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There is a saying in the Jewish community, "But is it good for for the Jews?" Thus, many are asking, will the Obama administration be an asset or liability for Israel? While many Christians place little interest or importance on this, this ministry does.
Much is being made of several Jews who are now a part of the Obama administration. Some seem to think that a few are very pro-Israel Jews and that we will thus see a new course of American-Israeli relations. I hate to burst bubbles but they are dead wrong.
The Israeli newspaper Israel National News reports that Obama hired a number of Jewish advisors who are quite critical of Israel, are anti-Israel (yes, some Jews are critical of Israel), and are in fantasy land about the Saudi Arabian peace intentions. Those include Dennis Ross, Dan Kurtzer, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Tony McPeak, Susan Rice, Martin Indyk, and several more. These spell serious problems for Israel.
Then there is Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emmanuel. He was the key person in the Clinton administration to make Oslo happen in 1992 and 1993. So we have a group of Jewish advisors, some of them Jewish, who are unfriendly to Israel's settlement policies in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank and eager to divide Jerusalem.
Let's revisit Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emmanuel for a minute. In the early '90s he was one of the people who helped financially put together Bill Clinton's campaign. He gained tremendous influence in the White House from a group in Israel known as "Peace Now." In other words, far leftists. They were the ones who engineered the Oslo process, and he (Emmanuel) personally was the one who orchestrated the Rabin-Arafat handshake on the White House lawn in 1993.
Israel National News suggests that if you like the Oslo process (which instead of granting Israel land for peace has left Israel in pieces), then Rahm Emmanuel is your man. There is much Internet buzz that Emmanuel is going to encourage policies that are favorable to Israel as he even tried to defend Israel during the 1991 Gulf War. His father fought in the Jewish underground in the 1940s. It gets even stranger in that some are saying because "Emmanuel" means "God with us," he will be a "savior" in the Obama administration as it concerns Israel. He will fight for her good.
I suggest a reality check here. Obama is not going to listen to anyone in his administration who is going to go against his policies to continue to try to divide the land, create a Palestinian state, and issue other orders that will not strengthen God's land. What may happen is that other world events will so pre-occupy him that Israel may take a back seat.
Now out of the same newspaper comes a story that Hamas is claiming close and ongoing ties with the Obama administration. The relationship was kept under wraps until after the U.S. elections so as not to harm Obama's election prospects. The U.S. has classified Hamas as a terrorist organization. One has to wonder if that will hold.
A Hamas member states, "We were in contact with a number of Obama's aides through the Internet, and later met with some of them in Gaza. They advised us not to come out with any statements as that could have had a negative effect on his election campaign."
The bottom line question always is -- no matter who the American president is -- how much will Israel allow the new administration to get away with? Israel generally bows to State Department wishes and demands. Even Bibi Netanyahu, Likud Party leader and a contender for Prime Minister in the coming months, stated that if he were elected he, too, would give away some land. Just perhaps not as much as the more left-leaning parties.
It is possible that soon Israel will face the world totally alone in her most desperate hour? That is predicted in the Bible. (See Zechariah 12 and 14.) It will turn her face toward God, but we do not know the timing of such an event.
Christian Zionist leader Jan Willem van der Hoeven states, "All that the new, full Democrat-controlled U.S. administration with its inbuilt anti-war bias will do to alleviate Israel's fears is talk and talk and talk, just as the Europeans have fruitlessly done these last few years. Israel will literally be left alone and stark naked vis-à-vis its ever more ferociously armed enemies. If the Israelis want to do anything, they will be on their own. Even requesting the approval of the new Obama-led administration will be a mistake. He will opt for more talk, more sanctions, until the time will have passed for Israel to act preventively."
While President Bush refused to meet with former PLO leader Yasser Arafat, he did have his Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, in Israel for extensive periods during his term. She has pressured Israel mercilessly, scolded them for not keeping peace commitments, and seldom blamed the Palestinian leadership for their failures and not keeping to their commitments. This isn't a Republican/Democrat issue. It's a fairness issue and both sides seem to want to look the other way. But to suggest that Obama has pro-Israel advisors on his staff that could change all this is a stretch in my opinion.
Please keep these issues in your prayers. But if you see Israel being abandoned, know that God has purposes even for that. "He who keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps" (Ps. 121:4). And He who watches over you and I never sleeps as well.
