Posted by
ApolloSpeaks on Friday, June 05, 2009 7:13:48 AM
With practically one national voice Israeli Jews have said "NO!" to Obama on the impractical and useless request on freezing settlement activity on the West Bank as a first step toward reviving the disastrous peace process with the implacably Jew hating murdering Palestinians.
And unless Obama forces Israel to make this concession he will look weak and impotent to the Moslem world and lose whatever good will, credibility and respect that he won from yesterday's speech as the friend of Islam-thus maintaining the rift in US-Moslem relations. It looks like Obama has raised unrealistic expectations among Moslems about getting tough with Israel while placing himself in a no win situation as Israel under Netanyahu will not change its policies on settlements whatever Obama might do. Indeed, by saying in his speech that US-Israeli bonds are unbreakable Obama emboldened Netanyahu to defy him as he can do so with impunity.
Great words without deeds are doomed to fail. Yesterday's speech will likely go down in history as a well-meaning but shortsighted attempt by an inept US leader to achieve great and difficult things with words alone.
Postscript
Why would Israel be so stupid as to freeze settlement activity on the West Bank when it's a crime punishable by death in the Palestinian territories for an Arab to sell land to a Jew? Until the Palestinians overcome their anti-Jewish racism and accept the reality of Israel's existence as a Jewish state; and the possible reality of West Bank settlers living as a Jewish community with equal rights in a new Palestinian State, Barack Obama, like Bill Clinton before him, can only worsen the tension and bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians by seeking an impossible peace (see "THE PERILS OF A WAR WEARY NATION IN THE TRAGIC AGE OF BARACK OBAMA " the section on "The Honolulu Blackout and the Gaza War").