Americans need to be alarmed by what Obama?s actions on behalf of Hamas reveal about the general direction of American Middle East policy under his leadership.
When US President Barack Obama phoned Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday night, in the middle of a security cabinet meeting, he ended any remaining doubt regarding his policy toward Israel and Hamas.
Obama called Netanyahu while the premier was conferring with his senior ministers about how to proceed in Gaza. Some ministers counseled that Israel should continue to limit our forces to specific pinpoint operations aimed at destroying the tunnels of death that Hamas has dug throughout Gaza and into Israeli territory.
Others argued that the only way to truly destroy the tunnels, and keep them destroyed, is for Israel to retake control over the Gaza Strip.
No ministers were recommending that Israel end its operations in Gaza completely. The longer our soldiers fight, the more we learn about the vast dimensions of the Hamas?s terror arsenal, and about the Muslim Brotherhood group?s plans and strategy for using it to destabilize, demoralize and ultimately destroy Israeli society.
The IDF?s discovery of Hamas?s Rosh Hashana plot was the last straw for any Israeli leftists still harboring fantasies about picking up our marbles and going home. Hamas?s plan to use its tunnels to send hundreds of terrorists into multiple Israeli border communities simultaneously and carry out a massacre of unprecedented scope, replete with the abduction of hostages to Gaza, was the rude awakening the Left had avoided since it pushed for Israel?s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza.
In other words, in their discussion Sunday night, Netanyahu and his ministers were without illusions about the gravity of the situation and the imperative of winning ? however defined.
But then the telephone rang. And Obama told Netanyahu that Israel must lose. He wants an unconditional ?humanitarian? cease-fire that will lead to a permanent one.
And he wants it now.
And by the way, the eventual terms of that cease-fire must include opening Hamas-controlled Gaza?s borders with Egypt and Israel and ending Israel?s maritime blockade of the Gaza coast. That is, the cease-fire must allow Hamas to rebuild its arsenal of death and destruction quickly, with US political and financial support.
Until Obama made the call, there was lingering doubt among some Israelis regarding his intentions. Some thought that US Secretary of State John Kerry might have been acting of his own accord last Friday night when he tried to force Israel to accept Hamas?s cease-fire terms.
But then Obama made his phone call. And all doubts were dispelled.
Kerry is just a loyal steward of Obama?s foreign policy.
Obama is siding with Hamas, and its Muslim Brotherhood patrons in Qatar and Turkey, against Israel, and its Sunni Arab supporters ? Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
It is Obama who demands that Hamas have open borders so it can resupply, and receive billions of dollars ? starting with an immediate cash injection of $47 million from US taxpayers ? so it can pay North Korea for more missiles and import building materials to reconstruct its tunnels.
The fact that the US?s current preference for genocidal, Jew-hating jihadists over the only liberal, pro-American, stable US ally in the Middle East is a White House position, rather than that of a rogue Secretary of State was actually exposed even before Obama?s phone call.
Sunday CNN?s Candy Crowley interviewed Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes. She asked him what the administration thinks Israel can do to prevent civilians from being killed in Gaza beyond what it is already doing. Rhodes replied, ?I think you can always do more.?
In other words, Rhodes said that no matter what precautions Israel takes to try to minimize Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza, the administration will never be satisfied. The White House will never acknowledge that Israel is in the right, or that it is fighting a moral war against a barbaric foe. And since the administration will never be satisfied, Israel can expect to be condemned by various UN bodies, including the Security Council, because no matter what it does to try to earn the support of the administration, it will never receive such support.
The discovery that the Obama administration is entirely in Hamas?s corner hit all of Israel hard. But it hit the Left the hardest. Few on the Right, which recognized Obama?s hostility from the outset of his presidency, were surprised.
As for political leaders, the government cannot risk giving the administration justification for its anti-Israel policies, so senior ministers have all said nothing.
Consequently, the harshest criticisms of the administration?s pro-Hamas position were heard from quarters where rarely a peep of criticism for Obama has been heard.
-Caroline Glick
(Excerpt)
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