In response to today’s withdrawal of Chas Freeman to be head of the NIC, Ira Forman of the NJDC issued the following statement:
Today, the Obama administration accepted the withdrawal of Chas Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council By doing so the Obama administration made clear that Freeman’s conflicts of interest with Saudi Arabian and China made him unfit to interpret intelligence. It also showed that Freeman’s unwarranted hatred of Israel tainted his judgment.
This support for Israel by the new administration highlights two important points about Obama and his die-hard, ideological opponents. First, the President has once again illustrated that he works hard to keep his campaign promises. Second, it highlights the tenacity of Obama’s ideological opponents to invariably find him to be intensely anti-Israel—even if that evidence runs up against cold hard facts.
NJDC spokesman, Aaron Keyak called on Jewish Democrats to thank President Obama for accepting Freeman’s withdrawal.
It was not surprising that the President’s knee-jerk critics, many of whom are in our own community, could not wait for yesterday’s announcement before accusing the Obama administration of appointing an anti-Israel official.
Once again, President Obama has shown that he will sand against unfair criticism of Israel.
Thank the President for standing by his commitment of supporting Israel. Let President Barack Obama know that you support this decision, and send a letter to him now.
Neither Forman nor Keyak have actually written anything like this about Freeman’s withdrawal, but they wrote similar things about the American withdrawal from Durban II. Ignoring the issue as to whether the U.S. should have been involved in the planning of Durban II, both acted as if the eventual American withdrawal vindicated their portrayal of the President as being reliably pro-Israel.
In fact Keyak’s gone one step further. In a post titled Two views on the Administration’s Durban II Policy, Keyak presented the AJC’s and Anne Bayefsky’s contrasting responses to the Durban II withdrawal and concludes with
We leave it to our readers to decide who has the most credibility when it comes to assessing this administration’s performance.
Given Keyak’s earlier dismissal of Bayefsky as an “anti-Obama” partisan this is a not too subtle rejection of her. But Keyak ignores:
1) Bayefsky is more concerned with the UN than with American politics. She warned that no good would come of the American’ participation in planning Durban II. If the Obama administration hadn’t participated in the planning, Bayefsky wouldn’t have criticized the administration.
2) Bayefsky pointed to American statements to the effect that the U.S. would participate in the UN Human Rights council, which is the organization that is in charge of Durban II. Plus she mentioned that the administration explained the decision to two different groups: Jewish groups on one side and a combination of Arab and human rights groups on the other.
Bayefsky pointed to actual concerns and wasn’t acting as an “anti-Obama partisan.” To call her a critic would be fair, but that’s not what Keyak did.
The NJDC is free, of course, to defend the Obama administration. What’s disturbing is their insistence in questioning the integrity of Obama’s critics. It looks that the administration recently did good regarding Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann , but its actions on Durban II and Freeman only confirm the fears the pro-Israel community had.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
