President Obama to AIPAC: Don't Worry, We'll Keep Arming Israel, No Matter What They Do

President Obama addressed the Zionist lobby AIPAC on Sunday, just three days after his major speech on the Middle East, in which he paid attention to the popular uprisings going on in the region and placed himself, at least rhetorically, on the side of those seeking democratic reform.

But then, in typical diplomatic fashion, he gave no indication that his administration would do anything forceful to prevent the current violent suppression of democratic protesters in those places where, one might assume, the U.S. actually has influence, like Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The speech to AIPAC was of a similar nature.

In his May 19 speech on the Middle East, the President said that the 1967 border was an appropriate starting point for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Within the pro-Israeli environment of American domestic politics, many Zionists took offense.

So, the speech on Sunday was diplomatically required to reassure them of the toothless nature of the original assertion, making the AIPAC address rather wearisome.

The first half was all about how the U.S. is so solidly committed to Israel that whatever the Israelis do Washington will never abandon them. It was all about how the U.S. is going to keep on arming them so that, in effect, they will continue to have no incentive to negotiate justly with the Palestinians.

In other words, the first half of the speech was all about why the Israelis and their supporters need pay no attention to the 1967 borders.

The President also peppered the talk with statements that, I am sorry to say, sound utterly wrong to anyone with an objective sense of the present situation. Here are just a couple of examples:

–”We also know how difficult that search for security can be, especially for a small nation like Israel in a tough neighborhood.”

Israel is not so much a small nation as a military giant. Obama knows that because it is the U.S. that has done the most to make Israel flagrantly oversized in this regard.

In doing so Washington allowed Israel to become the bully that dominates the neighborhood. In other words, the President, as almost all of his modern predecessors before him, was reversing the facts for the sake of domestic political advantage.

–”No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction.”

This reference was, of course, to Hamas. To call Hamas a “terrorist organization” is considerably out of date. Actually, it would be more fitting to assign the epithet to the Israeli government.

That purveyor of state terrorism has brought sudden death to much larger numbers of innocent people than Hamas. And, using Obama’s logic, one might argue that Hamas should not be expected to negotiate with Israel, because Israel adamantly refuses to recognize it as the legitimately elected government of Palestine (which it is) and is “sworn to its destruction.”

Further, as Palestine’s legally elected government, Hamas too has a right to defend itself against predatory neighbors.

–”America’s commitment to Israel also flows from a deeper place – and that is the values we share.”

There is something really embarrassing, actually downright humiliating, about the first African-American president of the United States saying this about a prima facie racist state like Israel.

The two countries do not share any important values. This can be seen clearly in the fact that, when it comes to societal goals, the two lands are moving in starkly opposite directions.

At least since the end of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s the United States has moved in the direction of greater and greater inclusiveness. This movement has not always been smooth and consistent. However, today President Obama himself stands as living proof that inclusiveness is the direction American society has consciously set for itself.