Obama's Visit to Israel

So President Obama finally visits Israel. He ignored visiting there in his first term. Now he's been and gone. Was his visit a good thing? In his mind, I'm betting he thinks that he was awesome, spoke eloquently and accomplished his objectives. Some of which were to use his cool style to convince the young Israelis to abandon their mainstream political leaders, like their current Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and lead the way to make the appropriate concessions with the Palestinians that will lead to peace. Some other under the cover agenda items included pressuring Netanyahu to apologize to the Turkish PM for Israel's killing of about 9 of their citizens during the Mavi Marmara boat fiasco. In time, we might eventually find out what other pressure tactics were used by the suave Obama on Israel's leadership.

The short answer though is: Obama's visit was absolutely NOT a good thing.

For starters, the timing was terrible for Israel. Israel was struggling to create a government until just days prior to his visit. Surely the Israeli leadership had many other more important issues to tackle, rather than to focus on appeasing their nemesis in Obama.

In general, despite Obama's sometimes beautiful words, his visit was a slap in the face to most Israelis. His purposeful avoidance of speaking to the Knesset (Israel's Parliament) was the most obvious insult. Instead, he insisted on speaking to mostly university students who are for the most part left leaning, liberals (by Israeli standards). Even here he did not allow students from Ariel University in the West Bank to attend his speech.

Even though, he mostly said the right things, some rang hollow while others made some listeners wince. His hollow words were his constant assertion that he will not tolerate a nuclear Iran. While most Israelis understand Iran's truly existential threat, most Americans and for that matter, most of the rest of the world, does not. Just like the simple case of someone else being threatened by gun point, perhaps a robbery captured on video on TV, we the viewers may gasp but in the end we march to the kitchen to get another slice of pizza. Since we are not in that desperately, dangerous position, we just won't get it.
Further, since Obama's history of back pedaling on issues, hiding secrets and outright lying, Israelis, even including the left leaning liberal students, don't trust him. Nor should they.

He continues to live in some kind of magical, mystery world with blinders on. He still continues to praise the Arab Spring and doesn't even get his super colossal mistake of pushing Mubarek out the door while ushering in the Moslem Brotherhood. As if supplying them advanced weapons worth billions of dollars plus tons of cash, isn't enough, he's considering jumping into Syria to help the rebels kick Asad out of Syria.  Those same rebels who hate Americans as much as they hate Jews and will have no problems dropping chemical weapons on Israel given the chance.

At the beginning of his speech he joked about how the media built a wall of lies about his crummy relationship with Netanyahu. You know the saying that there exists a bit of truth in every joke? Well please tell me how Netanyahu, the State of Israel, and American Jewish leaders were treated by him and his administration over the past few years? You'd have to be living on Mars to not agree that he has  imposed a very strained relationship with one of his closest allies, to put it mildly.

He showed his continued arrogance by sticking his nose into another country's business. The same arrogance he detests shown by the British Empire and other empires, obviously does not apply to him.

Therein lies the point. To get slapped in the face is bad enough. But to get slapped in the face while telling you that he is your best friend is the ultimate insult. I sincerely hope that most people, especially Israelis are not that ignorant or gullible.