Five Steps for Obama

The Emergency Committee for Israel recommends President Obama take these five steps, if he's interested in being considered a pro-Israel president:

1. When President Obama speaks to the UN General Assembly next week, he should refrain from criticizing Israel, as he has done in the past. Instead, he should deliver a ringing and unqualified defense of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state, denounce efforts to scapegoat and delegitimize Israel, and reassert the deep and unbreakable U.S. commitment to Israel’s security and wellbeing. And he can act in line with this commitment by announcing the United States' departure from the appalling, anti-Israel UN Human Rights Council.

2. President Obama should make clear that there will be real consequences for the Palestinian Authority's plans to unite with Hamas and pursue statehood at the UN in defiance of its agreements with Israel and the United States. He should say there will be no U.S. aid to a unilaterally declared Palestinian state or a Palestinian Authority that includes Hamas.

3. President Obama should revive the pledge he made to the 2008 AIPAC conference that Jerusalem will never be divided, and he should state that it is the policy of the U.S. government that Jerusalem is and will remain Israel's undivided capital.

4. President Obama should reaffirm the 2004 Bush-Sharon letter, which endorsed Israel's need for secure, defensible borders, rejected the so-called Palestinian “right of return,” and acknowledged that Israel should not be expected to withdraw to the pre-1967 armistice lines.

5. President Obama should announce that he plans to visit Israel to reaffirm the U.S.-Israel relationship and to show Israel's antagonists in the region that his administration stands clearly and proudly with Israel.