I guess Rahmbo and Obambi took for granted the docile, predictable, Jewish vote when they decided to treat Netanyahu like a Mafia turncoat on the witness stand. All it did was show what a small minded, petty, ignorant man we have in the White House – who treats friends like enemies and enemies like friends- and rallied support for Netanyahu both in Israel and America.  I hope that friends of Israel, both Jewish and non Jewish, are not deceived by the “charm” offensive. You did not “screw up” the message Ramhbo – your message was already “screwed up”.

by Herb Keinon

The Obama administration has “screwed up the messaging” about its support for Israel over the past 14 months, and it will take “more than one month to make up for 14 months,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said on Thursday to a group of rabbis called together for a meeting in the White House.

“During the elections there were doubts about President Obama’s support for Israel, and now they have resurfaced,” Emanuel said, according to one of those who participated in the meeting. “But concerning policy, we have done everything that we can that is in Israel’s security – and long-range interests. Watch what the administration does.”

Dennis Ross, who runs the administration’s Iran policy, tried to allay fears during the meeting that by calling for a nuclear-free Middle East, US policy regarding Israel’s alleged nuclear capabilities was changing.

Since 1995, Ross explained, the administration’s policy, supported by Israel, was to push for a nuclear-free Middle East in conjunction with comprehensive peace. Emanuel, according to a participant in the meeting, said, “We understand Israel’s full layer of deterrence.”

These comments came during the second of two White House meetings with a carefully selected slate of 15 rabbis from across the US representing the Orthodox, Reform and Conservative streams. The first meeting took place on April 20, shortly after Obama was widely perceived to have treated Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu shabbily during their last White House meeting.

In addition to Emanuel and Ross, the other administration officials in the meetings were Dan Shapiro, the deputy national security adviser who supervises policy for Israel and its neighbors; Susan Sher, the chief White House liaison to the Jewish community; and Danielle Borin, associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement and special assistant to Vice President Joe Biden.

Ross opened Thursday’s meeting, saying he hoped that the rabbis “had seen the manifestations of the change” of the administration’s tone since they met the first time a month ago.

He quoted Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who last week in Washington declared that regarding defense and security, the relationship between Israel and the US had never been stronger.

Ross said the US was providing Israel with everything it needed “in a tough neighborhood,” integrating Israel into America’s “military architecture,” especially in the missile defense sphere. Both he and Shapiro were meeting Israeli officials on a weekly basis, either in Jerusalem or Washington, regarding defense issues, Ross added.

Read the rest: Emanuel to Rabbis: ‘US screwed up’

Colonel Ralph Peters weighs in on a related topic

‘It’s those damned Jews.” That’s the muffled message I hear when, pretending to represent our national interest, voices call for the abandonment of Israel.

We’ve heard it from agenda-driven scholars who write that our alliance with Israel is responsible for our problems in the Middle East. More worrisome still, I’ve begun to hear it from a minority of military officers, as well as from Washington types.

This latest, and sadly lasting, bout of moral cancer can be dated back to 2006 and the publication of an article that had sought a home for years, “The Israeli Lobby And US Foreign Policy,” by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

The book’s assault on Israel was welcomed by figures including President Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski — a hoary Israel detractor. With their Ivy League credentials, Mearsheimer and Walt made anti-Israeli diatribes (semi-)respectable. Their effect has been lasting.

OK, let’s get one thing straight: There is no evidence that if Israel disappeared tomorrow, the Middle East would suddenly blossom into a pro-American model of justice, hard work and progress.

Nor is there any evidence that anti-American terrorism would slacken. In al Qaeda’s list of complaints, Israel barely makes the top dozen. A US turn away from Israel would only encourage and empower terrorists, convincing them of our cowardice and folly.

The grotesquely failed societies of the Middle East desperately need Israel and the US to blame for their self-wrought problems. Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are responsible for the Arab world’s pervasive corruption, stagnation, oppression of women and lack of creativity or a work ethic.

Neither the US nor Israel is to blame for the unprecedented squandering of wealth by Arab oil powers, for their failure to invest in human capital or productive infrastructure, for the absence of democracy and respect for human rights, or for the region’s mockery of the rule of law.

Given the vast homemade tragedy of the greater Middle East, it’s inevitable that Israel’s hated for its shining success amid the local squalor. Likewise, the US is hated for our might — and the seductiveness of our civilization.

But if that explains why Arabs, Persians and others would relish, but not reward, our abandonment of Israel, it doesn’t explain the American voices repeating Arab propaganda about devious Jews controlling our foreign policy.

I divide the dump-Israel movement’s leaders and fellow travelers into four groups:

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Read the rest Dumping Israel