Why is Obama so Afraid of Benjamin Netanyahu?

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under.}

Barack Obama seems terrified of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu received an invitation to speak before Congress concerning the Iranian threat from Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, and he accepted.

The problem is that Obama suspects that Netanyahu will stress the idea that Iran should not be allowed to achieve nuclear break-out capacity, while Barack Obama seems to think that Iran should be left alone to achieve that capacity, while he seeks to normalize and legitimize American relations with Islamists.

Barack Obama is terrified that Americans might agree with Netanyahu's commonsensical notion that the West should not allow a hostile Islamic theocracy, that has regularly threatened both Israel and the United States with death, to enrich uranium for the purpose of making a bomb.

Obama, needless to say, has reminded us that the Ayatollahs claim no interest in constructing nuclear weaponry.  And while Obama may be a deeply trusting and kind-hearted soul, those of us with an inclination toward self-defense may be a tad more skeptical.

Thus, in order to prevent Netanyahu from speaking, or to undermine his credibility with both Congress and the American public, Obama has ordered his people away from the speech and is encouraging anyone who will listen to do likewise.

Obama has such a disregard for the American Jewish community - despite (or, perhaps, because of) their servant-like devotion - that reports are now emerging that Obama intends to snub AIPAC.

The Jerusalem Post tells us:

Michael Oren addressed on Saturday media reports that the White House may boycott the upcoming AIPAC conference in an attempt to undermine Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Congress address, calling AIPAC a "strategic asset" to the State of Israel whose status "must not be harmed." 

"Should the American government choose to boycott AIPAC," Oren said, "it will essentially choose to boycott its strategic alliance with Israel."

Barack Obama is so petrified of Benjamin Netanyahu that he is even willing to throw Jewish support in the trash merely to undercut the ability of the Prime Minister to communicate with the American public.

All this gibberish concerning "protocol" is merely the lame excuse the administration is giving in order to justify the snub.  Just what justification the administration will give for snubbing AIPAC has yet to be seen, but whatever the justification, if Obama wanted to attend AIPAC he would.  If he wanted to send senior administration officials, he would do that.

And if he wants the Democratic Party to send a clear message to its Jewish constituency that neither the administration, nor the party, are to be trusted by the Jewish people, then he will do that and that is precisely what he is doing.

Year by year, Barack Obama has shown himself to be a much better friend to political Islam (Islamism) then he is to the American Jewish community, or Jewish people more broadly.

Barack Obama and his people demean and insult the Prime Minister of Israel, even going so far as to anonymously call him "chickenshit" in what has to be one of the least professional examples diplomatic hostility and malfeasance in recent U.S. history.

The reason that Obama dislikes Netanyahu has very little to do with Netanyahu, himself.  This president would not like any Jewish Israeli leader that believes in Israeli self-defense, because no Jewish Israeli leader - left, right, or center - would favor a deal that leaves Iran with nuclear break-out capacity.

All Obama hopes to do is kick the can down the road so that when he leaves office Iran will not yet have the bomb.  The fact that he will leave them with the capacity to get the bomb shortly thereafter seems not the least bit troubling to this president.

Fortunately, it is troubling to Benjamin Netanyahu and whether Obama likes it or not - and he emphatically does not - Netanyahu is going to tell the world that allowing for a nuclear Iran is both irresponsible and criminally insane.

If Obama was hoping to keep Democratic Congresspeople away from Netanyahu's speech, he seems to have failed.   Less than two dozen of 188 Democratic representatives have agreed to stay away from Netanyahu's speech and that means that the great majority of Congress will be in the gallery listening to every word.

One has to wonder how it is that Barack Obama, a man who was once president of the Harvard Law Review, could be so afraid of spreading the idea that Iran should not be allowed to gain nuclear weaponry?  That is pretty much all Netanyahu is likely to say, after all.  Nothing that the man is likely to say to Congress will be earth-shattering or new.

If I am right - and I suspect that I am - all we are going to hear from Netanyahu are reasons why a nuclear-armed Iran is a terrible idea, not the least which reason is that it will lead to Middle Eastern arms race with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, not to mention Turkey and perhaps even Jordan, scrambling to gain their own nuclear weapons.

Obama is manufacturing hatred toward both Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish State of Israel, and thereby Jews more generally, merely because Netanyahu is going to plea to the American people to support Israel in preventing Iranian nuclear break-out capacity.

If Obama believes otherwise, he should allow Netanyahu to speak and then clearly tell the American public just how it is the Netanyahu is mistaken.

If the president of the United States cannot even bring himself to refute such an argument, then how can we possibly trust him to refute Iranian nuclear potential?

Finally, for Barack Obama to snub Netanyahu on the grounds that meeting so close to the Israeli election would amount to interfering with that election is the very height of hypocrisy.  Everyone who follows Israel knows that the Obama administration has sent a team into Israel for the purpose of unseating the despised Netanyahu in favor of a US puppet like Herzog or Livni.

Obama likes his Jews soft and malleable.