Holding Attack Watch accountable: Israel

The Obama Campaign created Attack Watch to make sure everything’s reported as fact they want it reported. So in my continued efforts to get myself and this blog listed on Attack Watch, I thought I’d put things into perspective on all the things they claim Obama’s being attacked on. Each of my next few posts will focus on one of the claims that is made on Attack Watch.

• “President Obama is a friend to Israel, despite unfounded claims to the contrary.” – Attack Watch.

President Obama has called for Israel to return to their 1967 borders. You know… the borders prior to the Six-Day War when Israel was attacked. On the flip side, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that the 1967 borders are “indefensible.”

Skip to 7:10 if you don’t want to listen to Obama talk. I highly recommend it

The changing of the borders has been an issue that President Obama seems to be set on. Either President Obama hasn’t read a history textbook or he’s just clueless.
Attack Watch presents as an argument comments made by various politicians. While that’s nice and all, in the world of politics there’s a need to be courteous to each other when allies are involved. It’s very telling that there’s no mention of any specific policy or legislation that has been a part of President Obama’s efforts to help Israel. The best it does is mention a speech by Obama at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. Some of what is mentioned regarding that speech by Obama needs to be taken into context. He says cooperation between the militaries has been increased to unprecedented levels. That’s not exactly quantitative. He says that we’re making our most advanced technologies available to Israel. That’s pretty much par for the course. It’s just that it’s a new day so the US has new military technology to sell. Obama also mentioned increasing foreign military financing to record levels. What allowing US military contractors to sell goods to countries like Israel does is it allows them to have another customer for their products. That helps keep jobs in America and bring money into our economy more than anything. Helping them finance it is like what GMAC does for GM. It allows customers to buy more of their cars sooner. So while Obama does get a few points for helping the economy with these moves, it’s hardly proof that he’s a friend of Israel. It’s not like Israel’s going to use these weapons against the US.
Then there’s the biggest threat to Israel, Iran. It seems like Obama hasn’t been consistent on that issue. During his campaign, he didn’t seem to think too much about Iran.

So... which is it?

Here’s the real telling part of this. Then Senator Obama had the time to research how much Iran spent on the military, but never really looked at the situation. Any casual observer knew that Iran had said that they wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, they have numerous human rights violations, and were a serious threat to the stability of the Middle East. And yet, Obama thought they were a nobody. I don’t know if he was placating to an anti-war group or what the case was. Either way, we could do better than a leader that has trouble with International Politics 101.
Back in 2010, the United States supported an action plan on nuclear weapons that said it was important for Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty while the proposal had nothing in it about Iran’s nuclear program. The Israeli government released a statement that said:

“(The plan) singles out Israel, the Middle East’s only true democracy and the only country threatened with annihilation. Yet the terrorist regime in Iran, which is racing to develop nuclear weapons and which openly threatens to wipe Israel off the map, is not even mentioned.”

This is not the behavior of a friend of Israel. By the way, this took place after the election. President Obama should have been well educated about Iran by this point.

At the very best, Obama is neutral on Israel. Even that’s a stretch. There’s no way he’s a “friend” to Israel. We could do better. My question is this: If Obama’s a friend to Israel, what’s it like to just be an acquaintance of the President?