By Schmoel Yitzhak
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
The above maxim has always seemed to me a sensible and logical guide to successful living.
But, according to the advanced, 21st Century logic-according-to-Barack Obama, there’s a new twist to the old adage; and a painful one at that.
The White House reflex action can best be simplified to this: kiss the Arab mouth that bites you.
No matter how often nor how harshly Muslim governments snap at America, the president of the United States goes out of his way to make nice to them -- only to be slapped down once more; or bitten in the crotch to be even more politically accurate.
Obama must be wearing a steel cup because he either doesn’t feel it or -- worse still -- doesn’t get it.
If the Guinness Book of World Records featured a section called “Presidents Who Turned The Other Cheek -- And Got Whacked Again,” the Chief of State would lead it by a mile; or 2,892 cheek-turns while he awaits the next blow.
Why and how does this happen?
Jerusalem Post columnist and Israel television personality Caroline Glick offers a compelling insight.
“Obama believes that the Arabs have good reason to hate the U.S.,” explains Glick, “and that it is up to the U.S. to put its national interests aside in the interest of making them like America.
“As Obama put it, ‘A failure to change our approach threatens a deepening spiral of division between the United States and the Muslim communities. And you know what that means. If the U.S. doesn’t end the ‘spiral of division,’ then the Muslims will come after America. So the U.S. better straighten up and fly right.”
The president’s disgustingly obsequious courting of the Arabs began with a pivotal political turn two years ago.
After taking office, the White House had a splendid opportunity to tighten its ties with its foremost ally in the Middle East and the area’s only working democracy, Israel.
Instead, Obama reacted -- as Arab states still relentlessly do -- as if Israel did not exist. He turned his back on Jerusalem and made a bee line for Cairo from where he made a speech that to this day has spelled finis to any hopes for Israeli-Arab peace.
The president wooed militant Islam by calling for a “settlement” (bad word for normal homes built with good intent) freeze beyond the 1949 armistice lines.
This gratuitous kick in Israeli pants not only infuriated the political right but moderate Israelis such as Moshe Arens as well.
“Obama,” noted Arens, “meant the cessation of building in parts of east, north and south Jerusalem that had been occupied by Jordan after Israel’s War of Independence.
“As should have been expected, the Palestinian negotiators could not be less Palestinian than the president of the United States. So the freeze on construction became their precondition for the resumption of negotiations with Israel.”
In terms of Israeli-American relations, nothing has changed. Obama still hasn’t visited his democratic ally -- not even for half-a-day -- but he has been courting the most extreme elements in Arab society including the Muslim Brotherhood.
Meanwhile, the White House treats Israel as some Third World country that either can be bullied with impunity or totally ignored as rockets and mortar shell explode over Ashkelon, Ashdod, Sderot and the Negev.
Where is Obama’s voice of outrage over the incessant attacks from Gaza?
What is Uncle Sam’s Commander-In-Chief doing about the growing Iranian nuclear threat other than delivering meaningless homilies about “opposition” to the Tehran menace?
“Obama has made it clear,” concludes Glick, “that actually the U.S. isn’t going to do anything about it.”
The president turns the other cheek while the warlords in Iran slap him from the left, right and center.
The dictatorship whacks his face and he kisses the hand that clobbers him.
Sooner rather than later, that brand of world leadership will turn Uncle Sam into
Uncle Slob.
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