There is no doubt US President-elect Barack Obama could work well with Likud head Binyamin Netanyahu… Congressman Robert Wexler, one of Obama’s most prominent early supporters in the Jewish community, told The Jerusalem Post… Wexler said, “I know that Obama and Netanyahu have met on at least two occasions… I am confident that should he become the prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu would get along very well with Barack Obama, and the two of them would work in concert toward the achievement of mutual interests. I have no doubt about that.”
Turns out the conservatives who scoffed at this nonsense weren’t so much filled with “Obama paranoia,” per Jeffrey Goldberg’s charming smear, as they were right:
Obama chose to embark on a collision course… Whatever the reason, this confrontation apparently started from day one of Netanyahu tenure: when he visited the White House for the first time a month and a half after taking office, he already encountered a chilly reception. This is unprecedented. Even during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, whom many compare to Obama, the first visits by prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and later Menachem Begin were warm and friendly, at least on the surface.
Now there’s an interesting debate to be had about whether Wexler actually knew he was brazenly lying. This is a flavor of one of my pet psychoanalytic tangles – which I stole from xkcd – about whether Lucy ever believed the things she said to Charlie Brown.
There are a couple different ways to approach the problem and your answer typically depends on some fairly precise methodological commitments. He certainly seemed like a man desperate to ignore uncomfortable facts and cling to obviously false pretexts.
But on the question of whether Wexler objectively carried water for an administration that has, with remarkable speed and enthusiasm, sought to detonate the US-Israel alliance – that’s less of a debate.
References:
* Flashback: Candidate Obama Doubles Down On His AIPAC Commitment To An Undivided Jerusalem [MR]
* Obama Shill Tells Jews To Get Over Their “Obama Paranoia” [MR]
* Obama’s calculations were wrong [JPost]
* Obama Defenders: What Brzezinski Guy? (Plus: That’s Not Even Their Worst Argument)
* New Leftist Meme: Palin “Solved Jewish Problem” That Obama Never Really Had (Plus: Anti-Palin “Buchanan Endorsement” Meme Also A Lie) [MR]
Previously:
* 70 Percent Of American Jews Ready To Say "We Didn’t Know" When Obama Detonates US-Israel Alliance (Plus: They Most Definitely Know)
* Flashback: Candidate Obama Doubles Down On His AIPAC Commitment To An Undivided Jerusalem
* Prominent Jewish Democrats Double Down On Obama. Unpersuasively.
