Obama in Israel: Can he overcome low expectations?

[bemildred]

Later this month, President Obama will visit Israel, a country intended by an act of international law to be the reconstituted Jewish national home. The visit will be highly charged, but at the same time, many Israelis have low expectations for what could come of it.

The president's protracted but unsuccessful attempts to stifle Iran's nuclear weapons program, his insistence on zealously challenging Israel's right to a united Jerusalem and his inability to pressure the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its obligations are among the chief reasons for the lack of excitement in Israel.

Still, as befits the representative of Israel's most faithful ally, Obama will be treated with respect, for it is our hope that the visit will help the president come to a truer understanding of the needs of Israel and the reality of the region. In the meantime, he might want to contemplate a few issues.

In September 2009, at the United Nations, Obama referred to Israeli communities established across the former Green Line as the "settlements." His exact words were: "We continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-medad-israel-and-obama-20130308,0,1435971.story

Yisrael Medad resides in Shiloh and acts as a foreign media spokesperson for the YESHA Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria.

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Obama is the only sitting President to be awarded Israel’s Presidential Medal of Distinction

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/world/middleeast/israel-obama-to-receive-award.html

I am not sure where this "low expectations" crap is coming from, except maybe by people occupying illegal settlements in occupied territory.

[oberliner]

2. This piece was written by a far RW extremist settler

I have no idea why it would have been posted here.

[Agnosticsherbet]

3. Yes, that explains their "low expectations."

[bemildred]

5. The LA Times published the two together, and I thought the contrast was "informative".

Frankly, I see stuff like this all the time here, though I don't often post it myself.

[aranthus]

15. Yes, it was.

Then again Ayalon writes from much more practical experience.

[Scootaloo]

10. Tell me Oberliner, what makes it "extremist"?

I'm seeing nothing in this person's writing that puts them in a different category than say, yourself. Or Shira, King-David, Mosby, or any of the other good and true "liberal Zionists."

I've admitted my difficulty in determining the difference between the rhetoric of "extremist right-wing" Zionism and "good liberal" Zionism previously, but you weren't able to help me figure it out that much.

So, if you can try again. Where is the difference? could you cite from the article what makes this person an "extremist right-winger" and show me how you, the Liberal zionist, have a profound disagreement with it?

[azurnoir]

4. odd he seems to forget that this same POTUS stood as the sole veto

to a UNSC resolution against the Israeli settlements, his justifications for the settlements is boilerplate stuff that we see almost daily. He then skips on to blubber about Jonathan Pollard, now here is where it gets rather curious, Pollard is an American who was imprisoned for espionage against America, making this a security issue for Americans, so while he's going on about Obama not being sensitive enough to Israel's security, he seems to not understand or completely ignores the US's need for such

[bemildred]

6. That's what I noticed, the tone, the lack of clue. nt

[azurnoir]

7. politicians can't live without them can't live- wait a minute

maybe we could live without them?

[oberliner]

12. He's not a politician

Try again.

[azurnoir]

13. whatever

there now do you feel good?

[aranthus]

16. I don't think he remembers much more than he lives in Shiloh,

and works for Yesha.

[Jefferson23]

8. How many ways can one say, ai yai yai:

The president should be careful about using the word "illegitimate," by the way. A lot of Israelis are particularly sensitive to it because it is a word favored by those who think our state shouldn't exist. In an October 2006 live broadcast, for example, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad labeled Israel a "counterfeit and illegitimate regime that cannot survive."

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

9. Could PBO use the term "Illegitimate Settlements?"

[Jefferson23]

14. The author knows full well what Obama means, and he also knows the US's veto

power when the UN even attempts to address the illegal settlements.

The OP imo, is more about defining Obama as unreasonable..please temper your language
and don't focus on what we do.

[LeftishBrit]

11. Medad would of course be suspicious of Obama; he's a RW loony.

He 'resides in Shiloh' (i.e. he's a West Bank settler) and 'acts as a foreign media spokesperson for the YESHA Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria' - yes, I'm sure he'd have 'low expectations' about Obama sharing his extremist views.