Open Mic Fallout: More Americans Prefer Netanyahu over Obama, but Obama’s Snide Comments Will Be Forgotten by Democrat Jews at Election Time
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on November 12, 2011
Following Pres. Obama’s and Pres. Sarkozy’s overheard slamming of our ally, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this past week over an open microphone at the G20 summit, a new poll reveals that more Americans prefer Netanyahu over the Whiner in Chief:
From Washington Examiner, Report: Polled Americans prefer Israel PM to Obama:
President Obama’s hot-miked conversation with French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggested that he is frustrated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — but Americans might be more frustrated with Obama than they are irritated by Netanyahu.
“A poll conducted by the group Greenberg Quinlan Rosner found that 52.3 percent of Americans rate Netanyahu positively, compared to 51.5 percent for Obama,” reports Israel Today Magazine. “The results of the poll were enthusiastically discussed on Israel’s Channel 10 News on Thursday.”
The Washington Examiner called the polling firm to confirm and request the full data, including margin of error, but hasn’t heard back yet. The poll reportedly asked questions of 800 U.S. citizens.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney refused to comment, yesterday, on Sarkozy calling Netanyahu a “liar” and Obama reportedly complaining, “You are fed up with him, but me, I have to deal with him every day.”
Caroline Glick, journalist and senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC living in Jerusalem, has written a powerful essay in The Jerusalem Post about what Obama’s nasty comments about Bibi mean for Jews and Israel:
These statements are interesting both for what they say about the two presidents’ characters and for what they say about the way that Israel is perceived by the West more generally.
To understand why this is the case it is necessary to first ask, when has Netanyahu ever lied to Sarkozy and Obama? This week the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s report about Iran’s nuclear weapons program made clear that Israel – Netanyahu included – has been telling the truth about Iran and its nuclear ambitions all along. In contrast, world leaders have been lying and burying their heads in the sand.
Since Iran’s nuclear weapons program was first revealed to the public in 2004, Israel has provided in-depth intelligence information proving Iran’s malign intentions to the likes of Sarkozy, Obama and the UN. And for seven years, the US government – Obama included – has claimed that it lacked definitive proof of Iran’s intentions.
Obama wasted the first two years of his administration attempting to charm the Iranians out of their nuclear weapons program. He stubbornly ignored the piles of evidence presented to him by Israel that Iran was not interested in cutting a deal.
Perhaps Obama was relying on the US’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. As Israel said at the time, and as this week’s IAEA report proves, it was the NIE – which claimed that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 – not Israel that deliberately lied about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It was the US intelligence community that purposely deceived the American government and people about the gravest immediate threat to US national security.
Israel, including Netanyahu, was telling the truth.
Glick cites many other examples, and concludes with this:
And this brings us to the other troubling aspect of Sarkozy and Obama’s nasty exchange about Netanyahu. Their views reflect a wider anti-Israel climate.
Outside the Jewish world, Sarkozy’s and Obama’s hateful, false statements about their ally provoked no outrage. Indeed, it took the media three days to even report their conversation. This indicates that Obama and Sarkozy aren’t alone in holding Israel to a double standard. They aren’t the only ones blaming Israel for the Palestinians’ bad behavior.
The Western media also holds Israel to a separate standard. Like Obama and Sarkozy, the media blame Israel and its elected leaders for the Palestinians’ duplicity. Like Obama and Sarkozy, the media blame Israel for failing to make their peace fantasies come true.
And that is the real message of the Obama- Sarkozy exchange last week. Through it we learn that blaming the Jews and the Jewish state for their enemies’ behavior is what passes for polite conversation among Western elites today.
Will Obama’s dissing of Netanyahu and his anti-Israel/anti-Jewish policies and opinions hurt him at election time? Surprisingly, Diana Furchtgott-Roth at Daily Mail says “no” — Why Obama’s latest gaffe WON’T lose him the Jewish vote:
Will President Obama lose the Jewish vote after complaining about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu? Probably not.
[...]
In this instance, Obama can defend himself by saying that he had Israel’s interest at heart by raising the issue.
But this latest snafu follows Obama’s May 2011 remarks calling for Israel to withdraw to pre-1967 borders as part of a Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement. Obama tried to get British Prime Minister David Cameron to exert similar pressure on Israel, without success.
And in September 2010, Obama suggested a freeze on Israeli settlements.
Meanwhile, Obama has been far less vocal in calling on the Palestinians to recognize Israel’s right to exist and to halt repeated rocket attacks and suicide bombers against Israel.
But Jews are surprisingly short-sighted in their choice of political leaders. Seventy-eight percent voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential elections, and the vast majority are registered Democrats.
Back in 1999, my friend and fellow-Jew Irving Kristol, who died in 2009, wrote in the magazine Azure,
‘Jews to this day continue to combine an almost pathologically intense concern for politics with a seemingly equally intense inclination towards political foolishness, often crossing over into the realm of the politically suicidal. How is one to understand this very odd Jewish condition—the political stupidity of Jews?’
Perhaps Obama’s share of the Jewish vote will decline in 2012. The congressional seat held by Representative Anthony Weiner in the Queens borough of New York City, a heavily Jewish district, went to Republican Bob Turner in September, the first time in almost 90 years that a Democrat lost. Orthodox Jews came out strongly for Turner.
But Orthodox Jews are a small minority, and the Reform and Conservative movements vote Democrat as a matter of liberal faith—even though liberal dogma frequently clashes with Jewish law and is against Jewish self-interest.
Traditional Jewish law is against abortion, except to save the life of the mother, and opposed to homosexuality and assisted suicide.
As a group, Jews have higher incomes than average, and so don’t benefit from higher taxes and more government spending and expansion of the welfare state, tenets of the Democrats and Obama.
Norman Podhoretz, author of Why Jews are Liberals, explained it this way in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in 2009,
‘The upshot is that in virtually every instance of a clash between Jewish law and contemporary liberalism, it is the liberal creed that prevails for most American Jews. Which is to say that for them, liberalism has become more than a political outlook. It has for all practical purposes superseded Judaism and become a religion in its own right.’
What else will Obama have to say to get Jews to change their votes?
Regrettably, she may be right — many Democrat Jews still blindly support Barack Obama, despite his disgraceful snubbing of the Prime Minister at the White House last year and his continued support of the Palestinians over Israel.
Come election time, many Democrat Jews will have forgotten or forgiven Barack Obama's stance, snubs, and remarks against Israel and PM Netanyahu
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