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Ari Fleischer Accuses Obama of Bullying Israel

The former White House press secretary for the Bush administration has assailed President Obama for “pushing Israel around” and forcing the Jewish state to “make harmful, unwise concessions.”

Addressing a group of dual Israeli-U.S. citizens Tuesday night at a get-out-the-vote event in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Mishkenot Sha’ananim, Ari Fleischer questioned Obama’s commitment to Israel.

“I do not ever want to have a president in the Oval Office who will make us scratch our heads and wonder, ‘does he or does he not have Israel’s back,’” said Fleischer, alluding to President’s Obama’s pledge, last March, at the AIPAC Conference in Washington. “I don’t want to have a president in the Oval Office who makes me wonder what next will he do to put pressure on Israel and make Israel make harmful, unwise concessions.”

At Tuesday night’s sparsely attended event, sponsored by relatively new iVoteIsrael organization, Fleischer urged a mostly senior crowd of about 80 people to register to vote, coming on a day two leading U.S. polls showed Obama and his Republican challenger locked in a dead heat.

“You’re the size of Dayton, Ohio. You’re the size of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida,” Fleischer told the Israeli residents gathered. “You’re a longer plane trip from New York from those places, but you’re equally important.”

For more, go to Haaretz.com

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