By Alan Caruba
On Tuesday, March 23rd, when Benyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of the Jewish state of Israel, meets with President Barack Hussein Obama, a Muslim, he will not be able to rely on a compact of support that has existed since President Truman became the first world leader to recognize the new state of Israel in 1947.
The meeting will occur at a time when Americans of all political persuasions are calling for the impeachment of the President; when anger against Congress seethes over the passage of a widely opposed healthcare plan intended to impose socialism and debt on a nation facing a financial crisis that threatens its existence.
It will occur at a time when Israel is threatened with annihilation by Iran and attack by Hezbollah from the north and Hamas from the south, both proxies of Iran.
The previous evening, Netanyahu addressed the largest conference in the history of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). An audience of 8,000 gathered in Washington to hear him address the issues that are critical to both Israel and the United States of America.
“America has no better friend in the community of nations than Israel,” said Netanyahu. Led now by Obama, the unspoken question is whether Israel has a friend in America?
It is the President who sets foreign policy and it is this President who began his first term in office with an address on Al Jazeera, a television channel that serves the Middle East. It is this President who traveled to Cairo to assure Muslims there and around the world that America is not their enemy. It is this President who held out the olive branch to Iran only to have it slapped away.
Israel knows something about negotiating with Muslims. For more than six decades, despite continued attacks by its Arab neighbor states and terror campaigns in its streets, Israel has striven to find peace with them. The Palestinians, an invention of Yassir Arafat, have been maintained as the longest existing group of refugees anywhere in the world by the United Nations.
Imagine, then, the audacity of this administration to demand that the Israelis stop building housing developments in their own capitol city of Jerusalem, backed up by threats to withhold the military means with which Israel can defend itself against Iran and its other enemies in the region.
In his AIPAC address Netanyahu pointed out that the “fanatic hatred of Western civilization predates Israel’s establishment by over one thousand years. Militant Islam does not hate the West because of Israel. It hates Israel because of the West; because it sees Israel as an outpost of freedom that prevents them from overrunning the Middle East.”
“When Israel stands against its enemies, it stands against America’s enemies.”
The United States, through several administrations, has pressured Israel into a series of concessions to achieve peace. The latest such effort was Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and the result was the armed conflict between Fatah and Hamas that drove the former from the area to sanctuary in the West Bank. Following that, Israel suffered thousands of rockets directed against it until it undertook a brief military campaign to suppress them.
“Nothing is rarer in the Middle East than tolerance for the beliefs of others. Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem has ensured that the religious sites of all faiths have been protected. While we cherish our homeland, we also recognize that Palestinians live there as well. We don’t want to govern them. We don’t want to rule them. We want them as neighbors, living in security, dignity and peace.”
I do not know how more clearly the Israeli Prime Minister could have expressed his nation’s policy and aspirations. Twice, however, he said, “Israel must always reserve the right to defend itself.”
When America was attacked on September 11, 2001 by Muslim terrorists, it sent its troops to Afghanistan to drive out al Qaeda and the Taliban. It sent its troops to Iraq, a nation that had previously waged war on Iran and then had invaded Kuwait to depose its dictator and provide its citizens the opportunity for democratic self-rule.
“The founding of Israel did not stop the attacks against the Jews,” said Netanyahu. “It gave the Jews the power to defend themselves against those attacks.”
The continued support of Israel now lies in the hands of President Obama, a Muslim who would have you believe he is a Christian; a man who attended a Chicago church led by an anti-American pastor; a man who Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam called “the messiah.”
Jews and Christians alike in America face a common peril, the march of Islam toward the destruction of their faiths in the West.
Netanyahu’s address to AIPAC was an affirmation of our common beliefs, our common values, and a warning about our common enemy.
© Alan Caruba, 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment