Aug 2, 2009

Rejecting Obama leads to...

The newspaper reported this morning that the Obama administration's recent attempt to pressure the Arab world to take some, even minor, steps towards Israel as goodwill gestures to help get the talks back on track were all rebuffed.
  1. The Saudis rejected any option of any goodwill gestures and said everythign is up to israel to get things going.
  2. The Palestinians again rejected the request to recognize Israel as a Jewish State.
  3. The Syrians said to sit down and talk with Israel they demand the full return of the Golan Heights. That is just a precondition to talk. (I don't know what else there is to talk about with them, so what is this a precondition for exactly?).
I don't know why they feel like they can tell President Obama "no" while Israel feels too much pressure and has to agree on many demands and even then is pressured on the small demands we said no on.

Why do we feel so much pressure to say yes?

I guess the next stage is what will Obama do with these rejections? Will he turn to put more pressure on Israel, as that is the only thing that seems to work? Will he turn the screws up on the Arab countries until he gets them to say yes? Will he tell Israel that if the Arabs will not be forthcoming in the slightest he cannot demand Israel give up everything at this stage?

What will be? What will be?

9 comments:

  1. that sounds ridiculous. very paranoid and conspiracy oriented. I hope it is not true.

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  2. She said it. Obama dumped her for it during the campaign. Then he brought her back on board again as no less than a director at the NSC.

    Do the math. Stand back and look at the big picture. It is very ugly.

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  3. SG said:
    "Obama dumped her for it during the campaign"

    Acccording to Wikipedia, she was dumped because of some nasty comments made about Clinton.

    Before anyone jumps all over me about trusting wikipedia, let me state in my defense that it's wikipedia's word vs. that of a blog. No one can claim the higher ground, but wikipedia is subject to editing.

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  4. Yes, Powers called Clinton a "monster".

    Today Clinton is Secretary of State and Power's has a top level Obama admin job of influence in the NSC.

    The math just gets better.

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  5. I think it's simpler than a conspiracy. Israel take s more aid from the US than any other country and that makes Israel more beholden to certain demands or protocols.

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  6. SG,

    If you're going to use non-sequiters, please warn us in advance. Alternatively, please explain the connection between Power calling Clinton a "monster" and Clinton being SoS.

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  7. The "Israel gets lots of US aid" is such a huge red herring, you could make about 53 really nice kiddushes from it.

    Guess where Israel spends all of its massive amounts of military aid (because that's basically the only type of aid it gets)? The US! Guess what happens if the US cut off its aid? It loses a huge arms and air craft consumer. Why would it ever want to do that?

    When my husband was in the army, he told me they were inundated with peripheral items that had to be spent with US military aid on US items- like toilet paper, random T shirts that said "US Army" on them ( i'm not kidding) American style bathroom stalls. Anything that could be purchased from the US and shipped over was.

    So the "beholden" idea goes both ways.

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  8. Commenter-you make a valid point, but an administration can still do it.
    Rafi-Israel has no natural allies. We don't share a religion of language with anyone. We have no natural resources to speak of, hence the need to keep up a good relationhip with the US is something that we need much more than the Arabs do. The whole world besides the US is considrably more anti-Israel. The US helps deflect them but there is a price tag for that. Telling the Amercians to "go to hell" is much easier if your an Arab country than if your'e Israel.

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