VICTOR SHARPE: TO CROSS THE RUBICON
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/08/to_cross_the_rubicon.html
There is a time in a nation’s history when a decision of immense and fundamental importance must be made. Such a decision means embarking on a new direction that alters everything that has gone before. It is a veritable crossing of the Rubicon. That decision now confronts embattled Israel.
A great alliance exists between two peoples who share principles of democracy, the rule of law, freedom of religion and speech, and human rights. That alliance and friendship between the American and Israeli people largely remains, exemplified by the support of Congress, despite the policies of the current administration.
Like the United States, Israel respects the rights of minorities. It has an independent judicial system, which protects the rights of individuals and operates under the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” Israel, like America, features regularly scheduled elections that are free and fair and open to all its citizens, regardless of religion, race, or sex. What a contrast exists between it and the grim horrors and butchery endemic among the failed Islamic states that surround it.
But American voters elected Barack Hussein Obama as their president – not once, but twice. Tragically for both the Israeli and American people, this president has set his face against Israel and seems to embrace the very Islamic foes who plot the extermination of the Jewish state.
At the same time that Israel’s request for a shipment of hellfire missiles to replace those expended during the defensive struggle against Hamas has been denied, the requests of Israel’s Muslim and Arab enemies are speedily and unquestionably granted by Obama and the State Department.
Stopping weapons shipments to a close ally in a time of war is deliberate sabotage by the incumbent in the White House. President Obama had no trouble ordering U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to sign a massive armaments agreement last month with the government of Qatar, which will pass the weapons, including Apache helicopters, advanced Patriot surface-to-air missiles (SAM), and Javelin handheld ground-to-air defense systems, to Doha and who knows to whom else.
Qatar is a strong ally of the Muslim Brotherhood and finances Hamas. Obama also was, and may well remain, a strong supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. He quickly sold one and a half billion dollars of highly sophisticated weaponry to Mohammed Morsi, the Brotherhood’s president of Egypt, before Morsi was overthrown by a popular revolution.
Obama’s weapons deal with Doha flies in the faces of both Israel and Egypt. For President al-Sisi of Egypt, Obama’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood and his cold-shouldering of Egypt has already led al-Sisi to cross his own Rubicon and seek a new alliance with Russia.
Egypt will now establish trade relations with Russia and receive weapons systems from it, thus overturning years of U.S. diplomacy to keep Egypt within the American sphere of influence. Here we see yet another Obama diplomatic disaster for the West.
So what will Israel do, or rather what will Prime Minister Netanyahu do, now that there is no pretense left of President Obama having Israel’s back? Will he do what Egypt’s al-Sisi has done and turn away from further attempts to retain any semblance of an alliance with a hostile Obama regime? Or will he try to tough it out for the next two years in the hope that a new president will return America to sanity? That may not be, alas, a viable alternative anymore.
There are those who suggest that there’s no reason why Israel’s Rafael Industries, for example, cannot manufacture Israeli versions of hellfire missiles. Perhaps the time has finally come for Israel to end the U.S. foreign aid it receives. After all, when Netanyahu was first elected as Israel’s prime minister, he came to Washington and, in a speech delivered to Congress on July 10, 1996, announced that U.S. foreign aid to Israel would become a thing of the past.
It is never wise to put all one’s eggs in a single basket. Trade with India and China beckons. Meanwhile, Israel should look to obtaining raw materials from other sources and assembling all its own weapons systems. Israel is more than up to the challenge.
After all, if the Hamas thugs have been able to build their own missiles, albeit rudimentary at first but increasingly lethal and sophisticated, Israel certainly has the technology and the means. How nice it will be to be able to tell OBH what to do and where to go!
Writing in the Truth Provider blog last July, 2014, and during the height of the war to end Hamas aggression, Robert Vincent summed up where he believes Obama’s end game towards Israel is concerned:
As Israel is pushed to more dramatic levels of military action in order to defend herself against growing terrorist pressure – as we are now seeing in Gaza as of this writing – this writer predicts that Obama will ultimately abandon Israel in the UN, leaving her to twist in the wind as a pariah state. He’ll stand by as the UNSC passes binding sanctions against her, in order to strangle her politically and economically. Such a scenario may push Israel into extreme actions indeed, but this may not turn out as Obama believes it will.
The events of these last few weeks during Operation Protective Edge has taught Israel that it cannot rely on those it believed were friendly nations. Britain has placed an arms embargo on the Jewish state and, like many western European countries, is pushing now for Israeli concessions to Hamas – in other words, rewarding Hamas aggression and war crimes at Israel’s expense.
Do we see the hand of the Obama administration orchestrating the use of a weapons embargo as a tool to pressure Israel to capitulate to Hamas’s demands? Is this yet another brutal arm-twisting exercise against Israel in the same way that an FAA ban on flights to Israel was instituted to force the Jewish state to succumb to Obama’s diktats?
Should Israel be denied laser-guided and smart missiles to defend itself against future Hamas aggression, it will be forced to use less accurate ordnance, causing more collateral damage to occur. This will include greater chances that Hamas leaders themselves will be hit where they are hiding and will be a direct consequence of President Obama’s embargo.
The nations of the world have turned upon Israel, and she must live as she and the Jewish people have always lived: as a nation that dwells alone.
She must learn the lessons that these dark days have reminded her of, and she must survive while remembering and taking comfort in Genesis 12:3.
Obama has two years remaining in office. Much more harm can be done in that time.
More reason for Israel, having reached its Rubicon, to cross it.
Victor Sharpe is a freelance writer and author of the trilogy, Politicide: The attempted murder of the Jewish state.
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