For eight years, President Obama’s position on Israe🐎l teetered between di🥃sregard and open hostility.
The argument that it was merely a personality clash with Israel’s leadership never made any sense. He would be friendly to despots, unelected kings and tyrants,🅠 but cold and downright cruel to the democratically elected Benjamin Netanyahu.
💖And now Democrats are signaling they♕’ll uphold that legacy.
By ensuring passage of an anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council, the Obama administration had left honest Americans bereft of intelligent excuses. After the UN resolution passed, the foreign-policy writer Eli Lake tweeted, “I apologize for the times I defended Obama to my pro-Israel friends🍒. I was wrong.”
The question is: Where are the rest of the apologies? Where’s the pushback? Sen. Chuck Schumer managed to say it was “extremely frustrating” and “disappointing” that the United States didn’t veto the resolution, but is that it? Where are the writers and thinkers to call out the administration for what they are: anti-Israel? Where are the Jewish Democrats to say this new direction of the party does not repr🦄esent them?
For ei♋ght years, pro-Israel Democrats defended the president at every turn. In 2012, Schumer said “the president has been for a very, very strong Israel.” Mic magazine laughably called Obama “the most pro-Israel president ever” in 2013. Any attempt to criticize the president on Israel was shut down as racist, as if that criticism implied he was secretly a Muslim.
A month befor𒐪e Obama was elected president in 2008, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic that anyone “smearing Obama in the face of overwhelming evidence that the man is a great friend of Jews and of Israel” was just afraid of the “presence of an African-American in the White House.” Goldberg kept that defense going even after the relationship eroded, and he kept “a running list” of insults that Obama-adminis💛tration officials had lobbed at Netanyahu, including when they mocked him as too “chickensh- -t” to start wars.
Even now, G🔯oldberg’s criticism is mostly of Netanyahu — blaming the victim.
On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a resolution denouncing the UN vote. While a majority of Democrats voted in support of it, some 40 percent voted against it — and in doing so, threw their support to the UN resolution. That 40 percent inc💛luded House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the leading candidate for Democratic National Committee chair, Rep. Keith Ellison.
Following the UN resolution, Lake tweeted, “A lot of Jewish Democrats telling me privately that they 𓆉are disgusted and ashamed of @POTUS and @JohnKerry.”
Private disgust is no longer enough. During t꧂he presidential campaign, prominent Jewish Rep🌺ublicans took a firm stand against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, John Podhore🐽tz, Ben Shapiro and many others made it their business to oppose their party’s candidate, openly and frequently.
This was not without political risk, especially now that that candidate has won the presidency. They took anti-Semitic abuse and were called traitors for abandoning their party’s nominee. Yet they did it anyway, beca⭕use they felt it was the right thing to do.
Now it’s time for Jewish Democrats to get their collective heads out of the sand and say something. The issue isn’t Obama’s petulant behavior. As mom used to say, “I’m not mad at him, I’♒m disappointed in you.” What needs addressing is where the Democrats go from here. Are they a parꩲty that supports Israel or aren’t they?
When it comes to Israel,𒉰 there’s really no suc🍃h thing as an abstention — despite how much we know Obama likes to vote “present.”
The burden is always put on Israel: to live up to treaties when the Palestini🔯ans don’t even pretend to, to treat people who openly say the destruction of Israel is their only goal as worthwhile partners for peace. But a UN resolution that refers to Jerusalem, any part of Jerusalem, as outside some fable🐟d 1967 borders needs to be soundly condemned by a cross-section of America’s leadership.
When Obama was his party’s 20🦂08 presidential nominee, he agreed, saying: “Jerusalem will rem🐷ain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” That the UN resolution wasn’t opposed by the Obama administration is a small tragedy. To have that be acceptable to Democrats going forward would be a much bigger one.