[Editor’s note; When David Frum spoke in Winnipeg recently at an event sponsored by the  Jewish Heritage Centre on April 28,  2011  he was asked to discuss what he thought some of the Obama administration’s biggest failures have been regarding Israel.
 
He has given the Winnipeg Jewish Review permission to reprint his articles.  Below are two articles in which he wrote about  what he considered to be Obama's mishandling of the Settlement vote at the UN , Obama’s Policy failure re: Iran.
 
In his talk Frum also pointed out that in his Cairo speech Obama mistakenly adopted the Palestinian narrative that Jews got a state as a result of the holocaust (to which Palestinians say “why should e be punished for Europe’s sins) rather than asserting Jewish historical and biblical claims to Israel that go back thousands of years earlier than the Holocaust.]
 
FRUM ON OBAMA'S CAIRO SPEECH  JUNE 2009
 
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/06/13/david-frum-not-quite-splitting-the-difference-on-jerusalem.aspx#ixzz1MOoIS3xC
 
 
In an article in the National Post entitled “Not Quite Splitting the Difference on Jerusalem, on June 13, 2009   David Frum leveled several criticisms at Obama regarding his Cairo speech:
 
“In his Cairo speech, President Obama signaled his intent to press for some kind of international status for the ancient holy city.
 
‘What’s that? You didn’t hear Obama say that? Remember, this is Barack Obama talking. To understand his meaning, you must listen very, very carefully.
 
“At the end of the section on Arab-Israeli peacemaking, the President offered a striking image of brotherhood:
 
“All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra —  as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer.
 
“What has that to do with Jerusalem?
 
“Isra is the title of a chapter of the Koran, the 17th. The chapter opens with the following verse:
 
“Glory to Allah, Who did take His servant for a Journey by night from the Sacred Mosque to the farthest Mosque, whose precincts We did bless, in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who heareth and seeth.
 
“This verse is explained by Islamic tradition in the following way:
 
“Shortly before Muhammad fled Mecca, the archangel Gabriel appeared to him with a magical horse. Muhammad mounted the horse and was carried to the “farthest mosque,” where he led Jesus, Moses and other prophets in prayer.
 
“Some Muslims interpret the “farthest mosque” as heaven itself — and the whole Isra story as a vision of Heaven.
 
“But more politicized Muslims have insisted on a different interpretation. For them, the “farthest mosque” is a place on Earth: Jerusalem. For them, the story of Isra is the theological origin of the Islamic claim to the holy city of the Jews.
 
“Past American presidents have addressed the Palestinian problem as a humanitarian issue. Obama in Cairo went much further — which is why his audience applauded so loud.
 
“President Obama made no analogous allusion to the Jewish connection to Jerusalem. Quite the contrary. About Israel’s origins, the President said: “The aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied” — that is, as he proceeded to explain, in the history of the Nazi Holocaust.
 
“Jews could tell him that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland in Zion long antedates the horror of 1933-45. “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning,” is a verse far less obscure than the story of Isra and at least a thousand years older. Worse, the President’s mention of the Nazi Holocaust as justification for the Jewish state invites the unanswered question, “Why should Arabs and Muslims surrender land because of a German crime?”
 
“President Obama did not go quite as far as his Cairo audience might have wished. He described Isra as a “story” — meaning something that might or might not be true. He did not explicitly mention Jerusalem — meaning that the grand union of religions invoked in the speech may well have to wait for heaven after all. Notice too the subtle editing so that Muhammad joins Jesus and Moses rather than leading them, as he does in the Islamic tradition.
 
“Characteristically, Obama is trying to find an intermediate position between two opposing points. But also characteristically, this intermediate position is not exactly in the middle. Obama will pressure Israel to surrender something it has — control over Jerusalem — in exchange for the Palestinians surrendering something they want. Similarly, the outcome the President appears to seek — internationalization of the central city — will likely be less favourable to Israel, since international bodies can be expected to show much greater deference to the sensibilities of their many Arab and Muslim members than to their sole and single Jewish member.
 
‘The President’s preference is not of course the last word. But it is a powerful word — and it presents Israel with another in the daunting series of challenges and dangers from this audacious President.’

How Obama Mishandled the UN Settlement Vote
By David Frum, February 19th, 2011

Elliott Abrams at the Council of Foreign Relations has written an important statement (http://blogs.cfr.org/abrams/2011/02/18/how-to-lose-friends-and-not-influence-people/) on Friday’s Obama administration goings on at the UN. It’s both back story and detailed rebuttal. Please read, it’s reproduced below in full.

How to Lose Friends and Not Influence People
by Elliott Abrams

The Obama Administration cast its first veto in the United Nations on Friday, February 18, killing a Security Council resolution that would have condemned Israeli settlement activity.  Its poor handling of the entire episode has left just about everyone angry at the United States, and is therefore a manifest failure of American diplomacy.

The Palestinian Authority began to talk about this resolution months ago.  The United States could then have adopted a clear position: put it forward and it will be vetoed.  That very clear stand might have persuaded the Palestinian leaders and their Arab supporters to drop the effort early on, when it could have been abandoned with no loss of face.  Instead the Administration refused to make its position clear until the final day. In its Friday edition the New York Times was reporting that “the Obama administration was trying Thursday evening to head off an imminent vote in the United Nations Security Council that would declare Israel’s settlement construction in the West Bank illegal, but would not declare publicly whether it was prepared to veto the resolution.”  It seems clear that the Administration was desperate to avoid a veto, indeed desperate to go four years without spoiling its “perfect record.”  But a “perfect record” in the UN requires vetoes, given the persistent anti-Israel bias of the organization.  The Administration’s desire to avoid vetoes only served to reduce its bargaining power, for the credible threat of a veto has long served American diplomats seeking to achieve an outcome more favorable to our interests.

On the last day before the vote, the President called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. The Israeli press reported that “In a 50-minute phone call, he asked Abbas to drop the resolution and settle for a non-binding statement condemning settlement expansion, Palestinian officials said.  Abbas on Friday received a follow-up call from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the issue, the Palestinian news agency Wafa said.” But apparently the President did more than ask: “One senior Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the offer, made in an hour-long phone call from Obama, was accompanied by veiled threats of ‘repercussions’ if it were refused.

‘Obama threatened on Thursday night to take measures against the Palestinian Authority if it insists on going to the Security Council to condemn Israeli settlement activity, and demand that it be stopped,’ the official said. ‘There will be repercussions for Palestinian-American relations if you continue your attempts to go to the Security Council and ignore our requests in this matter, especially as we suggested other alternatives,’ the official quoted Obama as telling Abbas.”

Abbas rejected the Clinton and Obama appeals and/or ignored their threats, in itself a sign of reduced American diplomatic influence.  The American veto will have angered Palestinians even more.  But it will not have gained the Administration any thanks from Israel or from supporters of Israel in the United States, who were appalled by the Administration’s search for a bad compromise. According to the New York Times, the Administration proposed that instead of a resolution the Security Council issue a “presidential statement” that “would condemn settlements but also call on all sides to resume negotiations.  That statement would be paired with a Russian proposal for a fact-finding mission on settlements, and a proposed change in how the quartet, the international group that deals with the Middle East peace process, defines the basic building blocks of negotiations ranging from borders to the political status of Jerusalem.”

So the Administration was content with condemning settlements, happy to establish a new UN fact-finding mission, and willing to redefine the role of the Quartet.  All that just to avoid a veto of the sort American presidents have been ordering for decades.
Feeling guilty about its veto the Administration then issued an extraordinary “explanation of vote,” read by UN Ambassador Susan Rice.  Though we had to veto, she explained, “we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity. For more than four decades, Israeli settlement activity in territories occupied in 1967 has undermined Israel’s security and corroded hopes for peace and stability in the region. Continued settlement activity violates Israel’s international commitments, devastates trust between the parties, and threatens the prospects for peace….While we agree with our fellow Council members—and indeed, with the wider world—about the folly and illegitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity, we think it unwise for this Council to attempt to resolve the core issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians. We therefore regrettably have opposed this draft resolution.”

This is amazing language for a diplomat: “folly,” “illegitimacy,” “devastates,” “corroded,” and so on.  It’s hard to recall such a vehement statement against Israel, nor one that contains so many conclusions that are, to say the least, highly debatable.  Has construction in and around Jerusalem or in Ma’ale Adumim, for example, “undermined Israel’s security?”   Given that the Israelis and Palestinians concluded the Oslo Accords and the numerous other agreements while construction activity was far greater than it is today, what is the basis for saying that it “devastates trust?”   No doubt the Administration decided that as it had vetoed it would “make it up” to the Arabs with this statement.  But emotive language such as Amb. Rice employed serves no purpose.  Arab newspapers will headline the veto—assuming of course that they have space in their pages tomorrow after covering the revolts in Tunisia, Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Bahrain, and Egypt—and are very unlikely to cover her speech.  Only Israelis and supporters of Israel in the United States will study her language, and remember it.

So, the Administration emerges having damaged relations with both the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Decades of American experience at the United Nations proves clearly the “folly” of such diplomatic action, which “devastates trust” in the United States and therefore “corrodes hopes for peace and stability in the region.”  Next time, say you’ll veto, veto, and leave it at that.  The United States will end up with fewer angry friends and fewer gleeful enemies.
 
 
OBAMAS BIGGEST FOREIGN POLICY FAILURE:
By David Frum, April 23, 2010
 
 
The Middle East policy of the Obama administration is governed by one grand unifying idea, expressed for example in NSA Adviser Jim Jones’ April 21 speech (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-national-security-advisor-james-l-jones-washington-institute-near-east-poli) to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

One of the ways that Iran exerts influence in the Middle East is by exploiting the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict.  Iran uses the conflict to keep others in the region on the defensive and to try to limit its own isolation.  Ending this conflict, achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians and establishing a sovereign Palestinian state would therefore take such an evocative issue away from Iran, Hizballah, and Hamas.  It would allow our partners in the region to focus on building their states and institutions.  And peace between Israel and Syria, if it is possible, could have a transformative effect on the region.  Since taking office, President Obama has pursued a two-state solution—a secure, Jewish state of Israel living side by side in peace and security with a viable and independent Palestinian state.  This is in the United States’ interest.  It is in Israel’s interest.  It is in the Palestinians’ interest.  It is in the interest of the Arab countries, and, indeed, the world.  Advancing this peace would also help prevent Iran from cynically shifting attention away from its failures to meet its obligations.

Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett debunk (http://www.raceforiran.com/general-jones-at-the-washington-institute-still-getting-the-iran-palestine-connection-wrong) this illusion on their blogspot:

The Obama administration continues to buy into a Bush-era delusion: that concern about a rising Iranian threat could unite Israel and moderate Arab states in a grand alliance under Washington’s leadership. In reality, the prospect of strategic cooperation with Israel is profoundly unpopular with Arab publics.  Even moderate Arab regimes cannot sustain such cooperation.

That seems exactly right, even if the other conclusions they draw seem either wrong or unacceptable, specifically:

The relationship between Iran and Arab-Israeli peacemaking runs in exactly the opposite direction from that described by General Jones:  today, one of the reasons that the United States needs a better and more productive relationship with the Islamic Republic is that it will be impossible to achieve Arab-Israeli peace without U.S.-Iranian rapprochement.

I think events have refuted the Leveretts’ thesis that such a rapprochement is available at any price worth paying. But regardless of that piece of the puzzle they are surely right: The Obama idea that the U.S. can build a coalition against Iran by muscling Israel is not only wrong, but dangerous. The Obama administration has wasted 18 unrecoverable months muscling Israel, and it is now further from, not closer to, both Israeli-Palestinian peace and an effective Iran policy. This may be the administration’s single biggest policy failure, certainly its biggest foreign policy failure. Can we have some relearning please before it is too late?