When the Obama administration abstained from, rather than veto, last week’s UN resolution declaring post-1967 Israeli communities illegal, the news was greeted with massive shock and surprise from both Dems and Republicans. It probably shouldn't have been.
In fact, Obama's calculated decision to abstain, which allowed the harmful vote to pass, was perfectly in keeping with his demonstrated passive-aggressive political career, and his personality. It precisely reflected his consistent defaults to actions that seem superficially non-committal, but have devastating and often fatal results.
As a senator, Obama’s record included almost as many “did not vote” as yeas or nays. Eight years as president proved no different: his non-commitment to protecting Ukraine, in defiance of stated US policy, resulting in a Russian invasion; his non-commitment to honoring his own, self-imposed red line at Syria's use of chemical weapons, resulting in millions of Syrian deaths; his non-commitment to democracy-hungry Iranians who counted on his support during their failed Green Revolution; and of course, the biggest, non-committed middle finger of all, to the American people, with Obamacare's lie of "if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor".
But with all the shock that ensued after Obama's knife in the gut to Israel at the UN, the group that should be least shocked of all should be liberal American Jews. Their continued, abject refusal to countenance even the slightest suggestion that Obama might harbor some antipathy to Israel and its security makes them complicit in some of the responsibility of what happens to Israel going forward.
Over eight years, every slight to Israel, no matter how unprecedented, overtly rude, or demonstrably harmful, was excused or spun as insignificant. As summarized in part by The New York Post:
- 2009—With no serious criticism of Palestinian aggression, Obama declares at the UN, “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”
- 2011--Obama demands Israel negotiate with terrorist-backed Hamas and Fatah according to pre-1967 borders. Even notoriously liberal NY mayor Ed Koch opined that Obama “threw Israel under the bus.”
- 2013--Obama allows the Pentagon to leak information that Israel attacked the Damascus airport to stop a terrorist arms shipment.
- 2014--An American-Israeli teenager and two others are kidnapped and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists. Obama calls for restraint...from Israel.
- 2014—In the middle of a defensive shooting war in Gaza, Obama tightens arms shipments...to Israel.
- 2015—Obama approves US State Dept. funding of a political organization, One Voice, to help defeat Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s re-election bid. The campaign against Netanyahu was spearheaded by Obama’s 2012 national field director. Netanyahu still won.
There are many reasons, both political and social, why American Jews consistently vote Democrat, sometimes against their own interests. Obama received a 78% in his first presidential election and 69% in his second, despite his known associations with anti-Semites like Rev. Wright, his appointment of noted anti-Israel Senator Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, and his 2009 vow to put more “daylight” between Israel and the US . Those high percentages continued a consistent 100-year record of Jewish votes for Democratic presidential candidates, with the exception of 1920, which broke 43% for Republican Warren Harding and only 19% for Cox.
But this is 2016, a year dubbed “surreal” even by Merriam-Webster dictionary editors. As we saw with the “nobody-could-have-predicted” insurgencies of Brexit and the Trump win, American liberal Jewry may also be seeing an insurgency of sorts, as they come to realize that Obama, and the Democrat congressional representatives that will remain after his departure, might not be the friend to Israel they imagined. Abstaining from a harmful UN vote, which by definition allows the vote to carry, was just a continuation of Obama’s reflexive and demonstrated predilection for petulant, passive-aggressive behavior.
All liberal voters, if they think about Obama’s consistent acts of non-commitment, and historians who will dissect Obama’s foreign policies as they prepare his reputation for the history books, would do well to remember the parable of the scorpion and the frog.
A scorpion asks a frog to carry him across a river on the frog’s back. The frog hesitates, since surely the scorpion, as his enemy, will kill him. The scorpion reassures him that he wouldn’t, since killing the frog would also mean that the scorpion would drown, as well. The frog agrees to carry him, but halfway across the river, the scorpion delivers his fatal bite. As they drown, the frog asks why the scorpion bit him, ensuring both their deaths. The scorpion replies simply, “I can’t help it. I’m a scorpion. It’s my nature.”