Obama's Incomplete Message to Israel
Palestinian terrorists in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip launched as many as 100 rockets on Israeli civilian areas, Tuesday, putting more than a million people on alert to take shelter.
In response, the Israeli government called up 40,000 reservists for an expanded military operation against Hamas.
On the same day, the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz published an exclusive article by President Barack Obama titled, "Peace is the Only Path to True Security for Israel and the Palestinians."
In it, the president reconfirmed the U.S. commitment to Israel's security, outlined that Washington was spending $3 billion in tight budgetary times to assist in Israel's defense, and repeated the mantra that both Israel and the Palestinians must "take risks" for peace which should end in a solution of two states for two peoples.
Obama praised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, saying "Israel has a counterpart committed to a two-state solution and security cooperation with Israel."
He mentioned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once in the article, omitting any reference to his leadership.
While Obama wrote of the pain both Israelis and Palestinians feel for the teenagers murdered in recent days, he neglected to mention that the Palestinian Authority has entered a unity agreement with Hamas, whose charter explicitly calls for Israel's destruction.
Israel believes Hamas engineered the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, which was followed apparently by the revenge killing of an Arab boy in East Jerusalem.
Now, Israel's security cabinet is poised to quell the rocket fire and punish the people who routinely attempt to kidnap and murder Israelis, the people who are fully committed to replacing Israel with a nation of Palestine stretching "from the Jordan River to the (Mediterranean) Sea."
In the concluding paragraph of his Ha'aretz article, the president writes, "For all that Israel has accomplished, for all that Israel will achieve, Israel cannot be complete and it cannot be secure without peace."
He might have added, "and peace will never be realized as long as Palestinian children are taught that the elimination of Israel is a noble and lofty goal and as long as world leaders try to finesse that fact."
But he didn't.
