Friday

March 29th, 2024

Insight

Obama's Narcissistic Dissing of Israel

David Limbaugh

By David Limbaugh

Published Jan. 30, 2015

    Obama's Narcissistic Dissing of Israel

It is just like the Obama administration to twist its own mistreatment of Israel into an opportunity to slander Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer.

Like petulant children, Obama and his crew treat any resistance to their agenda as unprovoked hostility, personally directed at Obama, and lash out personally at those who would resist their dubious and aggressive behavior.

Despite Obama's persistent slighting of Israel, he simply will not let pass Netanyahu's acceptance of House Speaker John Boehner's invitation to speak before a joint session of Congress. It doesn't matter that he refused to meet with Netanyahu, disingenuously citing concerns over interfering with the upcoming Israeli elections. Truth be told, he'd like nothing more than to interfere with those elections in an effort to unseat Netanyahu. In fact, unconfirmed news reports have circulated that an Obama political team is in Israel working on that very goal.

The Drudge Report led its page Thursday morning with the headline "Outrage at Israel," over a photo of Obama scowling at Netanyahu. The link is to a New York Times article, which confirms that Matt Drudge was hardly guilty of hyperbole here.

The Obama administration admits how "angry" it is that Netanyahu accepted Boehner's speaking invitation without consulting the White House. By no means must anyone, including the leader of one of our allies, ever do anything that could be interpreted as being disrespectful to this president — irrespective of whether this president drew first blood with his own pattern of disrespect toward that leader. What's good for the goose, in this case, is not good for the gander, because the gander is our imperial president, Barack Obama, whose preferences and ego must take priority over the interests of the United States.

Putting presidential pettiness aside, what should responsible world leaders and congressional leaders in the United States do in response to an aggressive Iran hellbent on acquiring nuclear strike capability and an administration hellbent on blocking realistic efforts to thwart Iran? Are they to sit around in joint paralysis because they would rather betray the interests of their nations, world peace and sanity than offend the narcissist in the Oval Office who has turned an intentionally blind eye to Islamic terrorism and the threat Iran represents?

Moreover, don't you think it's objectively untoward for the Obama administration to fan the flames of a public feud with Israel? It has broken decades of precedent by publicly criticizing Israel and Israel's leaders throughout Obama's time in office, and it is castigating Israel for poisoning the relationship between our countries? It's the type of behavior you get with an administration more engaged in navel-gazing than governing on behalf of the nation under its charge.

While the administration is classlessly attacking the Israeli ambassador, he is showing restraint in return, declining to return personal insult for personal insult and responding, "I have no regrets whatsoever that I have acted in a way to advance my country's interests." Dermer said that he didn't think it was his place to inform the administration and that it was Boehner's prerogative to notify the White House of the Netanyahu congressional address. Sounds reasonable to me.

It is so typical of our media to focus on the party in conflict with the Obama administration. With this event, the spotlight is on Dermer instead of the administration's reckless passivity regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions and its snubbing of Israel and Netanyahu.

Obama has repeatedly assured us that his administration is monitoring Iran, while Iran has pressed forward and the administration has virtually allowed it to continue through its phony promises and deferred negotiations.

In between veto threats in his State of the Union address, Obama lectured us on the imperative of "combining military power with strong diplomacy" and leveraging "our power with coalition building. ... We're upholding the principle that bigger nations can't bully the small."

Well, tell that to Netanyahu and Israel. Tell them you and Secretary of State John Kerry haven't been bullying them into swallowing your agenda for them — including halting settlements in their own West Bank and accepting the 1967 borders. Tell them you haven't publicly sympathized with anti-Israeli positions by referring to the lands Israel acquired from enemies who unsuccessfully waged war against it as "occupied lands" and by effectively declaring moral equivalence between Israel and Gaza in Gaza's war of aggression against Israel in 2014.

Then please explain to the rest of us how your diplomacy has been working out with Iran — not to mention Russia and the rest of the world.

President Obama is doing a fine job of appeasing terrorists, especially in releasing the most dangerous terrorists back into the world, where they can resume their jihad right where they left off, and in eliminating from the administration's lexicon words that properly identify the terrorism we face with Islamic extremism.

This administration is so wrong about so many things, but sharing space at the top of that list are its willful ignorance in recognizing our enemies and its intentional mistreatment of our ally Israel.

Comment by clicking here.

David Limbaugh is a columnist, author and attorney practicing in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Columnists

Toons