On April 14, 2011 Dan Senor published an article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) that is as phony as the economy of Israel about which he wrote a book on a previous occasion – except that he did not say the Israeli economy was as phony as a three dollar bill; he said it was a miracle. As to the WSJ article, it has a title that comes in the form of a question: “Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote” and a subtitle that comes in the form of a response to that question: “He [Obama] doesn't have a 'messaging' problem. He has a record of bad policies and anti-Israel rhetoric.”
Dan Senor begins to build a case by mentioning the New York special election for the House of Representatives which took place the day before the publication of the article, an election that he describes as being “the first electoral outcome directly affected by President Obama's Israel policy.” There is no denying that the outcome was a decisive loss to the party of the President but as always, opinions differ as to whether the loss can be attributed to this factor or to that one. Certainly, you would expect that there exists one-issue voters in that district as they do everywhere else but the fact that the district is heavily populated by Orthodox Jews does not mean that all of them care more about Israel than they do about America.
The truth is that America is doing badly economically these days, and the economy is an issue that touches the lives of everyone, the reason why it is now and forever the primary concern of voters in that country as it is everywhere else in the world. In any case, this is neither here nor there because unlike what happens at the level of the House of Representatives, the Jewish vote is no more important to America than Israel is to the world. When you consider the fact that for every Jewish vote gained by someone running statewide (for a senate seat) or nationwide (for the presidency), as many as five votes can be lost in the Arab and Muslim communities, you do not pander exclusively to the Jewish voters. Add to this the fact that voters in all the other communities do not like to see their politicians pander exclusively to one group or do worse by selling the country to a handful that works for the benefit of a foreign infliction at the expense of America.
Dan Senor then goes on to mention the former mayor of New York City, Ed Koch who is of the president's party but said publicly that he voted for the candidate of the other party because “he wanted to send a message to the president about his anti-Israel policies.” Maybe it escaped the attention of Senor that Alan Dershowitz did the same thing. And this is not the only similarity joining these two characters; they have something else in common. It is that Ed Koch called the Palestinians the scum of the Earth because they threw stones at the Israeli soldiers of occupation, and Dershowitz said that Israel has the right to inflict on the Palestinians any and every horror that someone has inflicted on someone else throughout history. Birds of the feather as you know.
Still, Senor takes solace in the fact that in two battleground states – Florida and Pennsylvania -- out of the fifty states that make up the Union, there are “significant” Jewish populations that can make a difference, something that should worry the President, he says. And he adds that early indications are to the effect that the Jewish donations to the President's campaign may come to only two thirds what they were the last time around; which means he could lose one third. Well, when the worst that can happen is that you may lose one third of the votes and donations of a group that represents less than 2% of the population, and you worry about that, you can only be considered a traitor who should be sent to jail not to the White House.
Even then, as mentioned already, there is the possibility that another demographic group as well as the American electorate in general will do more than offset the presumed loss of the Jewish vote and the Jewish donations. Moreover, there is the fact -- as the Senor article mentions -- that the Obama campaign has launched a counteroffensive to reassure the Jewish donors. And this is where Dan Senor steps in and gives his two-cent worth of advice to the team that will be in charge of that counteroffensive. To this end, he draws up a list of the areas where, in his view, the President came short with regard to the causes of World Jewry and of Israel.
The points that he makes cover the period from February 2008 to May 2011. The first point concerns the day when Senator Obama told an audience in Cleveland some Jews consider you to be anti-Israel if you do not adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel. So what? You ask and Dan Senor quickly gives you the gotcha moment. He says that the Likud Party was not even in power at the time. So what? You still ask and he says that it was the Likud which gave up the Sinai and Gaza. But knowing history, you say no, Israel was kicked out of the Sinai and of Gaza because its military was defeated in these places as it was in South Lebanon and in half the Golan Heights on the Syrian front.
Ploughing ahead, Dan Senor writes that at the time Obama said what he said; Israel was being led by the centrist party Kadima that was pursuing an unprecedented territorial compromise. What does he mean? You ask. Does he mean that territorial compromise is a good thing? The answer seems to be yes from the way he presents the case. And so you ask: Where did Obama go wrong then? And where does Senor want him to correct his mistake, if any? Would stating the irrelevant point that in February of 2008 Kadima and not Likud was in power satisfy this guy? And you wonder how it is that such trivial, adolescent and nonsensical characters get to acquire such a high profile in America, and how they get to hold important positions. This is sick, man, this is so very sick.
He now mentions the meeting that Mr. Obama had with Jewish leaders at the White House in July of 2009 when he told them he will put daylight between America and Israel. The President explained that for 8 years under W. Bush there was no daylight and nothing was accomplished. And this is where Senor alarmingly asks: Nothing? And he cites an accomplishment to prove the President wrong. He says that Ariel Sharon had uprooted thousands of settlers in Gaza (where the Israeli army was defeated) and the Northern West bank. So you ask: What happened to Ariel Sharon after that? And this is where you get the big surprise: He resigned from the Likud Party to build a majority party based on a two-state consensus, says Dan Senor. Well then, Obama was correct in thinking of the Likud as being the party of trouble, you conclude. Even Sharon felt this way, and whether or not the likud is in power in Israel, those in America who follow its dictates better engage in some serious self-reflection.
And this is exactly what Obama said to the Jewish leaders during that same meeting. He suggested that Israel should “engage in serious self-reflection.” But Senor says that this statement stunned the audience. And he seems to have been stunned himself both because of what was said and because -- as he remarks -- he cannot envision the president delivering a similar lecture to Muslim leaders. And I say: Why should he do so? This sort of lecture is delivered by the Jewish dominated liberal and conservative media in North America 24 hours a day everyday of the week to Christian and Muslim Arabs as well as to Muslims of every race.
Here in Canada, we have several television programs moderated by Jews where Muslims are regularly invited to wash their laundry and to bicker among themselves in public. If this can happen here, imagine what can happen in the Arab countries and the Muslim world. Moreover, Senor says that Israeli society is many things, but lacking self-reflection isn't one of them. What this guy is confusing are two different notions. It is that self-reflection and the gazing at one's belly-button are two different things. The day that someone like me will be allowed to moderate a discussion between Dan Senor and someone like say, Norman Finklestein will be the day that Senor will get his eyes off his belly button and look at the things that will make him think and write like a grownup. He will then know what it means to engage in self-reflection.
Lacking the ability to get his eyes off his Jewish belly button, Dan Senor now complains about something that happened in September of 2009 when Obama declared at the UN General Assembly that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” What galls Senor is that the President drew a connection between rocket attacks and living conditions in Gaza without criticizing the Palestinians unconditionally. Here, I have the duty as a citizen of the world to hammer something into the head of Dan Senor and all those like him. It is that people of all races and all religions are fed up with the Jewish demand that something bad be said about someone every time something bad is pointed out about a Jew or Israel. People are gradually drawn to the view that if the Jews will insist on maintaining this mentality, they will prove that Hitler was correct in trying to annihilate them. Some people even predict that every Holocaust memorial will eventually be turned into a museum whose theme will be: “Look what happens to you when you be a Jew” and there will be a statue of Hitler at the entrance. It's all up to you, Dan; it's up to you now.
We now come to March of 2010 when the Vice President traveled to the Middle East, and Israel announced plans to continue looting Palestinian land and property. Here, it is worth remembering that during the W. Bush years, the Israelis not only did the looting, they used American jets, helicopters and smart bombs to pinpoint Palestinian women and children in their bedrooms and bomb them to kingdom come as a way to show to the Palestinians and to the world that the W was their lap dog who laps them to show admiration when they behave like this. But because Obama did not lap them, they slapped his Vice President on that same day who departed Israel publicly, leaving it to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to do the rest. She berated Netanyahu during a 45-minute phone call and had the Israeli ambassador called to the State Department where he was dressed-down. In addition, the American Middle East envoy canceled a previously planned trip to Israel, and America joined Europe in condemning Israel.
You can imagine how bitterly Dan Senor complains about all this but we're not done yet because Mr. Axelrod who is chief adviser to the President went on television and called an insult and an affront to the United States the planned looting of Palestinian land and property with the intention of turning these into Israel's capital. On top of that, Robert Gibbs who is the Press Secretary of the White House also went on television and “accused” Netanyahu of weakening the trust between the two countries, complains Dan Senor in the article. How much more can the belly that aches for no reason take of this sort of assault before aching yet again? But with a heavy heart and a belly that was not yet repaired, Prime Minister Netanyahu still traveled to Washington ten days later to mend fences, says Senor, but the Prime Minister of Israel was snubbed by the President of the United States who allowed no photo op, no joint statement and had him shoved out the side door.
Not only do these people complain about what they believe is done to them that must not be done, they complain about what they believe is not done for them that ought to be done. An example of this is what happened in April of 2010 when Obama did not intervene after it became clear that Turkey and Egypt intended to use the Obama sponsored Washington summit on nuclear proliferation to condemn the Israeli nuclear program. And so I ask: What is wrong with these people? Why should there always be someone standing by to feed them, protect them and clean after them when they crap on the world and make a stinking mess?
And look what happened after that. Actually, nothing happened for nearly a year at which point the President must have gotten bored and decided it was time to pull an encore. And this is how Dan Senor describes this episode: “March 2011: Mr. Obama returned to his habit of urging Israelis to engage in self-reflection, inviting Jewish community leaders to the White House and instructing them to 'search your souls' about Israel's dedication to peace.”
Two months later, in May of 2011, the State Department issued a press release containing what Senor and people like him consider to be an error that is not a typographical error but an affront to the Jewish sense of being so above the law, America has the duty to disregard its own laws and those that bind it by international treaties in order to accommodate the fantasies of Israel and those of Jews. Look what happened, cries the ever bellyaching Dan Senor: “The State Department issued a press release declaring that … James Steinberg would be visiting 'Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank.' In other words, Jerusalem is not part of Israel.” No, this was not a typographical error because Jerusalem never was a part of Israel under any law except the Israeli law of annexation which is a crime against humanity. But Senor continues to bellyache that Obama later delivered his Arab Spring speech in which he adhered to those same laws by demanding that Israel return to the pre-1967 borders with land swaps.
Still, the man wants to be fair to the American President and give credit where credit is due so he admits that Mr. Obama made exceptions where the security of Israel was concerned. But, he goes on to say that Obama has overall “built the most consistently one-sided diplomatic record against Israel of any American president in generations.” What? Run that by me again! What else do you expect from America but security? You say you want to be friends but with a friend like you, the duty of an American President sworn to look after his people would be to limit the damage to his country by swapping you with an enemy from hell.
Go find someone new on who to sponge, you have sucked the life out of America where the preoccupation must now be to rebuild the country and restore its old glory, something that can be done only when you're out of sight and out of mind. Go away. Just go and don't look back.