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Obama rehires anti-Israel aide with whom he cut ties in 2008 for meeting with Hamas

Feb 19, 2014 9:57 am By Robert Spencer

MalleyWe tried to tell you. From The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America, by Pamela Geller with Robert Spencer:

Early on in his campaign, Obama named Robert Malley one of his primary foreign policy advisers – to the immediate consternation of Israeli officials. One Israeli security official noted in February 2008: “We are noting with concern some of Obama’s picks as advisers, particularly Robert Malley, who has expressed sympathy to Hamas and Hizbullah and offered accounts of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that don’t jibe with the facts.”

Malley’s sympathy was too much for the dancing Obama of the presidential campaign: he dropped Malley in May 2008 after it came to light that he had met with representatives of the jihad terror group Hamas.

However, this turned out to be only a trial separation, not a divorce. Meeting with an Islamic terrorist group was not a disqualifying resume item for Barack Hussein Obama. Only six months after Obama had dismissed him, the now-President Obama sent Malley to Egypt and Syria. “The tenor of the messages,” explained an aide to Malley, “was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests.”

Malley was a good choice to convey such a message. He has coauthored opinion pieces with a former adviser to Yasir Arafat and has repeatedly called upon the U.S. to hold talks with Hamas. His anti-Israel record was perfect; he even blamed Israel for the failure of the Camp David talks of 2000, when Arafat shocked the world by rejecting an offer to establish a Palestinian state in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem and beginning another bloody intifada instead. When Hamas won the Palestinian elections in the winter of 2006, Malley explained the result as stemming from “anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Arafat’s imprisonment, Israel’s incursions, Western lecturing and, most recently and tellingly, the threat of an aid cut off in the event of an Islamist success.”

Jihadist intransigence and Islamic anti-Semitism? Malley had nothing to say about either.

Malley has continued to defend Hamas and call for its acceptance by the U.S., saying that “a renewed national compact and the return of Hamas to the political fold would upset Israel’s strategy of perpetuating Palestinian geographic and political division.”

“Ex-Clinton aide returns to White House with Persian Gulf brief,” from Haaretz, February 19 (thanks to Jerk Chicken):

Robert Malley, the White House aide who advised President Bill Clinton during his futile effort to broker an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians at Camp David in 2000, is rejoining the White House, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The paper quoted administration officials as saying that Malley will manage the fraying ties between the United States and its allies in the Persian Gulf. As a senior director at the National Security Council, he will help devise American policy from Saudi Arabia to Iran.

Malley, who has been program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, has been something of a lightning rod in a field that can be culturally and ideologically treacherous. In 2008, he was forced to sever his ties as an informal adviser to the Obama presidential campaign when it was reported that he had met with members of Hamas, which the State Department classifies as a terrorist organization.

Malley also came under fire for an article, co-written with Hussein Agha, that argued that some of the blame for the failure of the Camp David talks lay with the Israeli leader at the time, Ehud Barak, and not just with the uncompromising position of the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, which was the conventional wisdom then.

Some right-wing critics accused Malley of showing a persistent anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian bias in his writings. A few even cited his father, the prominent Egyptian-born Jewish journalist, Simon Malley, who had close ties to the Egyptian government.

But Malley was stoutly defended by five former colleagues from the Clinton administration — Sandy Berger, Dennis B. Ross, Martin S. Indyk, Daniel C. Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller — who wrote a letter condemning what they said were “vicious, personal attacks” that were “unfair, inappropriate and wrong.”…

Sandy Berger! A man honest as the day is long!

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Filed Under: Barack Obama Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Veracious_one says

    Feb 19, 2014 at 10:52 am

    Obama continues to show his commitment to the destruction from within of the USA reaffirming the General Strategic Goal of the Muslim Brotherhood

    http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1235

    and Homeland Security has given top secret clearance to the Muslim Brotherhood….

    The Obama agenda is quite clear…

  2. zulu1 says

    Feb 19, 2014 at 10:57 am

    OT

    Muslim leaders issue a fatwa against anyone living on MARS as there is ‘no righteous reason’ to be there

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2562957/Muslim-leaders-issue-fatwa-against-living-MARS-no-righteous-reason-there.html#ixzz2tmfmxVdy
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

  3. Salah says

    Feb 19, 2014 at 1:33 pm

    @Veracious_one

    “The Obama agenda is quite clear…”

    Of couse it is. What I’m unable to understand is the silence and inaction of the once great American people. As an Egyptian myself, I am proud of the determination, action and massive demonstrations that led to the fall of the Morsi regime and his Muslim Brotherhood thugs (supported by Obama).
    Why can’t American do the same is beyond my understanding.

    http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-end-of-muslim-brotherhood.html

  4. Brian C. Hoff says

    Feb 19, 2014 at 2:28 pm

    So Robert nobody have the right to say anything bad about Israel and you donot believe in free speech.

  5. gravenimage says

    Feb 19, 2014 at 3:03 pm

    “Brian C. Hoff” wrote:

    So Robert nobody have (sic) the right to say anything bad about Israel and you donot (sic) believe in free speech.
    ………………………………..

    What absolute crap from “DefenderofIslam”. Robert Malley was not criticizing Israel; he was urging ties with a Jihad terror group committed to the violent destruction of Israel and genocide of the Jews.

    Only a pious Muslim like “DefenderofIslam” would consider this appropriate for an American foreign policy advisor.

    Seventy-five years ago, he would have cheer-led an advocate for Fascism.

    This last is not just speculation, either—”DefenderofIslam” regularly chimes in here with apologia for the Nazis and condemnation for supposed American and British “warmongering”.

  6. BIll C. says

    Feb 19, 2014 at 3:13 pm

    Brian C. Hoff wrote:

    “So (comma belongs here), Robert (also here), nobody have (has, you moron) the right to say anything bad about Israel and you donot (make up your mind: don’t or do not, you illiterate buffoon)…”

    Honest to God, one would think these third-worlders would at least learn how to proof their sentences before posting their nonsense…

  7. 23 says

    Feb 19, 2014 at 4:02 pm

    Hey @Salah

    I’m also an egyptian, a coptic christian. The reason the egyptians we’re able to reclaim the gov after morsi’s tyranny is because we had the same rage that we used to take down Mubarak (with Americas help with the hope to replace Mubarak with the MB) we took down morsi all the same. The Americans secretly conspired against the Egyptian people to set up the MB, we but didn’t let it happen. As much as the mainstream media denied the existence of the largest protest in history, that is what forced him to go down [along with Sisi’s support thankfully]. For us to reach that pt it took 30 yrs under mubarak, 30 yrs of the most populous middle eastern country in poverty. The Americans have lost hope in politics, im sure atleast 50% of the country has no idea what the branches of government are even. And they are not going to do mass disobedience like the Egyptians did because of all the mass propoganda fed to them by the mainstream media. Obama is hip and cool, so is Hilary. It’s sad to see how much power and influence America is losing and nobody even talking about it.

  8. Wellington says

    Feb 19, 2014 at 4:49 pm

    Brian C. Hoff: To assert, as you did, that Robert Spencer does not believe in free speech is risible since there is no one I know of who believes in free speech more than does Robert Spencer and he has put his life on the line for it. But, in typical Muslim-think mode, you see white as black, freedom as tyranny, totalitarianism (read Islam here) as enlightenment, down is up, et al. Ah, Islam does terrible things to the mind. You could be Exhibit #1 here.

  9. Salah says

    Feb 19, 2014 at 8:25 pm

    @23

    Indeed, it was the biggest demonstration in history. I’m sure Christians in Egypt are in a much better situation now than ever before. Please back me up, many JW commentators are unable to understand this obvious fact.
    Thank you.

  10. LT COL HOWARD says

    Feb 20, 2014 at 3:16 am

    APPOINTMENT OF ROBERT MALLEY TO SENIOR POSITION AT NSC FULFILLS PRES. OBAMA’S PRE-ELECTION CHICAGO PLEDGES TO RASHID KHALIDI AND ALI ABUNIMAH
    2-19-14
    At a time when Saudi Arabia and other US allies in the region should be worried that the U.S. has turned its back on them as part of President Obama’s misguided pursuit of détente with Iran, the president has called back to service Robert Malley, one of the foremost enemies of Saudi Arabia, the current regime in Egypt, the current regime in Jordan, and Israel.
    Malley’s joining the NSC removes any remaining doubt about where Obama’s foreign policy is heading.
    His prior actions, giving an explicit back-channel green light to terrorists should have been enough to keep him out of any administration , But,by putting him in charge of relations with the Gulf states, President Obama is also demonstrating that he is determined to continue a policy of downgrading relations with traditional allies in favor of better relations with Iran and other radicals.
    The Saudis have many reason to worry. including the administration’s failure to act in Syria, where Iran’s ally Bashar Assad appears to be winning his war to hold on to power. The Saudis are right to dismiss the president’s attempts to reassure them on Iran.
    Israel has cause for concern about the US’s headlong rush to embrace Iran.
    The appointment of Robert Malley is a clear sign sign of just how far President Obama has strayed from his campaign pledges on the Middle East. The U.S. thrust toward appeasement of radical Islamists is no longer a matter of speculation but a fact. Any constraints on administration policies based on concern about alienating America’s allies are now a thing of the past.
    Now that he has appointed a longtime advocate of embracing America’s foes, it’s not likely that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and many other US allies in the middle East will feel any better about U.S. policy.

  11. gravenimage says

    Feb 20, 2014 at 8:45 pm

    LT COL HOWARD, the hideous Shari’ah state of Saudi Arabia is *no* ally of the United States and the West. They are, in fact, major funders of violent Da’wa and of Jihad terrorism.

    Many of the current US policies are indeed suicidal when it comes to appeasing Islam—but not because they are discomfiting our “ally” Saudi Arabia. Good grief.

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