The lonely Israeli Left

Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST:

Israel’s leftists are lonely these days. This was the central thrust of an opinion column in Tuesday’s New York Times authored by Aluf Benn, editor-at-large of the left-wing Haaretz newspaper.

Benn’s article, “Why won’t Obama Talk to Israel?” was a plaintive call for US President Barack Obama to woo the Israeli public. As Benn put it, “Next time you’re in the neighborhood, Mr. President, speak to us directly.”

Benn’s article has been touted by Obama supporters and detractors alike as evidence that the president has a credibility problem with Israelis. Jewish Obama supporters sought to soften the impact of Benn’s article on their fellow Jewish leftists by claiming that Obama is listening to the likes of Benn. For instance, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reported without irony that administration officials defend Obama’s silence toward Israel by arguing that his June 4 speech to the Muslim world in Cairo was also geared toward Israelis.

The June 4 address of course was the one where Obama compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry and to black slavery in the antebellum American South. It was also the speech where he embraced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s claim that Israel owes its existence to the Holocaust and not to the Jewish people’s legitimate right to self-determination in our homeland.

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