Op-ed: US president’s policy focuses on boosting Israel’s international isolation
Shoula Romano Horing
Israel Opinion
It seems that President Obama’s confrontational and accusatory attitude toward Israel during the last two years has encouraged the anti-Semites in the international community, who did not dare to reveal themselves during the Bush Administration. Now, they have resurfaced and are making Israel the new scapegoat for all the evils in the world. Furthermore, the Obama Administration has been an active participant in international bodies with bias against Israel which the Bush Administration refused to join or concur with. In some instances, the current Administration even consented to these bodies’ investigations of so-called Israeli “crimes.” But more cynically and morally repugnant, Obama has been using the threat of international isolation to pressure Israel into more concessions.
Otherwise, why would one of the assurances reportedly given by the US to Israel, in an effort to get the West Bank settlement freeze extended for 60 days, be an American commitment to use its veto to prevent UN recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state? Under Presidents Bush and Clinton it was taken for granted that the veto would be used, as it was understood that any peace deal premised on the “two-state solution” would only be decided through negotiations.
Reportedly, Prime Minster Netanyahu also fears that as soon as any new 60-day freeze ends, and with the November US midterm elections over, the Obama Administration - with the help of the international community - will aim to force a permanent agreement on Israel by presenting a “take it or leave it peace plan.”
Such initiative would publicly support the Palestinian position that the 1967 borders should be the basis for a future Palestinian state, including a divided Jerusalem.

Breaking 40-year precedent
In the last two years, Israel has been under a new kind of attack on her legitimacy and on her right to exist. A campaign has been conducted where many of Israel’s enemies are employing legal tricks, through multinational and international bodies, to present Israel as an illegitimate pariah state that should be isolated like Apartheid South Africa.
Sadly, the Obama Administration was an active participant in these efforts until it recently felt the backlash from Jewish voters and has eased off before the midterm elections.
In May, the Obama Administration broke 40 years of US precedent and shamefully signed a unanimous resolution adopted at a meeting of the 189 signatories of The Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, singling out Israel’s atomic program without even mentioning Iran’s. The draft urged Israel to sign the NPT and put its nuclear facilities under UN International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
During the previous NPT conference in 2005, the Bush Administration refused to accept parts of the draft document that called on Israel to join the NPT and turned down the idea of holding talks in order to create a region free of nuclear weapons.
While President Bush refused to join the UN Human Rights Council and lend it legitimacy, President Obama’s first foreign policy decision was to join the Council, knowing that it has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning the state of Israel than all others 191 UN members combined.
In August, under heavy Obama Administration pressure, Israel agreed for the first time ever to participate in a UN review panel investigating IDF actions in the Gaza-bound flotilla incident.
It appears that letting Israel feel isolated and alone while relying on the US as her only friend is the Obama Administration’s strategy to “deliver” Israel to the Arabs. However, recent polls reveal great support for Israel by the American people.
The American people who care about Israel’s survival must stand by Israel in the upcoming November elections and only vote for the Republican Party, to deflect future US pressure by Obama. In the meantime, the Israeli government must wait for the American voter’s verdict against Obama and the Democratic Party.
Shoula Romano Horing was born and raised in Israel. She is an attorney, a national speaker and a radio host in Kansas City Missouri. She blogs at www.shoularomanohoring.com.

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