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By Morton A. Klein
 NEW YORK —President Barack Obama’s speech to the U.N. General Assembly on September 23, when it came to Israel, was not merely a reiteration of earlier, troubling statements he and his Administration have made about Israel, but broke new ground. It may foreshadow a shift in America’s long-standing, pro-Israel position.
Already, the Obama Administration had sought to pressure Israel into further one-sided concessions to Mahmoud Abbas’ unreconstructed, terror-supporting Palestinian Authority (PA); threatened to link U.S. action on Iran to Israel making such concessions; and called for a freeze on all Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. At the U.N. however, Obama went further – he “coupled” American commitment to Israeli security with Israeli fulfillment of the “claims and rights of the Palestinians.”
This is among the most disturbing statements on U.S.-Israel relations ever uttered by a U.S. President Obama. In previous speeches, Obama spoke of U.S.-Israeli bonds being unbreakable. But now, Obama is qualifying U.S. support by Israeli adherence to what he calls the “legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians.”
Moreover, Obama has now asserted that America does not accept the “legitimacy” of “continued Israeli settlements.” This implies that all 600,000 Jews already living there must leave and Israel contract to the pre-1967, nine-mile wide indefensible borders.
It is one thing for President Obama to oppose them, which is one point of view; it is quite another thing to say that they are illegitimate, which carries with it legal implications. Many reputable U.S. and Israeli legal scholars have said that Jews have every legal right to live in these territories. And even if the PA had been truly reformed and now accepted peaceful co-existence alongside Israel, it could never be a condition of a meaningful peace that Jews, because they are Jews, must stop living in these territories.
In his UN speech, Obama, did not address Palestinian refusal to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. Moreover, he speaks of “the occupation that began in 1967” without mentioning that Egypt caused the 1967 war when they blockaded Israel by closing the Straits of Tiran, an act of war, and moved a hundred thousand troops up to the Israeli border. By speaking thus, Obama adopted an Arab propaganda approach that implies that
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Israel seized these territories illicitly by aggression, rather than legally in self-defense. He also ignored Israel’s offer to return the captured territories for peace treaties, which the Arab states rejected.
Obama also said nothing of Mahmoud Abbas’ recent Fatah Conference, which reaffirmed a platform refusing to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state, glorified terrorists and the “armed struggle” and rejecting an end of claims in any future peace agreement with Israel. Also, in continuing to call for a Palestinian state, he demands that it be “contiguous” – ignoring the fact that such a state would break up Israeli contiguity. Even a road link between West Bank and Gaza would enable terrorists to pour weapons into the former from the latter.
Obama also engaged in troubling moral equivalence. He spoke of the price of war being paid “by the Israeli girl in Sderot who closes her eyes in fear that a rocket will take her life” and “the Palestinian boy in Gaza who has no clean water and no country to call his own.” The failure of Hamas in Gaza to maintain water works and sewage plants, despite the world’s highest per capita infusion of humanitarian aid, is not Israel’s fault. Additionally, lack of clean water is hardly comparable to being murdered by rockets.
He also ignores the fact that the absence of a Palestinian state is directly the result of a Palestinian refusal of the 2000 Barak/Clinton statehood offer that would have resulted in an eight year old Palestinian state today.
I was pleased to see Obama criticize “vitriolic attacks” and “incitement” against Israel. Yet he never mentions the fact that the PA, Hamas and other Arab parties are engaged in precisely these and other anti-peace actions. Nor does he ever expand on this serious issue by spelling out the nature of this violence and hatred-inducing incitement. This suggests that President Obama is merely paying lip-service to these matters. At no time has Obama made Palestinian cessation of terrorism and incitement to hatred and murder a substantive condition of progress – the only concrete demand he makes is of Israel to stop Jews building houses in the disputed territories.
Overall, Obama’s speech embraced Palestinian claims, while implying a reduced support for Israel in the future, determined by Israeli actions as demanded by Obama and the Palestinians.
All Jewish organizations and indeed all supporters of Israel should make their voices heard against Obama’s new – and dangerous – tilt against Israel.
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