At a campaign fundraiser in New York City on Wednesday with Jewish donors, President Barack Obama made the bold claim that his administration “has done more in terms of the security of the state” of Israel.
That claim drew the ire of Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Krauthammer said Obama had done just the opposite of his claim.
“It is not and I’m sure Obama knows it,” Krauthammer said. “If he doesn’t, he’s delusional. And this is really chutzpah.”
Krauthammer said, “This president has done more to delegitimize and undermine Israel’s position in the world than any other president and he did it by arriving on the scene and imposing and demanding of Israel a freeze on settlements, including the building of the Jewish homes in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem of all places, something that had never been precondition in 17 years of negotiations.”
And once Obama took a position on homes in Jerusalem, he backed Israel into an untenable bargaining position, Krauthammer said.
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“The Palestinians had to insist on it as well once the president did and that destroyed the negotiations,” he continued. “It made Israel the fall guy for an error, an error of an amateur — an arrogant amateur that imposed this at the beginning of his term. As a result there are no negotiations.”
Krauthammer took issue with Obama’s claim because of his ineffectiveness in dealing with the Iranian regime and its development of nuclear weapons.
“The most important issue for Israel, for its security is Iran,” he said. “And this is a president who at a time of maximum weakness of the mullahs did not lift a finger to help the revolution because he had another delusion that if he engaged and negotiated with the mullahs, he could sweet talk Iran out of its weapons. The policy is a failure. He knows it. And here we are in the threshold of Iran becoming a nuclear power.”