Straight Platform Politics

The Dalai Lama Snub And Israel

President Obama decided not to meet with the Dalai Lama when the exiled Tibetan leader visited Washington earlier this month. What does that mean for Israel?  See previous post

Dennis Prager wrote, “According to the Jerusalem Post, as recently as six weeks ago, just 4 percent of the Jews of Israel regarded President Obama as pro-Israel. Even if exaggerated, it is likely the most negative Israeli view of an American president since Israel’s creation.” (Jewish World Review 10/20/09)

The snubbing of the Dali Lama “is particularly troubling to Israelis because it means that an American president is placing appeasement of strong dictators above America’s traditional defense of embattled small countries….The line between selling out Tibetans and selling out Israelis is a direct one.”

“Those who worry about good and evil know that if America decides that the world’s approval is important, evil will increase exponentially. Only an America willing to be disliked, even hated, will consistently support the smaller good guys against the bigger bad guys.”

“And if America now values getting along well with everyone above moral considerations, the days of strong American support for Israel are numbered.” And the Israelis know it.

Is this the change that the Obama campaign was talking about?

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Noticing The Dalai Lama Snub

The world took note when President Obama decided not to meet with the Dalai Lama when the exiled Tibetan leader visited the U.S. earlier this month. The administration tried to pacify China by not receiving this distinguished Nobel Peace Prize recipient. See previous post

Alison Smale noted in the New York Times (10/14/09) that when interviewing Vaclav Havel, a leader in the non-violent overthrow of communism in Czechoslavakia, he had a question for her. “Was it true, he wanted to know, that President Barack Obama had refused to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington?”

Ms. Smale told the former Czech president that President Obama would meet with the Dalai Lama after the President’s visit to China. His response? “It is only a minor compromise….But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems.”

Maureen Dowd, also of The Times, weighed in with this: “The tyro American president got the Nobel for the mere anticipation that he would provide bold moral leadership for the world at the very moment he was caving to Chinese dictators. Awkward.”

Awkward, indeed. The Dalai Lama, the Nobel Peace Prize, and human rights were forced to take a backseat to a dictatorship. And that’s what the world noticed.

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The Dalai Lama Snub

The Dalai Lama visited the United States earlier this month and was snubbed by the President. The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, who fled China in 1959, has visited the U.S. ten times since 1991. This was the first time he has not met with the president during his visit.

President Obama did not want to meet with the Dalai Lama until after the president’s visit to China in November. John Pomfret reported in the Washington Post (Oct. 5, 2009) that the decision to postpone the meeting “appears to be a part of a strategy to improve ties with China that also includes soft-pedaling criticism of China’s human rights and financial policies.”

But according to Pomfret, the Chinese had already concluded that the meeting would take place in October and were interested only in how the president would receive the Dalai Lama: would it be a private or public visit. Thus, Obama officials needlessly postponed the president’s very important meeting with the exiled leader.

"’We’ve got the classic case of a Western government yet again conceding to Chinese pressure that is imaginary long after that Chinese pressure has ceased to exist,’ said Robert Barnett, a Tibetan expert at Columbia University. ‘The Chinese must be falling over themselves with astonishment at what Western diplomats will give them without being asked.’”

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