Shalom Also Means Good Bye

Ninety percent of the population of Israel can breathe a sigh of relief. President Obama has left the country after a dud of a visit. Notably, this was the first time Obama has gotten around to traveling to the country that is our one true ally in the mid east since he has been president. No doubt the Israelis were all atingle at the prospect as his favorability rating in Israel hovers around 10%.

He needed to publicly try to make friends with Prime Minister Netanyahu after his atrocious behavior toward the Israeli leader when he was in the United States. There was plenty of billing and cooing along with the pefunctory photo ops. Then Obama held a presser in Ramallah while standing under a large banner of Yassar Arafat, the father of modern terrorism. Arafat, you may recall won a Nobel Prize for inventing the suicide bomber.

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With his poll numbers tanking, Obama did what all politicians do, he ran to his base--college students. In a six hour speech, ok, it was only 45 minutes but it felt like six hours, Obama did an end run around Netanyahu and reverted back to Community Organizer in Chief calling for open rebellion by Israel's young people. The speech started out Israel-friendly. He tried to paint himself as a Zionist and with Bibi as his BFF, which was surreal to say the least. When he got to matters of policy, however, the real Obama emerged as Obama went directly to the kids, hoping to whip them into a pro Palestine frenzy which is more consistent with his long held anti Israel stance about which I wrote extensively in Obamanutz: A Cult Leader Takes the White House. The professional agitator encouraged the university students to start an open rebellion against Netanyahu's government and "put themselves in the Palestinians shoes". That would be the shoes of the same people who were dancing in the streets on 9/11. The same people who were lobbing rockets into Israel as they constantly do. Obama reiterated his demand for an independent Palestinian state, cavalierly ignoring the fact that it is Mahm0ud Abbas who flat out refuses to recognize the right of the Jewish state to exist as part of "negotiations". He left out the part about the constant flow of rockets and mortars into Israel. Abbas has been refusing to return to the negotiating table for four years after Israel's last offer of statehood, yet the violence is all the result of the Israeli's "lack of empathy" toward the Palestinians. Elections have consequences and the Palestinian people chose Hamas to be their leader. Obama seems to have no concept of how that happened and what it means. He harangued Israelis about how he will will help them but will cut them no slack on the issue of a Palestinian state. He considers the Palestinians to be "smothered" under Israeli "occupation". Perhaps if they quit firing rockets and sending suicide bombers, the IDF would feel less compelled to be zealous in defense of their checkpoints. Just a thought. All of this love for the Palestinians goes unrequited. They hate President Obama. During his visit, they stomped on the American flag and set fire to photos of our emperor. That Cairo speech outreach sure settled things down. A campaign promise kept: Obama really did change the way the world views America. Obama's Arab Spring has increased violence throughout the middle east and in the Israeli/Palestine conflict, Obama is on the wrong side. His words about not "allowing" Iran to go nuclear are hollow. Nobody takes this weak horse seriously. Israel is on her own. This was Obama's first visit to Israel since he became president. It's a safe bet that the country is glad to see him go. Joy Tiz ©2013