"... more seriously, a potential fourth example of Obama's increasingly anti-Israeli policy now arises: the administration's strongly negative position on Israel's Gaza blockade. Although so far expressed largely in private, with only nuanced statements being leaked publicly, the White House is plainly leaning heavily on Israel to weaken the blockade in potentially fatal ways. Indeed, on Friday, a White House press person said the "current arrangements" were "unsustain- able," a very poorly disguised threat to Israel.
Israel itself is prepared to make some cosmetic changes, so open differences between Tel Aviv and Washington are not currently visible publicly. Beneath the surface, however, the diplomacy is intense.
Ironically, Obama is expending more energy pressuring Israel than he did in the Security Council, the Human Rights Council or the nuclear-review conference to protect US and Israeli equities. This pattern also typifies Obama and his key advisers: They find it is far easier to bend their friends into submission than to stand up to America's determined adversaries (whoa!).
America's Western European allies, by and large, already are happy to agree that the Gaza blockade violates "international law." This view in part explains why even Britain and France failed to join the US in the Human Rights Council, and negotiated too closely with Turkey in its efforts to slam Israel in the Security Council.
Third World radicals will doubtless build on Europe's position in their ongoing, decades-long efforts to delegitimize Israel entirely. There is equally little doubt that Obama himself is susceptible to these kinds of foreign pressures, especially when withstanding them might cause his own international image to suffer. Here, Israel is merely collateral damage in guarding the cult of our first post-American president.
The harm caused by US weakness on the Gaza blockade issue will reach far beyond the Middle East. Worldwide, America's friends and allies increasingly realize that President Obama won't stand with them in controversial circumstances (as Did Bolton's old boss, W Bush with the Cedar-Closet Revolution, May 7, 2008' ... in the streets of Beirut!). Accordingly, those closest to us will calibrate their own interests more carefully to hedge against US weakness, step by step distancing themselves from us...."
1 comment:
Like how Bolton puts the words "international law" in quotation marks.
Like we needed any further proof what the neo-cons think regarding International Laws.
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