5 Things You Need to Know About the U.S.-Israel Relationship Under President Obama

from WhiteHouse.Gov March 1, 2015 ** Full Article Links HERE

NOTE: Truth is always difficult. Facts, though, can be reviewed, studied and verified if correct. Much of what we think we know should be questioned. 

Here are the five key facts you need to know about the U.S.-Israel relationship under President Obama: 

1. A strong defender: President Obama has strengthened Israel's defense in concrete and unprecedented ways: 

• Israel remains the leading recipient of U.S. foreign military financing (FMF), receiving over $20.5 billion since 2009. 
• The United States in Fiscal Year 2014 provided Israel with more security assistance funding than ever before. In Fiscal Year 2016, which marks the eighth year of a 10-year, $30 billion Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel, we have asked Congress for $3.1 billion in FMF funds for Israel.
• The President has provided $2.9 billion in funding for missile defense programs and systems. Since 2011, the United States has provided Israel with over $1.3 billion for the Iron Dome system alone, including $225 million in short-fuse funding last summer.
• The U.S. and Israel regularly conduct joint exercises to improve our military capabilities and strengthen our bilateral security.

2. An international ally: Under President Obama, the U.S. has led global efforts to defend Israel's legitimacy on the world stage: 

• Last year, the U.S. opposed 18 resolutions in the UN General Assembly that were biased against Israel.
• On five occasions last year, the U.S. cast the only “no” vote against unfair anti-Israel measures in the UN’s Human Rights Council.
• The U.S. worked with Israel and the European Union to organize the first UN General Assembly session on anti-Semitism in UN history, held in January 2015.

3. A proponent of peace: The President has strongly supported Israel in its quest for peace with its neighbors:

• President Obama has repeatedly stood up for a two-state solution that ensures the peace and security of Israelis and Palestinians.
• Under the President’s direction, Secretary Kerry initiated an intensive, collaborative effort to facilitate negotiations for a comprehensive peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.
• The President prioritized Israel’s security by asking one of our foremost military experts to help develop security arrangements that ensure a two-state solution leaves Israelis more secure, not less.

4. An economic partner: Under President Obama, the U.S. has a strong and robust commercial relationship with Israel:

• This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the United States-Israel Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which was the first FTA entered into by the United States.
• U.S. goods exports to Israel in 2014 were $15.1 billion, up 9.6% ($1.3 billion) from 2013, and up 64% from 2004.  U.S. exports to Israel are up 587% from 1984 (Pre-FTA).
• U.S. goods imports from Israel were $23.1 billion in 2014, a 1.1% increase ($242 million) from 2013, and up 58% from 2004. U.S. imports from Israel are up 1,203% from 1984.
• The U.S. continues to invest in the BIRD Foundation, a U.S.-Israeli partnership between private sectors to expand private high tech industries. Since its founding in 1977, the $295 million in grants have been awarded to 800 partnerships, generating over $10 billion in product sales.

​5. A support system for refugees and migrants: Under President Obama, the U.S. has invested millions in helping Israeli immigrants:

• In the last 6 years, U.S. humanitarian assistance to refugees and migrants travelling to Israel totaled $140 million. This funding is used to help transport eligible migrants to Israel, transitional shelter, intensive Hebrew-language programs that focus on ne
• wly-arriving immigrants, or youth programming in Israel.
Since Israel’s founding, the U.S. has provided Israel with more than $120 billion in bilateral assistance and, under President Obama’s leadership, the U.S. will continue to be Israel’s strongest ally and staunchest supporter in its pursuit of peace and security in the Middle East. 
Share this information with everyone who needs to know. 

John Boehner's Double Standard on Bibi — and Obama

from The Forward March 30, 2015 by J.J. Goldberg  Article Links HERE

NOTE: Kudos to J.J. for writing this. Utter (and irrational) hatred of Obama is de rigueur among too many Jews nowadays. 

In case you missed it: The No. 1 best comedy line of the weekend came from one of our best deadpan straight men, House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio.

It came during a Sunday interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.” They were talking about the Israeli prime minister’s flip-flop on Palestinian statehood just before and after Israel’s March 17 election — how on March 16, in Bash’s words, “he disavowed the two-state solution, and then right afterward he said ‘never mind’ and took it back. Isn’t this a little brazen?” No, Boehner said, “because he doesn’t have a partner.” He said he believes Netanyahu still believes in Palestinian statehood as “an aspirational goal.” Well, Bash asked, “Can you blame the White House or the president for not believing what he’s saying on where his position is on this?”

Boehner’s reply:

I think the animosity exhibited by our administration toward the prime minister of Israel is reprehensible. I think that the pressure that they’ve put on him over the last four or five years has frankly pushed him to the point where he had to speak up.

Get it? The animosity exhibited by our administration toward the prime minister of Israel is “reprehensible.” This from a guy who’s been virtually silent for six years — four of them as the leader of the Republican party — while members of his caucus and his party have directed an unending barrage of slander, character assassination and borderline obscenity at the president of his own country.

Think I’m exaggerating? In January 2011, days after Boehner’s Republicans took over the House and elected him speaker, Brian Williams asked him during an NBC Nightly News interview what he had to say to members of his party who claimed Obama wasn’t born in America, wasn’t a citizen and wasn’t legitimately president. Boehler’s reply:

Brian, when you come to the Congress of the United States, there are 435 of us. We’re nothing more than a slice of America. People come, regardless of party labels, they come with all kinds of beliefs and ideas. It’s the melting pot of America. It’s not up to me to tell them what to think.

Translation: Shucks, I’m only a politician, head of the Republican Party. I can’t advise Americans on how to view the world. What am I, a leader?

Six weeks later, during an interview on Meet the Press, Boehner repeatedly denied he had any responsibility to speak out when Republicans claimed the president was a foreign-born Muslim.

He noted that the state of Hawaii said Obama was born there, and that the president himself said he was a Christian, and “I’ll take him at his word” — strikingly, the same phrase Obama himself used last week to say that he believed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s March 16 disavowal of the two-state solution: “I take him at his word.”

But, Boehner said several times, “It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think.” (Which, when you think about it, is an odd stance for a political leader to take when discussing truth, falsehood and the affairs of the Republic. “Not my job to tell the American people what to think”? Has he been joking all these years about Obamacare, taxes, freedom?)

Host David Gregory had led off by playing a Fox News clip showing Iowa Republicans in focus groups saying they believed Obama was a Muslim. Here’s what followed:

Gregory: Do you not think it’s your responsibility to stand up to that kind of ignorance?

Boehner: David, it’s not my job to tell the American people what to think. Our job in Washington is to listen to the American people. Having said that, the state of Hawaii has said that he was born there. That’s good enough for me. The president says he’s a Christian. I accept him at his word.

Gregory: But isn’t that a little bit fast and loose? I mean, you are the leader in Congress and you are not standing up to obvious facts and saying these are facts, and if you don’t believe that it’s nonsense?

Boehner: I just outlined the facts as I understand them. I believe that the president is a citizen. I believe the president is a Christian. I’ll take him at his word.

Gregory: But that kind of ignorance over whether he’s a Muslim doesn’t concern you?

Boehner: Listen, the American people have the right to think what they want to think. I can’t — it’s not my job to tell them.

By way of context, the exchange came after several polls over the preceding months had shown Republicans holding a whole range of bizarre views of Obama, which the national leadership, including Boehner, had made no effort to dispute.

In March 2010, a Harris Interactive poll found that majorities of Republicans believed Obama is a socialist (67%), wants to take away Americans’ right to own guns (61%), is a Muslim (57%) and “wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government” (51%).

Moreover, Harris reported, 47% of Republicans believed Obama “resents America’s heritage”; 45% believed he “was not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”; 45% believed he “is the domestic enemy that the U.S. Constitution speaks of”; 41% believed he “wants to use an economic collapse or terrorist attack as an excuse to take dictatorial powers”; and 38% believed he “is doing many of the things that Hitler did.”

Also, 24% of Republicans believed Obama “may be the Anti-Christ” and 22% believed he “wants the terrorists to win.”

Here’s what Boehner had to say about the widespread Republican, um, animosity toward the president of the United States: [nothing].

In the years since then Boehner has been true to his principles, sitting silently while members of his own caucus have come up with a wide range of baroque insults to direct5 at the president. During the 2014 State of the Union address, for example, Texas Rep. Randy Weber tweeted from the House floor that Obama was “Kommandant-in-Chief” and a “Socialistic dictator.”

In January 2015 Weber complained about Obama’s failure to attend the Paris rally following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in a tweet that compared him (unfavorably) to Hitler: “Even Adolph [sic] Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn’t do it for right reasons.”

Weber apologized the following day — not to Obama but to Holocaust survivors:

It was not my intention to trivialize the Holocaust nor to compare the President to Adolf Hitler. The mention of Hitler was meant to represent the face of evil that still exists in the world today. I now realize that the use of Hitler invokes pain and emotional trauma for those affected by the atrocities of the Holocaust and victims of anti-Semitism and hate.

Here’s what Boehner had to say about Weber’s slurs against the president: [nothing].

It should be borne in mind, by the way, that Obama’s rough treatment of Netanyahu follows six years in which Netanyahu has repeatedly humiliated, undermined and sabotaged the president publicly. And while both leaders have tried to keep their very profound disagreements on the substantive plane and avoid descending into personal invective, Netanyahu’s allies and surrogates haven’t been so delicate. Recall the moment in January 2014, at the height of Secretary State John Kerry’s effort to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, when Israel’s Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon was quoted (accurately) saying that Kerry was “acting out of a misplaced obsession and messianic fervor” and that the “only thing that can save us is for John Kerry to win a Nobel Prize and leave us in peace.” That actually drew a mild scolding from Netanyahu on the Knesset floor, followed by a non-apology apology from Ya’alon (who “didn’t mean to insult” Kerry).

From Obama’s point of view, though, the relationship probably reached a breaking point on Israel’s election day. That was the day Netanyahu mobilized his voters by warning in a video that his incumbency was “endangered” by Arab Israeli citizens “streaming to the polls in droves.” It was just 10 days earlier that America’s first African American president had flown to Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the sacrifices made by blacks and whites a half-century ago in the struggle for minority voting rights.

It’s worth recalling an incident last October, after Jeffrey Goldberg (no, that’s not me)reported in The Atlantic about an unnamed White House official calling Netanyahu “chickenshit.” The anonymous insult prompted a reply from Israel’s economics minister, Naftali Bennett, leader of the settler-backed Jewish Home party, warning on his Facebook page — in a phrase borrowed from former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney — that Obama was “planning on throwing Israel under the bus.”

Bennett went on to write:

The prime minister is not a private individual, but the leader of the Jewish State and the Jewish world as a whole. Serious curses such as these against the Israeli Prime Minister are harmful to millions of citizens of Israel and Jews worldwide.

Exactly. The thing is, it goes both ways.

What John Bolton Gets Wrong About Iran

From the New York Times  March 27, 2015 by Carol Giacoma Article Links HERE

NOTE: All views welcome here. 

John Bolton’s best quality may be that he says what he thinks. Diplomats are trained to set aside personal beliefs as they fulfill their professional duties but even when Mr. Bolton was a senior official in the administration of President George W. Bush, and supposed to be exercising discretion, he was brash and outspoken.

In an op-ed published by the New York Times on Thursday, he advocated bombing Iran with characteristic force. “Time is terribly short but a strike can still succeed,” he argued.

Mr. Bolton has been pushing a hardline — military action and regime change — against Tehran for at least a decade. But he leaves out some important context — that he was part of an administration that never seriously sought a negotiated solution with Iran. Nor were they capable of putting together the kind of sanctions against Iran — with buy-in from the major powers — that Mr. Obama did and that Mr. Bolton still finds grievous fault with.

Most people believe the various sanctions helped persuade Iran to come to the negotiating table, where an agreement is said to be within reach, perhaps next week.

Mr. Bolton also avoids two major questions: First, if bombing Iran is such a great idea, why didn’t the Bush administration do it years ago when Iran’s program had a fraction of the equipment and facilities it now possesses and when military action would have been easier? As David Sanger reported in The Times, President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel in 2008 for specialized bunker-busting bombs that Israel wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex.

The options for dealing with Iran have always been pretty straightforward: Accept the fact that Iran has an advanced nuclear program that has yet to produce a weapon but could lead to one. Try to maintain sanctions and a system of containment indefinitely. Take military action against Iran’s many nuclear facilities, which experts say would set back the program by only two years or so. Or negotiate an agreement that would curb the program and guarantee long-term international monitoring.

Mr. Obama is pursuing the only sensible solution.

At Passover This Year, Difficult Conversations About The Promised Land

ARTICLE LINKS HERE

from The Jewish Week March 25, 2015 by Stewart Ain

NOTE: 10 Jews, 20 opinions... 

A sharply divided community limps toward the Passover seder.

With tensions between the United States and Israel running at a fever pitch, even the benign, ritually symbolic words of the Passover seder have suddenly become charged with divisiveness and political import.

For Susie Heneson Moskowitz, spiritual leader of Temple Beth Torah in Melville, L.I., reading the words “Next Year in Jerusalem” at the end of the seder next week will take on a whole new, and unexpected, resonance.

“We pray that there will continue to be a Jerusalem that reflects Jewish and democratic values — and is safe and secure,” said Rabbi Heneson Moskowitz.

Her statement, which seems to straddle liberal and conservative positions and reflect anxiety over controversial statements made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Election Day, epitomizes the concerns of a divided American Jewish community: that Israel continues to be the homeland of the Jewish people, that it can one day move forward with a two-state solution that allows Israel to end the occupation of its Palestinian neighbors and that it remain safe within secure borders.

Rabbi Moscowitz was reflecting, in part, the concerns of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who warned on the Senate floor last week that President Obama’s treatment of Israel could endanger Israel’s safety by emboldening its “enemies to launch more rockets out of southern Lebanon and Gaza, to launch more terrorist attacks, to go to international forums and delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.”

Rubio was responding to Obama’s promise last week to “reassess” America’s relationship with Israel in light of Netanyahu’s pledge on the eve of last week’s election that a Palestinian state would not be established under his watch. (Netanyahu’s Election Day statement that Arabs were “voting in droves” met with widespread criticism in Reform and Conservative circles.)  

Although Netanyahu clarified his pledge after the election — saying he is still committed to a two-state solution but that current conditions make that impossible — Obama dismissed them in a phone call to Netanyahu. He later told the Huffington Post: “I indicated to him that given his statements prior to the election, it is going to be hard to find a path where people are seriously believing that negotiations are possible. We take him at his word when he said that it wouldn’t happen during his prime ministership, and so that’s why we’ve got to evaluate what other options are available to make sure that we don’t see a chaotic situation in the region.”

Such talk from the Obama administration continued this week, with his chief of state, Denis McDonough, telling a J Street conference Monday that Netanyahu’s election eve comment was “troubling.”

“We cannot simply pretend that those comments were never made, or that they don’t raise questions about the prime minister’s commitment to achieving peace through direct negotiations,” he said.

At the State Department, deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters that the U.S. is now looking to Israel for “actions and policies that demonstrate genuine commitment to a two-state solution, not more words.”

And Obama repeated Tuesday that his dispute with Netanyahu is substantive and not personal.

(much more to this excellent article. Click the link below: )

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Dual Crises May Intensify Obama-Netanyahu Tensions

ARTICLE LINKS HERE

from the Washington Institute David Makovsy March 23, 2015

NOTE: Terrific, thoughtful article. 

To avoid a full-blown diplomatic collision, Obama will have to urgently address concerns about the Iranian nuclear deal, while Netanyahu will need to publicly declare a two-state-minded policy on Israeli settlements.

Binyamin Netanyahu's electoral victory last week was greeted by an immediate crisis with the Obama administration, when some of his comments aimed at wooing right-wing voters in the campaign's final days angered the White House. The administration perceived Netanyahu's statement that there would not be a Palestinian state on his watch as a repudiation of his commitment to a two-state outcome. Immediately after the election, the prime minister insisted that he remained committed to two states, but President Obama chose to believe that his election remarks were more authentic than his clarification, in keeping with his well-known doubts about Netanyahu's support for that goal. While pledging not to touch U.S.-Israeli military or intelligence cooperation, Obama told the Huffington Post on Friday that he took Netanyahu "at his word" that a Palestinian state will not happen during his tenure, and that Washington needed to evaluate all other options to avoid chaos.

Beyond this latest grievance, bilateral relations are almost certain to hit greater turbulence in the coming months, over both the Palestinian issue and the more urgent matter of whether the United States and its negotiating partners strike a nuclear deal with Iran. In principle, the two issues are completely separate, but both are trending toward crises that will only exacerbate the iciness between Obama and Netanyahu.

DIFFERENCES OVER IRAN

Netanyahu's speech to Congress earlier this month highlighted Israel's disagreements with the White House over how to proceed on Iran, even though he implied for the first time that he was not insisting on zero uranium enrichment. The tension surrounding the speech stemmed from a variety of incidents -- most recently, an Obama administration spokesman confirmed media reports that Washington has not been sharing information with Israel lately due to sensitivity in the Iran talks, but the problems date back to when Washington first opened a secret channel with Tehran without telling Israel.

Apart from the specifics of an Iran agreement, the United States and Israel need to reach a set of understandings about the wider context of any deal. This means that in addition to defining quantifiable methods for enforcing Iranian compliance and outlining precise mechanisms for penalizing consequential violations, Washington will need to provide assurances that the accord is not political shorthand for a change in the balance of regional power toward Iran at the expense of Sunni Arab countries and Israel. If Tehran emerges from the negotiations believing it has a free hand to act regionally -- and with additional cash due to the easing of sanctions -- Israel will feel nervous even if it is not directly threatened. The question remains whether Iran is entitled to an industrial-size nuclear capability after an agreement expires, irrespective of whether the regime acts in a destabilizing manner. Given all of these issues, Washington and Israel will find it difficult to adequately address their differences before the July 1 deadline for reaching a final agreement with Iran.

If that timetable was not enough of a constraint, two other factors have entered the mix. First, Netanyahu will be quite busy building his coalition of right-of-center parties, which he has made clear he wants to complete within three weeks. Second, Speaker of the House John Boehner announced that he will visit Israel at the end of this month, a move that is bound to revive speculation about Netanyahu seeking further coordination with him on Iran, since Boehner was the one who invited him to address Congress.

Presumably, Netanyahu would prefer to coordinate first with the Obama administration on key Iran issues, and he should make that preference abundantly clear even amid the current tensions. If spurned, however, he will most likely intensify consultations with Boehner. Although going that route and focusing on congressional oversight of an Iran deal would open Netanyahu up to U.S. accusations of partisanship, he would likely claim that he had no choice since he is disregarded by the White House, and since the stakes for Israel are existential. The upshot is greater Israeli tension with the Obama administration in the months ahead as the congressional debate over Iran is likely to intensify.

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