SnyderTalk Comment: Ruthie Blum refers to Israel as the “low-hanging fruit” that foreign governments historically have picked on when they were in trouble and needed a scapegoat. As she suggests, they pick on Israel to prop up their administrations, and they tend to do it just before their misguided policies go down in history as the disaster those policies were all along. In general, Blum’s analogy is a good one, but in Barack Obama’s case, I don’t think it works. He started picking on Israel on Day One. Obama’s 2009 apology tour had many victims, including Israel. It set in motion forces throughout the Middle East region that led to the destabilization of existing governments and the rapid rise of terrorist acts by radical Islamist groups including Hamas and Fatah. Hamas is widely known as a terrorist group, but Fatah is regarded as a moderate voice of reason in the Arab world. Nothing could be further from the truth. Fatah is just like Hamas with one notable exception: at the present time, it has an air of undeserved dignity. Fatah under Yasser Arafat was responsible for more death and carnage than Hamas ever dreamed of creating. He fomented a civil war in Jordan and was ousted by then King Hussein during what came to be known as Black September. Tens of thousands of people died. Then Arafat moved his forces to Lebanon where he stirred up another civil war that lasted for almost 20 years and cost tens of thousands of more lives. Mahmoud Abbas, the current Palestinian Authority president, was at Arafat’s side all along. He was complicit in many of Arafat’s crimes including the 1972 Munich massacre that led to the deaths of 11 Israeli Olympic athletes. “Mahmoud Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, long the treasurer of the PLO, was the man who provided financing for that attack, according to information compiled by Israeli attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, director of the Shurat Hadin Israel Law Center.” Obama needed a “respectable peace partner” on the Palestinian side to negotiate with Israel. He took Abbas, dressed him up a little, and told Israel that he was their man. True to form, terrorism immediately became a resurgent problem for Israel again. As I said, Obama didn’t wait until the world realized that his policies were headed for the trash heap of history before targeting Israel. He did it right out of the blocks. Hillary Clinton helped Obama and John Kerry has done even more, but Barack Obama is responsible. His schemes to undermine Israel were not kneejerk reactions. They were orchestrated ploys. That’s what history will show.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 10:41:54 +0000