In an op-ed in today’s Los Angeles Times, Aaron David Miller admits the obvious: “Unlike his two predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Obama isn’t in love with the idea of Israel.”

But Miller doesn’t address Barack Obama’s immersion in the anti-Israel, antisemitic views of his pastor and mentor, Jeremiah Wright, in whose Trinity United Church of Christ Obama worshipped for two decades.

Nor does Miller note Obama’s friendship with former Palestine Liberation Organization advisor Rashid Khalidi, whose anti-Israel views are a matter of public record, or Obama’s eager association with Arab causes early in his political career.

The Obamas with Palestinian intellectual Edward Said, 1998 (Source: Electronic Intifada)

Instead, Miller cites Obama’s “logical,” “intellectual” and “moral” approach to Israel–as opposed to the “emotional” approach of previous occupants of the White House, whose views were allegedly informed by simplistic faith and fables:

Obama’s views came from another place: his own logic, the university environment in which he developed intellectually and his own moral sensibilities. And according to this view, the Arab-Israeli dispute isn’t some kind of morality play that pits the forces of good against the forces of darkness. Instead, it’s a more complex tale, not of heroes and villains but of a conflict between two rights and two just causes. It’s also a conflict that is vital to American interests. And those interests are being threatened by the divide between those who want a solution and are serious about moving toward one, and those who aren’t serious about finding a solution and throw up obstacles. After three years, the president has clearly placed the Israelis in the latter category and the Palestinians in the former.

Miller adds that the sour relationship between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a result of Obama’s allegedly “intellectual” approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He seems to forget that it was Netanyahu who famously gave Obama an “intellectual” lesson in the history of the conflict and Israel’s borders in May 2011:

The truth is that Obama’s antipathy towards Israel is rooted in a passionate, radical left-wing ideology that thrives in both the academic cloisters and the radical pulpits that gave Obama his political inspiration and foundation. And the Los Angeles Times knows it, for it is in possession of a key piece of historical evidence: the “Rashid Khalidi tape.” (more…)

At The Corner the other morning, Andy McCarthy points out the LA Times’ “mainstreaming of the Muslim Brotherhood” by providing a forum for Mousa Abu Marzook—at one time the most senior Hamas operative living in the US:

This was akin to giving equal time to the director of the FBI and the head of Cosa Nostra. Marzook is the most important Muslim Brotherhood operative ever stationed in the U.S. I discuss him in some detail in The Grand Jihad. During his 14 years here, which ended when he was deported in 1994, he actually ran Hamas (the terrorist organization that is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch) from his home in Virginia.

Mousa Abu Marzook

This was in the early 90s, during the Intifada. He also had a hand in the establishment of many of the Islamist organizations with which we are familiar today. The Islamist infrastructure he helped build here was the foundation of the Justice Department’s successful terrorism financing prosecution against the Holy Land Foundation for funneling millions of dollars to Palestinian terrorists.

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U.S.-Israeli relations have hit a 35-year low over the contentious east Jerusalem building project. Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren said: “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975…a crisis of historic proportions.” This is because, according to Barack Obama, Jewish homes in the Jewish homeland “hinder peace” with Muslims. According to the Associated Press:

Israel’s already strained relationship with the U.S. hit a new low last week when it announced the construction plans during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden. The timing of the announcement deeply embarrassed the Obama administration and put plans for indirect peace talks with the Palestinians in jeopardy.

What about the timing of the Palestinian Authority’s “honoring” of a mass-murdering female genocidal bomber, for whom the Palestinians are naming a square in Ramallah? The Jerusalem Post reported: “The ceremony was scheduled to take place on the 32nd anniversary of the attack, the worst terrorist incident in Israel’s history, in which terrorists commandeered a bus and murdered 37 people, including 10 children.” It too was scheduled to take place during Biden’s visit, but was postponed for a week after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asked Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, to get the Palestinians to cancel it.

“The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Obama adviser David Axelrod also said: “This was an affront, it was an insult, but most importantly, it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region. For this announcement to come at that time was very, very destructive.” (more…)