More doors close in Israel’s face

A friend sent me an email entitled “I thought this might interest you,” along with a link to this article:

Last year, Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi had no problem setting up meetings with top officials in the U.S. government.

On his current trip to Washington, Ashkenazi sought to meet the administration of President Barack Obama, but most officials were unavailable.

Diplomatic sources said Ashkenazi failed to obtain access to any Cabinet member, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The Israeli military chief, who sought to discuss the Iranian nuclear threat, won’t even meet his counterpart, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“The administration is sending a very clear message to Israel, and this is we want to talk about Palestine and not Iran,” a diplomat who has been following U.S.-Israel relations said.

On March 12, Ashkenazi left for a five-day visit to the United States meant to lobby the Obama administration to abandon the planned U.S. dialogue with Iran. Ashkenazi, scheduled to meet with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, was expected to have brought new Israeli intelligence on Iran’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.

But the diplomatic sources said the administration made it clear that nobody in a policy-making position was available to sit with Ashkenazi. This included the president, Vice President Joseph Biden, Gates, National Intelligence director Dennis Blair or Mullen.

You can read the rest of the article here.

As I said in my reply email to my friend, I still haven’t recovered from the vast number of American Jews who cast their votes for Obama.  There is a running debate in the conservative community about whether American Jews no longer care about Israel or whether they’re simply such reflexive Democratic voters they were incapable of recognizing the danger Obama posed for Israel.  Articles like this depress but but he was right about one thing — I am interested.