Obama Accused of Treating Israel ‘Like a Punching Bag’

Jewish-American conservatives have taken out a full-page ad in
leading newspapers urging the Obama administration to “stop blaming
Israel first.”

The ad by the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) ran Thursday in The New York Times, Miami Herald and several other papers.

Under the headline “Why does the Obama
administration treat Israel like a punching bag?” the ad cites the
recent exchange between President Obama and French President Nicolas
Sarkozy complaining about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The
ad states that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta blames Israel for “the
failure of talks with the Palestinians,” citing his remark at a forum
calling on Israel to “get to the damn table.”

The ad also quotes Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, who charged Israel with discrimination against women, and U.S.
envoy to Belgium Howard Gutman, who recently linked the rise of
anti-Semitism in the Arab world to the unsolved Palestinian-Israeli
conflict.

Following the quotes, the ad states: “Enough with
the cheap shots. It’s time for the Obama Administration to stop blaming
Israel first.”

In remarks reported by the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz, ECI director Noah Pollak said: "In a month that has seen
Islamists come to power in Egypt, rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza and
Lebanon, progress on the Iranian nuclear program, and the continued
slaughter of civilians in Syria, the Obama administration has chosen to
repeatedly condemn the only liberal democracy in the region: Israel."

The ad ran a day before President Obama’s
appearance at a conference of 6,000 Jewish-Americans in Washington
sponsored by the Union for Reform Judaism.

Obama’s 51 percent approval rating among Jews in a
recent Gallup poll is higher than his national average — 48 percent —
but the lowest among Jews in his three years in office.