According to the Jerusalem Post, as recently as six weeks ago, just 4 percent of the Jews of Israel regarded President Obama as pro-Israel. Even if exaggerated, it is likely the most negative Israeli view of an American president since Israel’s creation.
If you think Israelis are irrational in this matter, perhaps Tibet will help persuade you otherwise.
Yes, Tibet.
Whereas every Democratic and Republican president since 1991 has met with exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, when he visited the United States, President Obama has decided that he will not do so during the Tibetan leader’s visit to the United States. The president does not wish to annoy China’s dictators prior to his upcoming visit to Beijing.
As US News & World Report reported, “The U.S. decision to postpone the meeting appears to be part of a strategy to improve ties with China that also includes soft-pedaling criticism of China’s human rights …”
This is particularly troubling to Israelis because it means that an American president is placing appeasement of strong dictators above America’s traditional defense of embattled small countries. (One assumes that the Taiwanese are equally worried; and the Iranian fighters for liberty have come close to giving up on Obama’s America.)
The line between selling out Tibetans and selling out Israelis is a direct one. Even liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was disturbed by the president’s snubbing of the Dalai Lama:
“Dissing the Dalai was part of a broader new Obama policy called ‘strategic reassurance’ — softening criticism of China’s human rights record and financial policies to calm its fears that America is trying to contain it … the tyro American president got the Nobel for the mere anticipation that he would provide bold moral leadership for the world at the very moment he was caving to Chinese dictators. Awkward.”
The world is quite aware of the importance of Mr. Obama’s snubbing the Dalai Lama. Dowd noted that:
“In an interview with Alison Smale in The Times last week, Vaclav Havel … pricked Barack Obama’s conscience. Havel (who led) the Czechs and Slovaks from communism to democracy, turned the tables and asked Smale a question about Obama … Was it true that the president had refused to meet the Dalai Lama on his visit to Washington?”
Those who worry about good and evil know that if America decides that the world’s approval is important, evil will increase exponentially. Only an America willing to be disliked, even hated, will consistently support the smaller good guys against the bigger bad guys.
If America starts shaping its foreign policy based upon getting along well with everybody, it will become less tenable to support Israel. The number of people and countries that want Israel destroyed are far more numerous than tiny Israel and its people.
The price of supporting free, democratic, tolerant Israel against its death-loving, totalitarian and authoritarian enemies is reduced popularity of America in those countries.
And if America now values getting along well with everyone above moral considerations, the days of strong American support for Israel are numbered.
They may indeed be numbered for additional reasons. Having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, President Obama may be even less inclined to consider an American attack, or in any way countenance an Israeli attack, on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate isn’t supposed to support, much less initiate, first strikes.
Additionally, the president, given his yearning for a nuclear weapons-free world, may support an Iranian offer to disband its nuclear weapons program if Israel is forced to abandon its nuclear arsenal.
All this combined with the economically weakest America in memory — increasingly dependent on other countries to help prevent the dollar from becoming more like Monopoly money — means that the 96 percent of Israelis who do feel they cannot rely on this president of the United States as they have on prior presidents is, unfortunately, not irrational.
This president characterizes his presidency as essentially the opposite of that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. He may be right, as reflected by this note from the Washington Post: “The last time he (the Dalai Lama) was here, in 2007, George W. Bush became the first sitting president to meet with him publicly, at a ceremony at the Capitol in which he awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress’s highest civilian award.”
If you were Israeli, which American president would you feel more secure with — the first one in 18 years who refused to meet with the Dalai Lama or the first one ever to meet with him publicly and give him a public honor?
President Obama is willing to meet the Chinese leaders, Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, he went to Denmark to lobby for the Olympic Games to take place in Chicago – but he has refused to go to Berlin to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Another fist for a democratic ally, while the “open hand” is for dictatorships. No wonder he snubs the Dalai Lama.
It looks as if America is giving up on Obama's America, thank God. Americans are recognizing that Obama is philosophically and ideologically anti-American. Much to Obama's surprise, he's discovering that Americans actually love their country and their constitution. And more importantly, are eager and willing to fight even him to preserve it.
The lesson learned from this dali is that if you walk around the world for 50 years with a fake message of peace…drumming up support because you are totally pissed that you got thrown off your pearch of ultimate god power….that eventually the movie stars and politicians will pick up the cause…
Let's compare the third world mentality of the infrastructure of Tibet…to say…modern Bejiing???Where are all the women in the Tibetan theocracy…
Whatever….try living in that backward…theocratic….undeveloped…crackpot country…the Tibetans and the Uigars sing that same backward song….
What's your point? Screw him and all Tibetans because they don't want to live under the rule of Communist China? Do you also agree that Israel should be abandoned because she does not want to exist as slaves to Muslim ideology? Or maybe that Israel should simply accept the inevitable, and go peacefully into the long dark night? And maybe America should accept the dismal future that Obama has planned for her? What exactly is your point? Other than that the idea of liberty is “so yesterday” and does not deserve being fought for?
Just one more nail in Obama's coffin. He alienates another group everyday….I am hopeful by the time the election comes about, there will be no one left to support him….that is my fervent prayer. If I could wave a magic wand and have it be November 2012 I would BE ABLE TO SLEEP AT NIGHT, KNOWING THAT SOON, AFTER AMERICA IS FULLY AWAKE, WE WILL HAVE A SANE PERSON WITH PRINCIPLES OCCUPYING THE WHITE HOUSE!! Our Republic is so in danger with this socialist, communist, fascist (whatever the heck he is) and freedoms seem to be dying everyday. Please, God, get us through these next 3 years with some remnant of rational thinking in tact…
President Obama is betraying America's allies, weakening our country's national security, and ruining this country's economy. I can't believe American people elected him! He reminds me so much of Jimmy Carter! I hope that in 2012 Americans elect another Ronald Reagan to the White House! Vote Republican 2012!
Ha! All those dark goth pinko lefty kweirs brainwashed hypnotized by media and ubiquitous cults must be having a cognitive dissonance attack. Naturally to maintain psychological consistency they will deny that “the one” the light their savior is traitorous and rotten to the core.
Sleep tight kiddies the commies will liberate you from your despicable life. Better study up on “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”. We will all need it son if this communist invasion is not stopped. Review the history of genocide in communist takeovers. Guevarra, Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, etc.
“A little of thiis knowledge will save you from great fear”…The Book of the DEAD.
Ha! Ha!
Oh, forgot to include in my above ditty the exquisite dissonance of feminazis dissing the Dali and supporting brutal communist China.
Now anybody knows how powerfully support of Tibet is ingrained in the western lefty psyche. Look for the cat fights, women scratching each others eyes out, over this.
Wow, I mean really, feminists dissing the Dali and supporting China. How surreal!
The death of liberalism is nigh. For whom does the bell toll? It tolls for thee.
I've always felt that I couldn't care less if the rest of the world liked us or not or if our president was a good and competent public speaker. What was important to me was content and actions and I'm afraid that now, in our country, those attributes are looked upon as unimportant. This is not a popularity contest.
It never occurred to me that anyone would even want to disparage the Dali Lama. What's next Mother Teresa?
Perhaps I am ignorant but did the Dali Lama run over some one with his tank? Maybe he had an economic plan that ended in famine with bodies floating down the rivers to the sea?
Did he invade a quiet little country and start shooting up the peasants because he did not think they were educated enough?