"No More Blank Checks For Israel!," States New Pentagon Advisor, LA Times Columnist, Special Council to Soros, and Human Rights Watch Member

B"H

All Obama is going to do with these wacko appointments is make himself look even more ridiculous, isolate himself and his opinion from that of the rest of America, and put a serious dent in the relationship between Israel and the US.

Rosa Brooks, the newest nutcase appointment (proceeded by Timothy Geitner and Janet Napolitano ), may be pleasantly eccentric in a college setting, but downright crazy when unleashed into an administrative position.

What I find both alarming and downright stupid is that this woman seems to assume that Israel needs the Obama administration much more than the Obama administration needs Israel.

She couldn't be further divorced from reality.

Obama simply will not win if he doesn't have Jews behind him. He got the votes of a huge percentage of American (and stupid) Jews last election, and he promised support of Israel as a strong and important alli of the US.

Now, it appears he is doing everything in his power to undermine the trust placed in him by the Jews who elected him, and he is quickly losing any support he had.

Making enemies with Israel will only hurt Obama and his administration. It won't help them a bit. This is how it works (in case Brooks cares):

• Those who hate Israel are either already undying Obama supporters OR they would never vote for Obama anyway.

• Those who love Israel but voted for Obama (Jews, Catholics) will never vote for him again.

Therefore: He doesn't gain anything by attacking Israel, but he loses plenty for himself, his party, and his political supporters in the congress and senate.

Frankly, it would be political suicide for him to push Israel too hard. Also, strategically, the US needs Israel. The US needs a place to refuel and land planes, a place to fly over, a place where US troops are welcome to dock in the Middle East, and a place where covert operations, intellegence, and communications centers can flourish. Without those centers, the mighty US military would find themselves blind, deaf, and dumb as they tried to stage military missions. Mostly dumb.

Rosa Brooks can say all she wants about how the US is not beholding to Israel, but the facts are that the US faces a huge terrorist threat, and the arab nations are not going to work closely with the US and work on the same level of trust as the Israelis.

I know that Rosa Brooks probably wants to blame some fictional "Jewish Lobby!" cabal for the US support of Israel, but the truth is that the US has a LOT to lose without Israel.

The Obama administration has even more to lose.

M
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Pentagon pick: Bush 'mindlessly' supported Israel
New top adviser warns Obama may not give Jewish state 'blank checks'
Posted: April 21, 2009
9:44 pm Eastern
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=95746
By Aaron Klein
© 2009 WorldNetDaily


The Pentagon
JERUSALEM – While President Bush was "blindly" and "mindlessly" supportive of Israel, President Obama may be less willing to give the Jewish state "blank checks," says Rosa Brooks, the Obama administration's new adviser to one of the most influential Pentagon officials.

Brooks will advise Michelle Fluornoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, a position that wields enormous power over drafting U.S. military doctrine in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Until accepting her position earlier this month, Brooks, who did work on behalf of George Soros' philanthropic foundation, also served as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. A WND review of her opinion pieces in the newspaper finds trends that defenders of the Jewish state may view as anti-Israel, including distorting history to seemingly whitewash Palestinian terrorism.

In a 2006 column, Brooks asserted Israel's actions in the Middle East were fueling anti-American resentment from the Arab world. The column largely focused on Israel's war that year against the Hezbollah terrorist group. The conflict broke out when Hezbollah built rocket arsenals along the Israeli border and then launched a major border raid in which Hezbollah killed Israeli troops, kidnapped two more soldiers and fired mortars and rockets into Jewish civilian population zones.

"Israeli policies are a major source of discord in the Islamic world, and anger at Israel usually spills over into anger at the U.S., Israel's biggest backer," Brooks wrote.

"With resentment of Israeli policies fueling terrorism and instability both in the Middle East and around the globe, it's past time for Americans to have a serious national debate about how to bring a just peace to the Middle East," she recommends. "But if criticism of Israel is out of bounds, that debate can't occur – and we'll all pay the price."

In another piece, Brooks grossly distorts the historical record by claiming former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was to blame for the failure of U.S.-brokered Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that culminated in a summit at Camp David in 2000.

The talks briefly continued into 2001 in Taba, Egypt, but broke down in late January after Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat refused an Israeli offer of a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. Instead, Arafat launched the "intifada" or terrorist war, aimed at liberating "Palestine" through violence.

Sharon, perceived as a defense hawk, was elected almost two weeks after the talks collapsed and on the heels of a major Palestinian terrorist campaign. President Bill Clinton largely blamed Arafat. The Palestinians claimed Israel's gestures, under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, didn't go far enough, but even the Palestinians did not finger Sharon's election as the cause of the collapse, since the talks imploded prior to the election.

But according to Brooks, "Israel and the Palestinian Authority came achingly close to a final settlement, but talks broke down after Likud's Ariel Sharon was elected prime minister on Feb. 6, 2001."

Writing in a piece entitled, "Israel can't bomb it's way to peace," Brooks continues, "Sharon refused to meet with Yasser Arafat, and newly inaugurated President George W. Bush had no interest in pushing Israel toward peace."

In the same oped, Brooks slammed Israel's 22-day military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip that ended this past January.

She claimed "Israel has justified its bombardment of Gaza on the grounds that Hamas broke a fragile, temporary cease-fire ... but the timing of the Israeli military offensive has more to do with politics than anything else."

Brooks wrote that the two sides were not on equal footing, claiming that as compared to Israel's military might Hamas "is weak, and its weapons – terrorism, homemade rockets – are the weapons of the weak."

Hamas' rocket-fire has devastated Israeli towns the past few years, killing Israelis and disrupting life for over 100,000 Jewish citizens. Hamas started launching the rocket attacks into Israel after the Jewish state unilaterally evacuated its citizens from the Gaza Strip, leaving the strategic territory to Palestinian control.

Brooks went on to list the initial Gaza casualty count without differentiating between civilians and terrorists.

"The first day of the offensive, Israeli bombs killed at least 180 Palestinians. By Wednesday, the Palestinian death toll exceeded 390," she wrote.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, two-thirds of the casualty numbers were Hamas members.

Brooks urged: "It's time for the United States to wake up from its long slumber and reengage – forcefully – with the Middle East peace process. Only the U.S. – Israel's primary supporter and main financial sponsor – can push it to make the hard choices."

She pointed out that as long as Bush was in the White House, "Israel could count on a U.S. administration that wasn't merely "supportive" of Israel but blindly, mindlessly so. Obama may be less willing to offer Israel blank checks."

Brooks is also a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where she serves as director of the law school's Human Rights Center. She previously served as special counsel to the president at Soros' Open Society Institute. She has consulted for Human Rights Watch and served as a board member of Amnesty International USA.

Yesterday, WND reported Brooks wrote that al-Qaida was an "obscure group" turned into a massive threat due to U.S. policies. She's also referred to Bush as "our torturer in chief" and a "psychotic who need(s) treatment" while comparing Bush's arguments for waging a war on terrorism to Adolf Hitler's use of political propaganda.