Obama’s relationship with Israel was horrible. As Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren said in in the Wall Street Journal in 2015, “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 … a crisis of historic proportions” (How Obama Abandoned Israel, June 16, 2015).
Here are some of the many ways Obama worked against Israel:
* Obama has abandoned a core principle in US / Israeli relations, that of “no surprises,” a principle Obama violated in his Cairo speech and by “demanding a settlement freeze” although diplomats for the two nations hadn’t discussed it.
* Obama has been more pro-Palestinian Arabs on some issues than many important Palestinian Arabs themselves. “The White House routinely condemned Mr. Netanyahu for building in areas that even Palestinian negotiators had agreed would remain part of Israel” (Ibid).
* Obama was “secretly negotiating” with Iran for months in 2014, Israel’s avowed enemy. Many of Israel’s leaders believe the Iran deal threatens Israel’s existence.
* In March of 2012, Foreign Policy magazine reported that information of a covert deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia to let Israel use their airspace to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities was leaked by Obama officials. Hoover Institution Fellow, Thomas Sowell said, “This leak was one of the historic and unconscionable betrayals of an ally whose very existence is threatened” (Obama versus Obama in foreign affairs, Sep. 29, 2012. www.appeal-democrat.com)
* In April 2012, The New Yorker reported that Obama administration officials leaked information that Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was helping to fund and train the Iranian opposition group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK).
* In his Cairo speech in 2009, Obama equates the suffering of Palestinians to the Holocaust.
* In June 2010, President Obama offered to send an extra $400 million in “humanitarian aid” to the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. (This was above and beyond the $600+ million in aid which the U.S. was already sending to the Palestinian Authority each year.)
* Obama calls for Israel to return to pre-1967 borders in a speech on May 19, 2011, just a few hours before Prime Minister Netanyahu flew from Israel to Washington. Robert Spencer said:
Obama specified that the new Palestinian state should have ‘borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt,’ while Israel should have ‘borders with Palestine.’ The implication was that Israel, in Obama’s vision, will border on neither Jordan nor Egypt — only on ‘Palestine.’ Yet currently Israel has substantial borders with both Jordan and Egypt. Obama was implying that his contiguous Palestine would comprise not just Gaza and Judea and Samaria, but large expanses of Israeli territory bordering on those two states. (http://front page mag.com /2011/05/20/obama-throws-israel-to-the-dogs/)
* US funds to Palestinian Authority were frozen because president Mahmoud Abbas attempted, in September 2011, to unilaterally declare Palestinian statehood, in violation of the PA’s treaty agreements. But President Obama had decided to override the Palestinian Accountability Act’s freeze on U.S. funding and provide $192 million to the PA.
* After Obama was re-elected in November 2012, Danny Danon, deputy speaker of Israel’s Knesset, said, “Obama’s victory demonstrates that the state of Israel must take care of its own interests. We cannot rely on anyone but ourselves. Obama has hurt the United States by his naïve leadership in foreign policy, which prefers the Arab world over the Western world, along with Israel. The state of Israel will not capitulate before Obama.”
* In early 2015, the Obama administration was enraged that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu would address a joint session of Congress and speak about the Iran nuclear deal, and in retaliation, the Pentagon declassified documents revealing Israel’s nuclear program, which had been a closely guarded secret.
* In early 2015, the One Voice Movement (OVM) funded the Israeli group V-2015 in its effort to defeat Netanyahu’s reelection. OVM flew a team of five former campaign workers of Barack Obama, including Jeremy Bird, who was a national field director for Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns, to help run V-2015’s anti-Netanyahu actions based in Tel Aviv. OVM paid for hundreds of people to go door-to-door trying to influence voters throughout Israel. OVM received $349,276 from the U.S. State Department (from September 2013 through November 2014). This was interference in the election of another country; it does not matter that it was not successful, it was interference.
* In August 2014, in the middle of an Israeli war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip, Obama gave an order that any Israeli request for weapons, large or small, cannot be fulfilled without his personal approval. Thereby, Obama effectively canceled at least two arms shipments to Israel that had already been approved by the Pentagon and suspended the transfer of AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles to the Israeli Air Force needed to destroy missile-launchers in Gaza with a minimum amount of collateral damage.
It seems the Obama administration didn’t actually reject Israel’s request, but just added more bureaucracy that made it impossible for Israel to receive its weapons when needed. A U.S. official said, “It is unprecedented that the president approve every item in a military-to-military relationship, but this is exactly what has been decided.” “The president felt that his efforts to achieve a ceasefire was being undermined by U.S. weapons deliveries to Israel,” said a White House official. “Now, nothing moves without his approval, and that means everything will be slowed down.”
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution condemning Israel and Obama officials abstained from voting, thus allowing it to pass. Israeli Prime Netanyahu said he has “unequivocal evidence” that the Obama administration led the UN Initiative to condemn Israel December 23, 2016, reported by CNS News. Obama denied the claim.
