By Alan CarubaThere is a revealing story that during a visit to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, just after Harry S. Truman left office, his old friend Eddie Jacobson introduced him saying, "This is the man who helped to create the state of Israel."
Truman, recalling Cyrus the Great, a Persian king in the 6th century B.C. who enabled the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their nation replied, "What do you mean 'helped create'? I am Cyrus! I am Cyrus!" He took pride in recognizing Israel’s new statehood in 1948.
Every President since then has been a friend to the Jewish state, but Barack Hussein Obama is not.
From the first day Obama entered the Oval Office, Obama has made his preferences plain. His first call was to Mamoud Abbas of the Palestinian faction, Fatah. He gave his first television interview to Al Arabia, a Middle East channel. Secretary of State Clinton is discussing a new opening to Syria.
His administration has announced it wants to give nearly a billion dollars to Hamas for the rebuilding of Gaza. It has further announced it wants to provide funding to aid the immigration of Gazan Palestinians to the United States! That’s just what we need, more Islamic fundamentalists who hate America.
Israel’s UN Ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, recently noted that, since the ceasefire on January 18, there have been more than two rockets a day fired into Israel from Gaza; at least twelve on March 1 alone. Even the Saudi foreign minister, Saud Al-Faisal, has pointed out that rebuilding Gaza would be “difficult and foolhardy, so long as peace and security do not prevail there.” Left unsaid is that peace will never prevail there.
Why the Obama administration would ignore the fact that a state of war continues between Israel and Hamas is testimony to its capacity for ignoring facts it does not like. Talk of rebuilding is, indeed, foolhardy. Despite an Israeli unilateral withdrawal in 2005 from Gaza, the Palestinians there have not ceased to wage war. Some 6,000 rockets fired into Israel prior to the military action to suppress the attacks are testimony to their intentions.
Indeed, on March 4th, the Philadelphia Daily News reported that, “After weeks of rebuking Israel for preventing humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, UN officials were forced to cancel deliveries of aid to the Hamas-controlled territory after terrorists broke into a UN Relief and Works Agency warehouse and made off with 800 tons of blankets, food and other basic commodities to sell them to the highest bidders.”
UNRWA has long been a facilitator of Palestinian claims and activities, ensuring that the Palestinians remain the world’s older group of refugees. Those “terrorists” were Palestinians.
Having gotten burned in efforts to have any effect on the upcoming April United Nations Conference on Racism, the Obama administration has signaled that it does not intend to participate in a second orgy of hatred for Israel and the Jews as was the case of the first conference from which the U.S. withdrew its delegation. This announcement will facilitate some 35 other nations that intend to announce their own refusal to participate.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this administration is breaking sharply with sixty years of previous diplomatic and strategic policy with regard to Israel. Why, however, should anyone be surprised, given that Obama spent twenty years attending a Chicago church in which hatred of Jews was preached on a regular basis? Even the leader of the Black Muslims, Louis Farrakhan, declared him the “new Messiah.”
Among the many dizzying changes that Obama has brought to the White House, the diplomatic movement away from Israel has the potential for grievous tragedy in the Middle East, especially if Iran interprets it as a green light to make good on its threat to “wipe Israel off the map”; presumably with one of the nuclear-tipped missiles at its disposal. American policy could force Israel to take preemptive military action against that threat.
This is occurring, too, at a time when Pakistan is under attack by the Taliban seeking to seize control of that nation. Pakistan already has nuclear weapons. It already is a platform from which the Taliban attack neighboring Afghanistan.
The Middle East’s future hangs in the balance. It can either connect with the West or sink back into the ignorance and oppression of past centuries. As such, it will continue to be a staging ground for more attacks on the United States, the West, and our ally, India.
With every passing day, the Obama administration looks like the worst possible answer to America’s financial crisis, the worst possible opponent of its energy needs, and, based on early indicators, making the worst decisions of policy in a dangerous world.
Note: The title comes from Psalm 137
I'm wondering if the over 70% of Jews in this country who voted for Obama are having serious buyer's remorse yet. He gave a bunch of half-baked assurances during the campaign, but see how quickly things changed.
ReplyDeleteBlaming the Jews is just dead wrong. They are barely 3% of the nation's population, whereas easily 90% of America's Afro-American population voted for Obama. You can be pretty sure that America's evangelicals and other Christians did not vote for Obama, based in part on his pro-abortion views.
ReplyDeleteI agree, however, that many American Jews must surely have buyer's remorse as they watch the Obama administration abandon Israel. Many Jews, however, are largely secular and not Zionists. Only when Israel is under attack do they take much notice.