Israel Lobby Sees Obama as Enemy of Zionist Agenda

Pakistan Daily

President Barack Obama’s foreign policy inclinations are a threat to Israel’s survival. That’s the no-holds-barred assessment by one of Israel’s leading American publicists, Norman Podhoretz, the prominent neo-conservative long associated with the American Jewish Committee’s influential magazine, Commentary. Podhoretz made the inflammatory charge against the U.S. president in an article in the May 2009 issue of Commentary in an article entitled “How Obama’s America Might Threaten Israel,” one of a series of polemics addressing the subject: “Israel at Risk.”

This is no surprise to AFP readers. On Dec. 1, 2008, AFP surprised many by suggesting that Barack Obama might “pull a JFK” and begin putting pressure on Israel. Six months later, AFP’s prediction appears on the mark. The difference between JFK and Obama, though, is that JFK’s pressure was applied privately, through diplomatic channels. Obama’s pressure has been both public and forthright.

The most recent frenzy from Israel and its American supporters in response to initiatives from the Obama administration came when the president forcefully demanded that Israel cease building settlements in the occupied West Bank. The president further inflamed the Zionist state and its American lobby by reiterating that demand in his widely heralded address to the Muslim world, delivered in Cairo.

In fact, the confrontation between the United States and Israel has been simmering for some time, beginning with the Obama administration’s open call for Israel to submit to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On May 7 the Philadelphia Bulletin carried a report headlined “Obama Follows JFK Example and Pressures Israel to Limit Nuclear Capability.” The Bulletin stated: “For the first time since the Kennedy administration, a senior American official has commented explicitly and negatively about Israel’s nuclear capability.”

Shock waves rolled through Israel and the Jewish lobby in Washington after President Obama’s assistant secretary of state, Rose Gottemoeller—speaking on May 5 at a meeting on the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—said Israel should become a signatory to the treaty. By doing so, Israel would be required to open up its secret nuclear arsenal to international inspection, something Israel has consistently refused to do.

The Bulletin noted that “The Obama administration’s newfound opposition to Israel’s formally undisclosed nuclear program reverses nearly 50 years of American silence on the subject,” adding that after JFK struggled with then Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion over the issue of Israel’s nuclear arms, “President Kennedy refused to budge and continued to push Israel to abandon its nuclear option until his death on Nov. 22, 1963. No American president has made an issue of Israel’s nuclear capability—until now.”

In response to the perceived danger posed by Obama, the Jewish lobby rallied its troops. A leading voice for the lobby, The Washington Times, featured a front page headline story on May 6 shrieking “Secret U.S.-Israel nuclear accord in jeopardy,” a clarion call for Republicans, conservatives, fundamentalist Christians, and those who want to curry favor with pro-Israel money barons, to join together to stop President Obama from pressuring Israel to sign the treaty...........