Obama's Enemies List: A Growing List of Obama's Enemies

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to submit an application to the UN Security Council to recognize Palestine as an independent state later this week. The Obama Administration is expected to use its veto in the Security Council to quash that application. Yet given its implacable hostility towards the State of Israel, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the Obama Administration does an about-face and gives a Palestinian state its blessing. Then watch the UN General Assembly welcome Palestine into the family of nations with open arms. One could make the argument that George W. Bush opened the door to this mess when he became the first president to call for a Palestinian state back in June 2002. Bush proclaimed : “I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty .” Well, the Palestinians in Gaza elected new leaders all right. But in choosing Hamas they elected leaders not only compromised by terror but defined by it. Needless to say, legalizing crucifixion isn’t exactly a sign that the Palestinians are practicing democracy based on tolerance and liberty. The West Bank, governed by the supposedly secular Fatah, isn’t exactly a beacon of benevolence either, as it frequently arrests dissidents (including last November’s arrest of one blogger who criticized Islam). As Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab journalist, wrote earlier this year, ” Hamas is bad; but who said that Fatah is any better? ” President Bush would go on to say, “A Palestinian state will never be created by terror — it will be built through reform.” But what do the Palestinians know other than terror? After all, a Palestinian state has never been about building a nation but rather about destroying one — Israel. The Jewish State — despite its peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan — is no more accepted in the Arab and Muslim world now than when it was established by the UN in 1947. Indeed, to this day the creation of the State of Israel is referred to in the Arab and Muslim world as “al-Nabka” or “The Disaster.” People forget that the original proposed terms of the 1947 UN Partition Plan held that both a Jewish and an Arab state be created (hence the term “partition”). Basically, the Jews accepted these terms and the Arabs didn’t. Five Arab armies invaded Israel upon its independence the following year and told the Arabs residing in Israel to leave and not come back until Israel had been conquered. Well, things didn’t exactly go according to plan. If Israel’s creation was a disaster for Arabs and Muslims then it was a disaster of their own making. It’s not as if there were calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state when Egypt governed Gaza and Jordan controlled the West Bank. Even when Israel took over Gaza and the West Bank following the Six Day War in 1967 there was no talk of Palestinian statehood. Adam Shatz, the senior editor of the