When Bibi Gave, Obama Pressured

By COLlive reporter

A former Israeli diplomat has inadvertently confirmed the opinion of the Rebbe that the nature of the relations between the American and Israeli administration was not as commonly perceived.

Over the years, the Rebbe has encouraged and even demanded of Israeli political leaders not to sweat over diplomatic pressure for concessions and transferring land to Arabs for “peace.”

One such statement was said when Jewish entrepreneurs and philanthropists Reuben and Rose Mattus visited 770 Eastern Parkway on March 21, 1988 (3 Nissan 5748) ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Asked what they can tell Shamir, the Rebbe said the Prime Minister must not be satisfied with his strong position for Israel’s security until now, but be even stronger – for the sake of Israel and the United States.

In public talks, the Rebbe said that instead of having a feeling of inferiority toward a gentile, Jewish people should become stronger and stand firmly against the pressure from the “nations of the world.”

The Rebbe told Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Uri Savir in 1989: “The Americans ultimately have no choice, because they are dependent on G-d’s choice. But G-d places the free choice in the hands of the Jews.”

The Rebbe added that Hashem “believes strongly in the Jewish people that ultimately they will choose the path which is 100 in accordance with out holy Torah – then the Torah, the People and the Land will all be complete.”

This stance was recently supported in an interview the Yated Neeman newspaper conducted with the American-born Knesset member Michael Oren who served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

Speaking about Barack Obama, Oren said: “There has never been another president like him, at least since Eisenhower in the 1950s. There was a very legitimate question as to how we would relate to him, and I was part of the minority.

“I maintained that we needed to show flexibility and to meet Obama halfway as much as possible. Of course, there are bound to be times when it’s impossible to give in to him. But my advice was for us to be rigid and inflexible only when we truly had no choice,” he says.

In his book “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” Oren praises Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for going as far as he could to appease Obama, even defying his own party in the process.

But in the interview with Yated, Oren makes a startling admission: “The problem was that whenever Netanyahu demonstrated flexibility, he received more demands from the president instead of getting credit for his concessions.”