Soccer Dad

Shaping obama

There are two points about the recent Washington Post report, Obama's aides, friends shaped his views on settlements:

The first is the omission of any mention of President Obama's friendship with Rashid Khalidi or Ali Abuminah. This allows the reporters to emphasize misleadingly that he is only opposed to the Likud, not necessarily anti-Israel.

Early evidence of that view was captured on tape during a private gathering in Cleveland in 2008. Obama challenged Jewish groups to allow for greater debate on Israeli actions and not demand what he called a "pro-Likud approach," referring to Netanyahu's party.

"This is where I get to be honest, and I hope I'm not out of school here," he said in a transcript published by JTA, a news service on Jewish issues. "I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you're anti-Israel. . . . If we cannot have an honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we're not going to make progress."

In a sense Netanyahu is the perfect prime minister for President Obama. He could have had this argument with Tzipi Livni too, but then he wouldn't have been able to hide behind his anti-Likud posture.

The other important aspect of the article is this:

One of the president's close friends in Chicago, the late Rabbi Arnold Wolf, wrote last year of his disappointment that Obama had often publicly softened his private positions.

"For my part, I've sometimes found Obama too cautious on Israel," said Wolf, who in 1973 co-founded an organization that advocated creating a Palestinian state. "He, like all our politicians, knows he mustn't stray too far from the conventional line, and that can be disappointing. But unlike anyone else on the stump, Obama has also made it clear that he'll broaden the dialogue."

President Obama (as he reportedly confided to Ali Abuminah) understood how pro-Israel the American electorate is and played down his views of Israel. Now that he's in power he's showing how he really feels. And his policies regarding the Middle East are and will be anti-Israel, not just anti-Likud.

UPDATE: I would also emphasize, though the Post article does not, that someone who supported a Palestinian state in 1973 was way out of the mainstream of Jewish politics. So the Post may emphasize President Obama's Jewish connections as if to say, well he has Jews who approve of his views, but that hardly means that they are or were part of the Jewish mainstream. And given the general American support for Israel, they were way out of the mainstream of the American political consensus on Israel.

Crossposted on Yourish.