparaging to African-American women. How could the first African-American President affirm such language by doing an interview with this man? And yet, he has no time for the leader of the United State’s most strategic partner in the Middle East. Or maybe he simply doesn’t view the US-Israel friendship as so strategic (see next point).Netanyahu’s goal was to show Iran that the US and Israel were united against allowing her to get nukes. It would appear that Obama did not want to send that same message to the sociopath Ahmadinejad.
7) OBAMA: ISRAEL IS ONE OF OUR CLOSEST ALLIES IN MIDDLE EAST
Recently on 60-Minutes, President Obama said that Israel is “one of our closest allies in the region.” I thought Israel was Americas closest ally in the Middle East. I mean, who are we competing with? Libya? Egypt? Iraq? Syria? Sudan? Iran!? Sure a case could be made for Jordan and Saudi Arabia, but you cannot compare America’s recent associations with these undemocratic monarchies to her long-term friendship with Israel. That is like comparing your new girlfriend to your faithful spouse of many years.8) JERUSALEM AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
“The Democratic Party platform doesn’t state that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, a change from prior years that could provide fuel to critics who say President Barack Obama’s commitment to Israel is weak.”[9] That was written just before the Democratic Convention and as the story spread, Obama realized he had miscalculated. He instructed the convention leaders to hastily organize a vote to put Jerusalem back on the platform. The vote was a farce with a predetermined outcome. Who can forget the way the voters were strong-armed and manipulated to make this change (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIXvbSL83RM). The poor fellow leading this gathering seemed to have a gun to his back from the woman behind him!But how shocking, that if the Democratic leaders had not ridden roughshod over the will of the people, their official platform would not have affirmed Jerusalem as the capital of Israel... and 78 percent of American Jews voted for Obama. And make no mistake; it was only because of the national attention given to the fact that they had taken out Jerusalem, that Obama demanded that it be reinserted—along with God, by the way.
THE TERRIFYING CONCLUSION
If President Obama wins reelection he can’t run again in 2016. This is it. He will have nothing to fear during his lame-duck administration. Each time he has acted against Israel in the past, he knew that he could only go so far if he wanted to be reelected.Thus, after each act of contempt against Israel or Netanyahu, he would grant an interview with an Israeli journalist or speak to a pro-Jewish group about America’s ‘unshakable commitment to Israel’ and how ‘relations have never been better between the two countries.’ But in a new Obama administration it’ll be open season on the pesky, little Jewish state—the cause of all the problems in the Middle East.
DON’T WORRY ABOUT US
And here is the rub. I am not worried about Israel. We have a covenant with God. We have tremendous promises of protection. We have survived miraculously through every attack against us. I am worried for America!Great Britain was once a massive empire. They used to say, “The sun never sets on the British Empire,” because they controlled lands all over the world. At that time, Great Britain was actively supporting the creation of a Jewish homeland. However in 1922 they began to slowly turn against the Jewish people. Even during the Holocaust, they would not allow Jews to come to British Mandate Palestine (Israel), which they controlled (not Arabs), and even sent some Jews seeking to enter back to Germany were many died. And just like that, the sun began to set on her empire. Great Britain is a shell of her former self.
America rose up and became the best friend of the new Jewish state, being the first country to recognize her statehood, and America's influence and power rose as well. God said that He would bless those who bless Israel (Gen. 12:3) and indeed he has. But if America takes a hard left turn away from the Jewish state, it won’t hurt Israel, but America, as the very same passage says, “Whoever curses you, I will curse.”
I am convinced that despite the US’s many sins, judgment has been held back partly because of the favor that is promised to Abraham’s friends. Take that friendship away and judgment could come quickly. Even now, it feels as if the heavens are crying out. Could it be that the near Tsunami in Hawaii and present hurricane getting ready to slam against the East Coast is the Lord Almighty telling us that America cannot turn against Israel? I’m no prophet—I am simply reading the signs of the times.
Obama was quick to confess American arrogance towards Europe during what many have called his apology tour, but arrogance against God is far more serious.
[1] http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=289600
[2] http://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Opinion/Article.aspx?id=278995
[3] http://edwardklein.com/the-jewish-problem-with-obama-part-3/
[4] Obama to reach out to Muslims in Egypt speech, Reuters.com
[5] ibid
[6] From the infamous Cairo apology tweet
[7] http://edwardklein.com/the-jewish-problem-with-obama-part-3/
[8] http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArafatArticles.html
[9] Obama Attacked Over Party Platform on Jerusalem, WSJ.com
source http://www.israeltoday.co.il/NewsItem/tabid/178/nid/23459/Default.aspx
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