Obama Being Anti Israel May be a fantasy, But He Still needs a Balanced Middle East Policy
Jonathan, the notion that Obama was anti-Israel, and the even more ludicrous, anti-Semitic is not a fantasy. It was a self-serving political straw man. It was dumped on the political table by a couple of GOP leaning 527 (hit) committees based on some youthful out of context Obama utterance about a fairer shake for the Palestinians, and a picture of him sharing a table with a Palestinian scholar at a fundraising dinner. That morphed into a Sarah Palin loose lipped, desperation stump crack about him palling around with terrorists.
Obama certainly didn't need to pick Rahm Emmanuel to quash doubt that he is one thousand percent rock solid pro Israel and pro Zionist. In fact, his position papers, writings, and AIPAC speech (some said pander) earlier in the year he has promised to be the staunchest of staunch defender and protector of Israel and its interests. If he had said or written anything else he would have been Obama the might have been president elect, not president elect. A stout defense of Israel is and has been the 101 of American politics for decades. Any and I mean any tilt real or perceived toward a balanced, even handed policy toward the Palestinian question, let alone Palestinian rights would be political suicide.
Now that he's president maybe, just maybe, Obama can worry about and wrestle with attaining a balanced Middle East policy at the same time he wrestles with health care and taxes.
In all honesty, Earl, many Jewish organizations had, and probably still do have, questions about his political affiliations, not just Sarah, loose-lipped, L'Oreal-lipped, whatever-lipped, Palin. And while Rahm Emmanuel is a wonderful choice from a Jewish person's perspective, including my own, it ain't over until the fat lady sings, so the jury may still be out on that one.
And in terms of a balanced perspective, what kind of balanced perspective are you talking about, the one of the Palestinian who straps a bomb to himself because he is unhappy and chooses to target men, women and children who never have and never would have done him any harm? Is that the kind of balanced perspective you mean?
They say if you repeat a lie enough, people will start taking it for the truth and assuming that people who choose to live in squalor, who do little more than sit around, blow things up and/or procreate while their neighbors living just feet away have chosen to do the opposite is but one example of that.