How Obama and Kerry Caused the Stabbing Terror Spree
in Israel
By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.com
Before the Muslim terror stabbing spree, Netanyahu
had made repeated efforts to meet with the leader of
the PLO. And for once, Abbas, the PLO leader, had
not been averse to a meeting.
Instead it was Secretary of State John Kerry who
told Abbas not
to meet with Netanyahu.
Abbas
went to the UN and disavowed the Oslo Accords. The
first Muslim stabbings of Jews, with the
encouragement of the PLO, began a few days later.
It is unlikely that Kerry had directly told Abbas to
escalate the violence, but he had sent him the same
effective message by coordinating with the PLO boss
at the expense of Netanyahu. The top terrorist came
away with the understanding that the administration
favored him and was hostile to Netanyahu.
And he was right.
So Abbas decided to see what another outburst of
violence would net him.
It wasn’t the first time that Obama and Kerry had
unleashed Abbas’ worst impulses.
Obama’s splashy trip to Israel didn’t lead to peace,
but it did make the PLO’s Palestinian Authority more
dictatorial and corrupt. The closest thing to an
accomplishment that the Bush administration’s own
failed efforts had to show for them was the
appointment of Salam Fayyad as Prime Minister of the
PA.
While Fayyad had nothing to contribute to the peace
process, and the Palestinian Authority remained a
corrupt coven of terrorists subsidized by foreign
aid, there were some improvements when it came to
financial transparency. Most importantly, Fayyad
provided a check on Abbas in an organization which
had otherwise abandoned elections and made the PLO
boss into a dictator for life.
In 2013, Obama finally followed the advice of his
Jewish leftist allies to visit Israel and “make the
case for peace” to the Israeli people. This he did
to a handpicked younger audience, while snubbing the
usual Knesset speech in Israel’s parliament that
Bush, Clinton and even Carter had delivered.
"I genuinely believe that you do have a true partner
in President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad. I
believe that,” Obama told his Israeli audience.
Earlier, Abbas
had told a Russian interviewer,
"As far as I am concerned, there is no difference
between our policies and those of Hamas. So why are
they labeled as terrorists?" It was a good question,
but not one that Obama was in the mood to address.
Despite Obama’s vote of confidence in Fayyad, it was
his visit with its free pass to Abbas that would
finish Fayyad’s career. Fayyad’s rise had been a
response to growing skepticism by the Bush
administration and Congress of Abbas’ mismanagement
of the Palestinian Authority.
When Obama arrived, Abbas had already been trying to
force out Fayyad. The visit, with the trappings of
one president visiting another, sent the message
that Abbas didn’t have to worry about democracy. US
diplomats scrambled to
persuade Abbas to keep Fayyad on, but the damage had
been done. Soon Fayyad was gone, leaving Abbas with
the Palestinian Authority as his private fiefdom.
Fayyad’s departure fed Abbas’ hubris. There were no
more elections and no independent prime minister to
get in his way. So Kerry’s attempt at a peace
process was met with a crazy demand by the PLO boss
that Israel release hundreds of terrorists as a
precondition to any negotiations.
Instead of giving Abbas a reality check that Israel
shouldn’t have to release dangerous terrorists just
for the privilege of sitting at a table with him,
Obama and Kerry once again backed up Abbas. While
Netanyahu’s expectation that Abbas should recognize
Israel as a Jewish state, according to Kerry was
“not going to happen in the beginning”, the release
of murderous Muslim terrorists would.
Most of the terrorists were freed, but Abbas just
escalated his demands and then made a big push at
the UN. Negotiations collapsed, but instead of
blaming Abbas, Kerry blamed Israel. "Israel didn't
release the Palestinian prisoners on the day they
were supposed to be freed, and another day passed,
and another day," he grumbled to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.
The worse Abbas behaved, the more Obama and Kerry
backed him up.
Even when Jews were being butchered in the streets
of Jerusalem, while Abbas’ henchmen and
propagandists cheered on the killers, Kerry once
again blamed Israel claiming that the violence was
caused by Muslim “frustration” due
to an imaginary “massive
increase in settlements.”
(Settlements being places in Israel where Jews live,
as opposed to where Muslims live, which are never
damned as settlements even when the land is
illegally acquired and when houses are built on land
that the Jewish population had been ethnically
cleansed from.)
Kerry was once again sending the message that Abbas
and the PLO could do no wrong.
The recent roots of this violence can be found in
how Obama and Kerry chose to feed Abbas’ hubris.
Abbas has learned that he can do just about anything
and his pals in Washington D.C. will blame Israeli
settlements or the manic depressive frustration and
desperation of terrorists instead of the PLO leader.
Obama’s overhyped visit didn’t set the stage for
peace, but for an escalation of the conflict. The
meeting of the two men only nourished Abbas’
grandiose delusions and totalitarian itches. The
Bush administration made an effort to set some
expectations for the PLO. Those expectations weren’t
met, but at least they existed. The Obama
administration has zero expectations for Abbas.
Those zero expectations have translated into an
unapologetic dictatorship subsidized by US
taxpayers, an international diplomatic campaign
whose only real purpose is the self-glorification of
that dictator and a campaign of violence and terror
so that the dictator can feel like a player on the
world stage.
Not only did Obama and Kerry fail to do the right
thing, but at every turn they managed to make things
worse. Their determination to blame everything on
Israel told Abbas that he could do anything. Even
when Abbas might have actually met with Netanyahu,
Kerry insisted on sabotaging the meeting.
None of this was an accident. There was a lot more
at stake here than another failed peace deal.
Obama views Netanyahu as a political enemy and
stirring up violence in Israel is one way of hurting
him.
It’s no coincidence that the peace push followed
Netanyahu’s Iran speech at the UN and growing
worries by Obama’s people that Israel would carry
out its own strike against Iran’s nuclear program.
While the PLO peace circus was in town, negotiations
with Iran were moving forward and being kept secret
from Israel. Forcing Israel to negotiate with the
PLO terrorists was meant to distract it from the
other negotiations with the Iranian terrorists that
the Jewish State wasn’t supposed to know about.
And making those negotiations as difficult and
disastrous as possible was one way of diverting a
good deal of Israel’s diplomatic and intelligence
capabilities to coping with a growing threat at
home.
Obama and Kerry may not have understood that their
gambit would end in violence, that an arrogant Abbas
would escalate the conflict with a new wave of
terror that would lead to Jewish men, women and
children being murdered by Muslim terrorists
emboldened by Abbas’s martyrdom rhetoric.
It’s more likely though that they just didn’t care.
Giving Israel a domestic security crisis to deal
with it is one more way of preventing a last ditch
effort to take out Iran’s nuclear program. Whether
or not Obama and Kerry had that particular outcome
in mind, it clearly benefits their agenda and they
have shown no sign of cracking down on Abbas’
incitement.
The White House may not be directing Abbas’ violence, but it benefits from it and it is unwilling to shut it down because even if it doesn’t bring down Netanyahu, it will weaken him and limit his options.
Obama could quickly send the signal to Abbas that the free ride is over. He could call for Palestinian elections, political reforms and use foreign aid to force an end to the PLO’s promotion of terrorism.
None of that is happening. Nor will it. Instead Kerry is taking great pains to avoid saying anything that could be characterized as singling out Abbas for blame. And that is a covert message of approval.
Abbas’ PLO terror will only escalate as long as he senses that he has the support of the White House. And as long as the White House continues to support him, the blood of his victims is on Obama’s hands.