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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsObama's Speech on Counter-Terrorism Raises Concerns Among Israeli Lawmakers
Israeli intelligence experts, defense mavens and foreign policy gurus should be poring over President Barack Obamas address to the National Defense University by now. Many of them, one can safely posit, wont like what theyre reading, in the text and between the lines.
And its not only because Obama, contrary to conventional wisdom in Israel, included the Israeli-Palestinian conflict among the underlying grievances and conflicts that feed extremism from North Africa to South Asia. Israelis have fought long and hard to counter the assertion that the conflict fuels or sustains Islamic extremism and the Arab Spring has only cemented their conviction.
But it will come as no surprise to most mavens that Obama, along with his vice president and secretaries of state and defense, is convinced that resolving Israels conflict with the Palestinians will go a long a way towards soothing Arab and Muslim resentment of, and enmity towards, the U.S. in particular and the West in general.
Rather it is Obamas declaration of intent to bring the American war on terror to an end that may be a source of greater concern for Israeli policy makers, on a philosophical level at least. Obamas view that there is no single global jihadist campaign that is being waged against America contradicts the prevailing outlook of most Israelis, inside the government and out. His conception that terrorists from Boston to Beirut to Baghdad to Benghazi, even if they are jihadi-inspired, are separate entities, rather than manifestations or even tentacles of a singular ideological central command, flies In the face of most Israelis view of the world. As it does for many U.S. Republicans.
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/177367/obamas-speech-on-counter-terrorism-raises-concerns/#ixzz2UMrHr5Jr
babylonsister
(171,054 posts)Coulda, shoulda, woulda...
moondust
(19,972 posts)Sort of presumptuous to say that it does when the author is only assuming that it will.