Obama - The King of Condescension

Audacity Vs. Reality

By Investor's Business Business Daily
Monday, May 18, 2009

Middle East: President Obama seeks a grand, unlikely reconciliation between Jews, Shiites and Sunnis. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decidedly undreamy Mideast agenda is about survival.

In the Middle East of the early 21st century, the world is challenged by two big facts: one, a problem with no solution; the other, a problem it's been pretending isn't really there.

The first fact is the troubled co-existence of Israel with its hostile Muslim neighbors.

It's obvious that the Jewish state will never be accepted as legitimate by a large number of Arabs.

There will always be Muslim nations and armed organizations that will never accept its right to exist, and that would try to get rid of it.

Yet year after year we hear most of Western Europe, Third World nations and now apparently America insist that a Palestinian state is the key to a lasting Mideast peace.

In truth, such an Israeli concession would likely fan the flames of hate toward Israel, make it territorially far less secure, and be seen by radical Muslims as a step toward Israel's eventual destruction. The heat would be turned up on the Jewish homeland.

As the world insists the insoluble problem — harmony between Middle Eastern Jew and Muslim — be given priority, the other fact regarding the region is neglected, even though it has a solution.

That second problem is Iran's nuclear ambitions. The options available now for years include concerted economic isolation, an explicit policy of regime change manifested through the material support of Iran's organized dissidents, and joint military action by the major free world powers.

Instead of any of that, this Islamofascist regime that has called for the destruction of Israel and has sponsored terrorists in Palestine, Lebanon and Iraq has been subjected only to impotent sanctions that have encouraged Tehran's ruling mullahs.

It is in this context that Barack Obama and Bibi Netanyahu's two hours together at the White House on Monday must be seen.

The president let it be known in his public remarks that he told the hard-line Israeli PM to "get a serious movement" going.

He also pointedly insisted to the Israeli leader that Jewish West Bank "settlements have to be stopped," and in a remark in which it is difficult not to find condescension, he expressed confidence that Netanyahu "is going to rise to the occasion."

An enticing vision of normalized relations between Israel and all Muslim countries was reportedly presented to the Israeli leader. Clearly, Netanyahu is far too sagacious to swallow any such fantasyland scenario.

Yet it was this same supposedly hotheaded hawk, the Israeli who during his previous tenure as prime minister is said to have caused Bill Clinton to spew a string of angry profanities, who came to Washington with the real message of unity.

"There's never been a time when Arabs and Israelis see a common threat the way we see it today," Netanyahu said of the Iranian nuclear threat.

When President Obama said "there is no reason why we should not seize this opportunity and this moment," it's too bad he wasn't talking about the opportunity to unite Israeli and Arab against the evil that continues to fester in Iran.
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