Caroline Glick has a good column in Tuesday Jerusalem Post on President Bush’s visit to Israel and the fallout from his speech to the Knesset. First up, her reaction to Bush’s speech:
To Israeli ears, Bush’s words were uncontroversial. Israel is beset by enemies who daily call for its physical annihilation and while doing so, build and support terror forces who attack Israel. For most Israelis, the notion that these enemies can be appeased is absurd and deeply offensive.
The only strong reaction that Bush’s remarks provoked in Israel was relief. In spite of the Bush administration’s own participation in the six-party talks with North Korea, its support for the EU-3′s feckless discussions with the mullahs, its paralysis in the face of Hizbullah’s takeover of Lebanon, and its support for the establishment of a Palestinian state run by Fatah terrorists dedicated to Israel’s destruction, at the very least, standing before the Knesset, Bush effectively pledged not to allow Iran to acquire the means to conduct a new Holocaust.
And then on Obama’s reaction to said speech:
From an Israeli vantage point then, it was shocking to see that immediately after Bush stepped down from the rostrum, Obama and his Democratic supporters began pillorying him for his remarks. Most distressing is what Obama’s reaction said about the Democratic presidential hopeful.
OBAMA’S RESPONSE to Bush’s speech was an effective acknowledgement that appeasing Iran and other terror sponsors is a defining feature of his campaign and of his political persona. As far as he is concerned, an attack against appeasement is an attack against Obama.
Obama and his supporters argue that seeking to ease Iranian belligerence by conducting negotiations and offering military, technological, military and financial concessions to the likes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who refers to Israel as pestilence, daily threatens the Jewish state with destruction, and calls for the eradication of the US while claiming to be divinely instructed by a seven-year-old imam who went missing 1100 years ago is not appeasement. Indeed, Obama claims that conducting direct face-to-face negotiations with the likes of Ahmadinejad is the right way to be “tough.”
Well worth reading the whole piece.