Barack
Obama speaks at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, in 2012. At the
time, he was focused on ratcheting up the Jewish vote. (Lynn Sladky/AP)
President Barack Obama couldn’t resist sticking it to
Israel just one more time!
Other than blacks, Jews have been among the most loyal
supporters of Democrats and Obama. While blacks gave Obama over 90 plus percent
of their votes in 2008 and 2012, Jews provided him with 78 and 68 percent
respectively.
In November, Clinton garnered 68 percent of the Jewish
vote.
Although it's common knowledge that blacks got virtually
nothing from Obama but platitudes and pandering, at least Jews thought they
could count on him to be a loyal friend to Israel.
It turns out that in the last days of his administration,
Obama is showing his true colors — with friends like him, Israel does not need enemies.
As if giving away gains and sacrifices of U.S. troops in
Iraq allowing the rise of ISIS and being a bystander to a Syrian holocaust in
Aleppo was not enough of a sad legacy, Obama added a final chapter of betrayal
by plunging a dagger deep into the back of Israel and much of the world’s
Jewish community by failing to veto a U.N. Security Council Resolution that
criticized Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory.
Jewish leaders, unlike most black leaders who remained
silent for eight years of Obama inaction and silence on the urban killing
fields, did not take what they considered to be an Obama betrayal lightly.
There was rightful universal and bi-partisan condemnation
of the resolution which said that Israel settlements in Palestinian territory,
occupied since 1967, had no legal validity and were a violation of
international law.
So why should the Palestinians negotiate with Israel when
the U.N. — thanks to Obama — has now sided with the Palestinians? They don’t
have to!
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out
against those supporting the Resolution saying that the "Obama
administration . . . failed to protect Israel against this gang-up at the
U.N."
One of the strongest condemnations came from former
democratic National Committee Chair, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz,
D-Fla., who said, "I condemn in the strongest of terms the United Nations
Security Council's passage of this one-sided, anti-Israel resolution, as well
as the United States' reckless abstention."
She went on to call the abstention "baffling"
and an "irresponsible action," moving the U.S. "further away
from peace and hastens the likelihood that we lose the trust of our allies
around the world."
Writing in The Weekly Standard, former Reagan Assistant
Secretary of State Elliott Abrams said that Obama "could not resist the
opportunity to take one more swipe at Israel — and to do real harm . . . will
leave with his record on Israel in ruins, and he will leave Democrats even
worse off."
From the political standpoint, Abrams believes that
Obama’s U.N. action will damage the Democratic Party by "driving some Jews
if not toward the Republicans then at least away from the Democrats and toward
neutrality."
One group that has remained strangely silent on this
issue are those Jewish members of the New York and Hollywood entertainment
industry who threw millions of dollars at Obama’s feet over eight years and
fawned over Hillary’s candidacy all the while professing staunch loyalty and
love for Israel.
You can bet your boots that if it were Donald Trump who
stabbed Israel in the back they would be in full attack mode. In fact, they
have not even had the courage to commend Trump for his support of Israel and
opposition to the Obama, U.N. action.
So much for integrity.
It seems that everything Obama has touched in the Mideast
has turned to dust.
The U.N. fiasco being just the latest example.
The main beneficiary of this and other Obama missteps
will be Donald Trump whom the world certainly does not see as a weak and unreliable
pushover. The country will once again be respected on the world stage as a
trustworthy ally. One that can be counted on.
Clarence
V. McKee is president of McKee Communications, Inc., a government, political,
and media relations consulting firm in Florida. He held several positions in
the Reagan administration as well as in the Reagan presidential campaigns. He
is a former co-owner of WTVT-TV in Tampa and former president of the Florida
Association of Broadcasters.
