American Jews are idiots *UPDATED (Again)*

UPDATE:  Pardon the white heat in the title of this post, but I cannot tell you how many times, during the days and months leading to the election, liberal Jews assured me, both in the media and in personal conversations, that Obama would never do anything to hurt Israel.  Nor can I tell you how many times my liberal Jewish friends and family refused to hear about all the antisemitic or anti-Israel people in Obama’s closest circles.

Seventy-eight percent of American Jews voted for Obama.  They did so despite the fact that those of us American Jews immune to the Obama Kool-Aid warned them, and warned them, and warned them again that Obama had a history of hostility to Israel, revealed most strongly in the people with whom he surrounded himself and upon whom he relied.

Obama’s anti-Israel animus revealed itself with startling speed once he assumed the presidency.  Caroline Glick gives a laundry list of the steps Obama has taken in just one month that are harmful to Israel:

SINCE IT came into office a month ago, every single Middle East policy the Obama administration has announced has been antithetical to Israel’s national security interests. From President Barack Obama’s intense 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 decision to end US sanctions against Syria and return the US ambassador to Damascus; to his plan to withdraw US forces from Iraq and so give Iran an arc of uninterrupted control extending from Iran to Lebanon, every single concrete policy Obama has enunciated harms Israel.

Glick does acknowledge that the above acts can all be imputed to good intentions, naivete and a political trajectory that just happens, as an unintentional byproduct, to harm Israel.

No such good or neutral intentions, however, can be imputed to the Obama administration’s much touted decision to attend the UN’s Durban II conference.  As those of you who have been paying attention recall, the Bush administration refused to attend the Durban I conference, since it was manifest that, while it was supposed to be some sort of massive anti-racist, anti-torture love fest, it would, in fact, be an occasion for unparalleled Israel bashing, something the Bush administration refused legitimize.  As it turned out, the administration was correct, and Durban I resulted in a type of high level, politically-sanctioned antisemitism unseen since the 30s in the Reich.

Durban II is not even pretending any longer to be anything but an antisemitic festival.  It’s stated goals are the implementation of those Durban I policies that were, without exception, aimed at delegitimizing and destroying Israel.  In other words, attendance at Durban II is not a chance to go back and undo Durban I.  Instead, it is intended to be a forum in which gleeful Muslim nations can expand upon and implement their Durban I policies.  Under those circumstances, Glick explains precisely why American participation is a disaster for Israel:

The same [that is, neutral or foolish good intentions] cannot be said of the administration’s decision to send its delegation to the Durban II planning session this past week in Geneva. Unlike every other Obama policy, this is a hostile act against Israel. This is true first of all because the decision was announced in the face of repeated Israeli requests that the US join Israel and Canada in boycotting the Durban II conference.

[snip]

On Thursday, Prof. Anne Bayefsky, the senior editor of the EyeontheUN Web site, demonstrated that by participating in the planning sessions the US is accepting the conference’s anti-Israel agenda. Bayefsky reported that at the planning session in Geneva on Thursday, the Palestinian delegation proposed that a paragraph be added to the conference’s agenda. Their draft “calls for implementation of… the advisory opinion of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] on the wall, [i.e., Israel’s security fence], and the international protection of Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory.”

[snip]

As Bayefsky and others argued this week, by entering into the Durban preparatory process, the US has done two things. First, it has made it all but impossible for European states like France, Britain, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, which were all considering boycotting the conference, to do so. They cannot afford to be seen as more opposed to its anti-Israel and anti-freedom agenda than Israel’s closest ally and the world’s greatest democracy. So just by participating in the planning sessions the US has legitimized a clearly bigoted, morally illegitimate process, making it impossible for Europe to disengage.

Second, through its behavior at the Geneva planning sessions this week, the US has demonstrated that State Department protestations aside, the administration has no interest in changing the agenda in any serious way. The US delegation’s decision not to object to the Palestinian draft, as well its silence in the face of Iran’s rejection of a clause in the conference declaration that mentioned the Holocaust, show the US did not join the planning session to change the tenor of the conference. The US is participating in the planning sessions because it wishes to participate in the conference.

The above quotations are just small parts of a coherent, larger article in which Glick demonstrates irrefutably that the Obama administration is precisely as hostile to Israel’s interests as those of us paying attention predicted it would be.

As far as I can tell, the only good thing in the offing for Israel is that Bibi Netanyahu will be the new head of Israel’s government.  He’s hampered by the dreadful coalitions that routinely paralyze Israel’s ability to function, but he will no longer be held back by the restraining hand of a friendly American administration.  This administration, by showing itself openly hostile to Israel’s very survival, actually gives Bibi some room for maneuver that was lacking before.  But Israel needs to act very quickly, because this administration will also surely cut off the foreign aid that has helped Israel maintain her necessary defenses in the world’s most antisemitic region.

UPDATE:  It turns out that, not only is the American delegation participating, it sat silently by as antisemitic issues got poured onto the agenda — and then lied about its silence.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News