Obama, AIPAC and Iran

It was supposed to be a weekend of conflict between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel; it didn’t happen. Instead, we saw a President desperately trying to hold on to the Jewish vote--perhaps too hard.

In Sunday’s speech to AIPAC, he began with a dishonest recap of his record, was followed by statements about Iran, which were so strong that he may have boxed the U.S. into a war with Iran.

Defending His Record

The first half of the President’s speech was spent defending his record on Israel. Unfortunately (for him) he chose the indefensible:

Just as we’ve been there with our security assistance, we have been there through our diplomacy. When the Goldstone report unfairly singled out Israel for criticism, we challenged it.

That’s not correct; the report didn’t unfairly single out Israel--it lied. It has long since been proven that Goldstone took false charges from the Palestinians and without investigation reported them as true. This was apparent from the beginning, yet the administration’s stance was that Israel should accept the charges and make a full investigation. Based on his comments above, the President still doesn’t accept the fact that the charges were false.

When Israel was isolated in the aftermath of the flotilla incident, we supported them.

Untrue--in the immediate aftermath of the flotilla, President Obama’s Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, told the press that Israel should agree to an investigation of the incident by the UN (like Goldstone).

When the Durban conference was commemorated, we boycotted it, and we will always reject the notion that Zionism is racism.

The Obama administration participated in the planning meetings for the “Durban follow-up conference.” According to Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, the U.S. made no attempt to prevent anti-Israel or anti-Semitic hate.

One by one, hateful anti-Israel provisions were discussed; on each one the United States remained silent. The delegation even remained silent when a discussion of the Holocaust was tabled by Iran because the Iranians claimed there wasn’t enough information to prove that the Holocaust really happened.