Britannia Radio

Weekly Commentary: Obama terms Israeli concerns noise – broad ramifications

Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 24 September 2012

A reminder:

#1. When any president of the United States speaks for the record on matters 
he expects to address, he basically recites a string of phrases that were 
painstakingly prepared well in advance. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s a 
very good thing. For while it may be a bit boring to find literally 
identical phrases repeated over and over again for weeks, months and 
sometimes even longer, there is the tremendous advantage that when something 
changes – be it tone, nuance or anything else – you can rest assured that it 
is indeed intentional.

#2. We are in the middle of an American presidential campaign. So #1 is 
even more closely adhered to than the rest of the term.

So here we have President Obama’s pre-Yom Kippur remark in a Sixty Minutes 
interview:

STEVE KROFT: “You don’t feel any pressure from Prime Minister Netanyahu in 
the middle of a campaign to try and get you to change your policy and draw a 
line in the sand? You don’t feel any pressure?”

OBAMA: “When it comes to our national security decisions — any pressure that 
I feel is simply to do what’s right for the American people. And I am going 
to block out — any noise that’s out there.”

That’s right.

PM Netanyahu’s “red line/deadline” campaign is “noise”.

This days after Fereydoun Abbasi, the head of Iran's nuclear energy agency, 
basically told the world that Iran couldn’t care less about what the West in 
general and President Obama in particular thinks about Iran’s nuclear 
activities when he said for attribution that Iran often delivers false 
information to international officials regarding its nuclear program, in 
order to protect its facilities.

OK.

So why did President Obama decide to use the unprecedented “noise” term?

Let’s remember – many hours were spent coming up with the line.

Yes. It seemed like a great way to kick Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin 
Netanyahu in the teeth. And that certainly felt good.

But this wasn’t an off the cuff remark. Hours were spent thinking about it.

And that’s the problem.

Because Binyamin Netanyahu isn’t some nudnik columnist whose remarks can be 
dismissed like swatting away an annoying fly.

Netanyahu is the prime minister of the sovereign State of Israel.

If Israel had only an iota of its relationship with the United States, it 
would still be unbecoming for the president of the United States to term the 
concerns of the prime minister of Israel nothing more than “noise”.

President Obama sent a poisonously dangerous message to the world about his 
attitude towards Israeli concerns.

And for friends of Israel in the United States, this was a preview of what 
four more years may entail.

Again: Nobody put a gun to Mr. Obama’s head and forced him to agree to run 
with the “noise” remark that his staff crafted and pitched to him. There 
are many eloquent alternative sound bites that could have been used to 
handle the question. It was most definitely Mr. Obama’s call.

And even odder: it’s hard to come up with the demographic that the “noise” 
remark might have nudged from the “undecided” column over to the Democratic 
ticket.

So besides being a message to friends of Israel in general, the “noise” 
remark is a particularly bizarre message.

Will American Jews manage to process this before they go behind the curtain 
in November?

Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis)
(Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava)
Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730
INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il
Website: http://www.imra.org.il