US Pres. Obama's administration & Israel

The new Israeli government and the Obama administration seem to be drifting apart. We see God's hand in this. At some point Israel will be pushed out, that is, separated from the global "community" (Num. 23:9), and the stage set for all nations to come against Jerusalem (Zech. 12:2-3; 14:2).

JP Columnist Caroline Glick noted that all the Middle East [ME] policies Obama had announced after only a month in office were antithetical to Israel's national security interests. From his desire to appease Iran's mullahs in open discussions; to his stated commitment to establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible despite the Palestinians' open rejection of Israel's right to exist and support for terrorism; to his expressed support for the so-called Saudi peace plan, which would require Israel to commit national suicide by contracting to within indefensible borders and accepting millions of hostile, foreign-born Arabs as citizens and residents of the rump Jewish state...to his plan to withdraw US forces from Iraq and so give Iran an arc of uninter-rupted control extending from Iran to Lebanon, every single con-crete policy Obama has enunciated harms Israel. ("Obama's Durban gambit," C. Glick, JP Op-ed, 19 Feb. 2009)

Glick said that although none of these policies can be seen as specifically hostile to Israel, things did not get any better. In April, when US VP Biden told CNN Israel would be ill-advised to attack Iran's nuclear installations, he made it clear that from the administration's perspective, an Israeli strike preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power is less acceptable than a nuclear-armed Iran. So the Obama administration prefers to see a nuclear Iran rather than to see Israel secure its very existence. ("Surviving in a post-American world," C. Glick, JP Op-ed, 9 Apr. 2009)

Efraim Inbar, professor of political studies and director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, wrote that,

Obama's intention to engage countries like Iran and Syria in order to start a new page in bilateral relations strikes most Israelis and ME Arabs as naïve, as if nice words can change established national interests. Arabs, as well as Israel, want to see Iran and its proxies rolled back, not appeased...

Inbar disagrees with US Sec. of State Hillary Clinton's recent statement that Arab support for Israel's bid to prevent Iran going nuclear, requires Israeli flexibility on the Palestinian issue. He finds it hard to believe the US State Dept. does not understand that moderate Arab states will cooperate to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb regardless of the Palestinian issue ...Above all, preventing a nuclear Iran is a paramount American interest. If Washington's current prism on world affairs obfus-cates its strategic judgment, the West is in trouble.

He concludes, warning that, misguided American policies, particularly regarding Iran, may have disastrous consequences - such as the fall of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey into Islamist hands. Under such a scenario, Israel would remain the only country where an American plane could land safely in the ME... Israel would much prefer that President Obama get up to speed on ME realities as quickly as possible. ("Growing divergence between Jerusalem & Washington?" E. Inbar, JP Op-ed, 10 May 2009)