Let’s start with the fact that the above says nothing. Typical for Obama. He promises much and offers few details. Then let’s review that before the AIPAC conference, those pesky Washington lobbysists that he pretends to hate but welcomes their donations through the back door, Obama said the following:
“Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”
Problem is only Israel holds that an undivided Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. No one else does. The rest of the world holds Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital pending a final settlement with the Palestinians. You would think that a sitting US Senator would know this, especially one who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Had he been President of the United States and said this, he would have set off riots across the Middle East and endangered both American interests and Americans lives. This is but one example where I find his inexperience to be dangerous. Obama as President will endanger lives because he says things off the cuff trying to pander to his audience. That afternoon the backtracking began and in the end left both the Palestinian and Israeli lobbys embittered. Here’s one pro-Israel supporter:
Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America and another Jewish activist who had originally lauded Obama’s statement, now called the candidate’s words “troubling.”
“It means he used the term inappropriately, possibly to mislead strong supporters of Israel that he supports something he doesn’t really believe,” Klein charged.
Actually Morton, he just wants your vote. He doesn’t really believe anything. That’s Obama. He will say anything to get your vote, the disappointment that is bound to come, well, they’ll get it over it, after all, they’re not going to vote for John McCain. That cynicism is quite something. He thinks he owns your vote. That’s Barack Obama.
So where does American Jewry stand on Barack Obama? Here’s one view from Jennifer Rubin, a conservative American Jew, who has written this op-ed for the Jerusalem Post:
Defenders of Barack Obama, and sometimes Obama himself, seem frustrated that some American Jews refuse to assume their traditional role of support for the Democratic presidential nominee. The Obama defenders are irked that not all Jews accept at face value Obama’s expressions of devotion to Israel and commitment to her security.
Why can’t these contrarians just take Obama at his word (he is a Zionist, he really is, they insist)? The answer is “1973.”
But the explanation starts in 2008. Many Jewish Obama doubters are convinced that Israel faces a true existential threat unlike any in 35 years. From nation states like Iran, which threaten to destroy Israel, to Hizbullah and Hamas terrorists, Israel may in the next decade be pushed to the brink of its existence. Israel’s failure to defeat Hizbullah in 2006 demonstrated the limits of Israel’s historic military advantage.
With the spread of nuclear weapons and other deadly technologies a second Holocaust - that is, the annihilation of a substantial portion of world Jewry - is not out of the realm of imagination.
THESE OBAMA skeptics recall a similar time, 1973, when Israel also faced extermination. Prime minister Golda Meir had miscalculated Anwar Sadat’s willingness to go to war and decided against a first strike against Egypt. The Arab nations attacked in October 1973, and within days Israel was facing defeat.
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