According to Reports: Is Obama Sending Wrong Signals in Mideast?

In his weekly Canadian Jewish News media analysis column “According to Reports,” Paul Michaels, CIC Director of Communications, looks at critiques of  Obama’s handling of the Mideast.

Two recent newspaper pieces – one in Canada and one in Lebanon – made the same argument: that U.S. President Barack Obama has failed to develop a cohesive, effective policy for the Middle East.

In “Obama’s Mideast Vision: Confusion” (Daily Star, Aug. 27) Michael Young, the opinion page editor and columnist for the Beirut-based English-language Daily Star, wrote that Obama’s efforts to make America better liked in the Mideast will only serve to make its adversaries more inflexible. “That explains the upsurge of bombings in Iraq lately, and it explains why the Taliban feel no need to surrender anything in Afghanistan.”

Young wrote: “Engagement of Iran and Syria has also come up short, though a breakthrough remains possible. However, there was always something counterintuitive in lowering the pressure on Iran in the hope that this would generate progress in finding a solution to its nuclear program.

“By placing most of his chips on engagement, the president has failed to develop a more multifaceted strategy while relinquishing other forms of coercion that could have been effective in Washington’s bargaining with the Islamic Republic.”

Obama’s efforts to engage Syria in an attempt to move it away from Iran shows no sign of succeeding. On the contrary, Syria “has facilitated suicide attacks in Iraq and encouraged Hamas’ intransigence in inter-Palestinian negotiations in Cairo.”

While Young agrees with Obama’s opposition to Israeli settlement growth, he faults the president for placing too much emphasis on it: “Obama is exerting considerable political capital to confront Israel, but it may be capital wasted at a moment when Hamas [backed by Iran and Syria] can still veto any breakthrough from the Palestinian side. In other words, Washington is working on a narrow front whereas its failure to weaken Hamas may render the whole enterprise meaningless.”

Young concluded: “The president is being tied up every which way by his foes, who can plainly see that the Obama vision is an unsystematic one.” The result, Young claims, is that the U.S. is marginilizing itself.

In “Obama’s Mideast fumbles disappoint Israel, Arabs” (Winnipeg Free Press, Sept. 1), Mideast correspondent Samuel Segev concurred with Young that “Obama’s shotgun approach to the region and his determination to reverse – at any cost – all of former president George W. Bush’s policies without a cohesive alternative strategy, have disappointed many of his supporters in the region.”

On an emboldened Iran, Segev wrote: “As far as Israel and the moderate Arab countries are concerned, however, there is no more important issue than the need to contain Iran. It’s not just Iran’s hegemonial ambitions and the nuclear threat to Israel, but also the Iranian support to seditious Sunni groups in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Gaza Strip, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. All these countries feel that Obama’s constant signals that the U.S. is eager to leave and go home have created a vacuum that Iran is ready to fill.”

Segev also addressed the issue of Iran’s determination to develop nuclear weapons. He argued that a recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear program provided indirect confirmation of this aim. This report, Segev wrote, revealed that “Iran is still refusing to turn over important documents related to its military nuclear program. It concluded that if Iran’s current stockpile of low-enriched uranium was further purified, Iran could have close to enough for two warheads.”

The Globe and Mail is a staunch defender of freedom of speech. But its editorial “Don’t blame Sweden” (Sept. 1) failed to understand the seriousness of the anti-Semitic “blood libel” conveyed in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, which alleged that Israeli soldiers have engaged in organ theft from dead Palestinians.

The Globe said that Sweden, like any democratic government, is not “accountable for what is published in free societies.” While noting that the piece was shoddy journalism, the Globe nonetheless argued that “not every piece of bad journalism is the blood libel.” It failed to understand that the Aftonbladet article was not a “slight and marginal piece,” but rather that it reveals the growing tolerance in mainstream European media for the most hideous depictions of Israel and Jews. It’s this legitimization of the illegitimate that should elicit the Globe’s condemnation.