Posted tagged ‘Moral equivalence’

« WarSclerotic home page
Newer Entries »

The U.S. President is Not Omnipotent

December 28, 2014

The U.S. President is Not Omnipotent, Algemeiner, December 28, 2014. This article was originally published by Israel Hayom.

full-senate-300x200The United States Senate.

Will the 114th Congress follow in his footsteps, or will it abdicate its constitutional responsibilities?

Congress has often abdicated its constitutional power in the area of foreign policy, failing to fully leverage the power of the purse: funding, defunding and “fencing.”

***************

White House and State Department officials contend that, irrespective of Congress, President Barack Obama can apply effective diplomatic, commercial and national security pressure and coerce Israel to partition Jerusalem and retreat from Judea and Samaria to the 9-15 mile-wide pre-1967 sliver, surrounded by the violently turbulent and unpredictable Arab street.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro recently voiced this inaccurate underestimation of the power of Congress — which has traditionally opposed pressure on Israel, echoing the sentiments of most constituents — saying, “What is unmistakable about our foreign policy system is that the Constitution provides the president with the largest share of power.”

The assertion that U.S. foreign policy and national security are shaped by presidential omnipotence can be refuted by the U.S. Constitution as well as recent precedents. The Constitution was created by the Founding Fathers, who were determined to limit the power of government and preclude the possibility of executive dictatorship. They were apprehensive of potential presidential excesses and encroachment, and therefore assigned the formulation of foreign policy and national security to both Congress and the president. Obviously, the coalescing of policy between 535 legislators constitutes a severe disadvantage for the legislature.

According to the Congressional Quarterly, the U.S. Constitution rectified the mistakes of its predecessor, the Articles of Confederation, upgrading the role of Congress to the primary branch of the U.S. government. “Hence, the first article of the Constitution is dedicated to Congress. The powers, structure, and procedures of the national legislature are outlined in considerable detail in the Constitution, unlike those of the presidency and the judiciary.”

Unlike all other Western democracies — where the executive branch of government dominates the legislature, especially in the area of international relations and defense — the U.S. Constitution laid the foundation for the world’s most powerful legislature, and for an inherent power struggle over the making of foreign policy between the legislature and the executive, two independent, co-equal and co-determining branches of government. Moreover, while the president is the commander in chief, presidential clout depends largely on congressional authorization and appropriation in a system of separation of powers and checks and balances, especially in the areas of sanctions, foreign aid, military assistance, trade agreements, treaty ratification, appointment confirmation and all spending.

Congressional power has been dramatically bolstered since the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair and globalization, which have enhanced the involvement of most legislators in international issues, upgraded the oversight capabilities of Congress, dramatically elevated the quality and quantity of some 15,000(!) Capitol Hill staffers and have restrained the presidency.

However, Congress has often abdicated its constitutional power in the area of foreign policy, failing to fully leverage the power of the purse: funding, defunding and “fencing.” Legislators prefer to focus on domestic issues, which represent their constituents’ primary concerns and therefore determine their re-electability. Hence, they usually allow the president to take the lead in the initiation and implementation of foreign and national security policies, unless the president abuses their trust, outrageously usurping power, violating the law, assuming an overly imperial posture, pursuing strikingly failed policies, or dramatically departing from national consensus (e.g., the deeply rooted, bipartisan commitment to the Jewish state). Then, Congress reveals impressive muscle as befits a legislature, which is the most authentic reflection of the American people, unrestrained by design, deriving its power from the constituent and not from party leadership or the president, true to the notion that “the president proposes, Congress disposes.”

For example:

  • On August 1, 2014, Democratic senators forced Obama to separate the $225 million funding of Iron Dome batteries from the highly controversial $2.7 billion immigration and border security bill.
  • Since 1982 the Senate has repeatedly refused to ratify the Convention on the Law of the Sea, and since 1999 it has rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
  • The January 2013 defense authorization bill tightened restrictions on the transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo to the U.S. In May 2009, Majority Leader Harry Reid foiled Obama’s attempt to close down the detention camp.
  • On February 17, 2011, Obama reluctantly vetoed a U.N. Security Council condemnation of Israel’s settlement policy, due to bipartisan congressional pressure.
  • In September 2012, a $450 million cash transfer to the Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt was blocked by Congress.
  • The 2012 budget cut into Obama’s foreign aid spending request by more than $8 billion.
  • In 2009, bipartisan congressional opposition prevented the appointment of Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council.
  • In 1990-1992, Congress approved a series of amendments, expanding U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation to unprecedented levels despite presidential opposition.
  • In 1990, President George H. W. Bush failed in his attempt to cut Israel’s foreign aid by 5 percent due to congressional opposition.
  • In January 1975, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was signed into law, in defiance of the president.
  • Congress ended U.S. military involvement in Vietnam (the 1973 Eagleton, Cooper and Church Amendments), Angola (the 1976 Clark Amendment) and Nicaragua (the 1982-1984 Boland Amendments).
  • In 1991, Senator Daniel Inouye fended off administration pressure to withdraw an amendment to upgrade the port of Haifa facilities for the Sixth Fleet: “According to the U.S. Constitution, the legislature supervises the executive, not vice versa.”

Will the 114th Congress follow in his footsteps, or will it abdicate its constitutional responsibilities?

Categories: Foreign policy, Ideology, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish occupation of Israel, Middle East, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Obama, Peace process, Political correctness, Settlements, Two state solution, U.S. Congress
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

Is there a solution?

December 26, 2014

Is there a solution? Israel Hayom, Dror Eydar, December 26, 2014

(For European nations, America and others, abortive efforts to bring “peace” among Israel and warring Islamic factions provide welcome distractions from difficulties elsewhere which are even less tractable and more damaging to them. — DM)

[N]ot even a utopian-style peace treaty will end the fight against Israel that is being waged by Europe and the global left wing (and here as well, to some degree). The dozens of organizations that have been established to take away the Jews’ right to their own land (for some reason, these groups are known as “human-rights organizations”; after all, you know, we Jews have no human rights) will no longer show any interest in the cruel dictatorship that they helped set up next door. Instead, they will aim their heavy artillery against Israeli society, which they will accuse of racism for being an exclusive state for the Jewish ethnic group instead of a “state of all its citizens,” which is actually code for “a state of all its nationalities.”

*****************

1. The upcoming elections have plunged Israel into a wartime atmosphere, and a good deal of blame is being thrown about. Each side, instead of looking to its own misdeeds, is making accusations against the other. They are not saying, “We have sinned,” but rather, “You have sinned.”

Here, too, the accusations are meant to generate shallow headlines rather than addressing deep issues. This is a big mistake. Despite the piles of mud and refuse that are customarily dumped onto the average Israeli, the average Israeli is generally well aware of what is going on. They understand ideology and vision.

On the political plane, one gets the impression that the discourse, at least on the Left, is still stuck in the 1980s, before the great experiments that the Oslo Accords brought upon us — before Hamas, before Islamic State, before the Middle East fell to pieces. What can Tzipi Livni accomplish with the Palestinians that she hasn’t done over the past two years, when she was in charge of the talks with them? Did she bring any sort of agreement to the government that it turned down? If so, let her tell us.

But she knows that there is nobody to talk to on the other side. They never had the slightest desire to end the conflict with the Jews. I would be glad to hear any Arab leader name his final demands — the ones for which, if they were fulfilled, he would sign on the dotted line that the conflict was over and state that he had no further claims. Are there any volunteers?

We have not even mentioned Jerusalem or the refugees or recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. The demand that our neighbors recognize Israel as the national home of the Jewish people was not for us, but for them. That is the litmus test of the integrity of their intentions. Do they recognize the right of Jews to any part of the historical Land of Israel? We know that any Arab leader who grants such recognition can expect an uncomfortable death.

That is the reason for the effort to anchor the Jewish nature of the State of Israel in a Basic Law. It is because not even a utopian-style peace treaty will end the fight against Israel that is being waged by Europe and the global left wing (and here as well, to some degree). The dozens of organizations that have been established to take away the Jews’ right to their own land (for some reason, these groups are known as “human-rights organizations”; after all, you know, we Jews have no human rights) will no longer show any interest in the cruel dictatorship that they helped set up next door. Instead, they will aim their heavy artillery against Israeli society, which they will accuse of racism for being an exclusive state for the Jewish ethnic group instead of a “state of all its citizens,” which is actually code for “a state of all its nationalities.”

2. As we look on, Europe is falling like a ripe fruit at the feet of the radical Islam sweeping over it. The more terrorism conquers the streets of Europe, the greater the Europeans’ desire will be to pay the terrorists a ransom in exchange for being left in peace, unmolested. As history has taught us, the ransom will be the Jews. The ludicrous statements by the European parliaments about recognizing the Palestinian state show the blindness of a society in decline that lost its basic instincts long ago. The Europeans care nothing about the Palestinians, whom they have doomed to a life of misery and suffering under oppressive regimes that are among the worst in the world, where there is no such thing as basic human rights.

The Palestinians are the last thing that the Europeans care about, just as they care nothing about the atrocities being perpetrated in Syria, Iraq or Africa. The Europeans are recognizing the Palestinian state not because they have any desire to improve our neighbors’ situation, but because they have a problem with the Jews. They always did.

Ironically, the return to Zion made the Jewish problem worse because it gave the Jews an independent political living space — which the Europeans find completely unacceptable. That is also the reason why there are dozens of European organizations in this region, and why they funnel hundreds of millions of euros supposedly to help the Palestinians, but actually in efforts to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state. The “peace process” is just one more tool in that mechanism.

3. The talk of a “diplomatic agreement” is also a media ransom, lip-service paid by politicians who seek the sponsorship of the media party. Avigdor Lieberman is quite familiar with this work.

“We must reach a diplomatic agreement,” he said in a “closed-door conference,” and received flattering headlines right away. “What is going on today is that they are doing nothing; there is a status quo. The initiative must be a comprehensive regional agreement.”

Have we not heard those empty phrases a thousand times already? Have we not tried to reach a political agreement in all kinds of ways? Has Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not gotten into trouble with his own camp over it? Did he not freeze construction in Judea and Samaria for ten months? And, before him, did Ehud Olmert not offer our neighbors what even Lieberman (I hope) would never dare offer?

And what about the two Yisrael Beytenu princes, Uzi Landau and Yair Shamir? Where are they? Why are they not responding to their party chairman’s heretical statements? After all, were they not the ones who gave Lieberman the stamp of approval to be a right-wing party? More evidence of Lieberman’s desertion to the Left is his use of the well-known leftist scare tactic terminology: “a political tsunami.” But what burst out this week was more of a police tsunami against the members of Yisrael Beytenu. Now that the leader has adopted the Orwellian language of peace and speaks the language of the media party, maybe they will cut him some slack.

4. In the end, the dispute between most of the Right and most of the Left boils down to one question: Do we believe the Palestinians or not? Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has declared many times that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and he specifically named 6 million, with all its symbolism, as the number of Palestinians who expect their demand for the right of return to be fulfilled. Abbas is currently being kept alive by the Israeli army, which is protecting him as they would a delicate flower from attacks by the street, which supports Hamas. This does not stop the Palestinians from going all over the world, accusing us of every possible atrocity.

The purpose of their action is to gain the maximum amount of territory at the minimum price — actually, for no price at all — but not to establish a tiny statelet. The past hundred years have taught us that what unites Arab-Palestinians is not the desire to improve their own living conditions, but to destroy the Jews’ lives. What more has to happen for us to believe what they say? In the meantime, they are sticking close to us so that we will protect them against Islamic State.

5. So what is the solution? First, whoever said that there was a solution? Second, if we tried and did not succeed, maybe we ought to leave something for future generations to accomplish. You do not really believe the well-known chorus of lamentation that things are bad here and that the country is “stuck.”

We have succeeded quite well, thank God, considering the fact that only one of our hands is engaged in construction, development and cultural work, since the other is busy with self-defense. Where were we just 70 years ago, in 1944 — and where are we now? Let us put things in perspective.

Categories: Elections in Israel, Europe, Foreign policy, Human rights, Israel, Jews, Leftists, Moral equivalence
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Why is Israel blamed for evil while Islamic nations are not?

December 21, 2014

Why is Israel blamed for evil while Islamic nations are not? Dan Miller’s Blog, December 21, 2014

Blaming Israel for evil, rather than her many Islamic neighbors and enemies is, despite the views of Obama and His colleagues, contrary to American values. Doing so is based on Jew hatred, envy of success, and the multicultural absurdity that no culture or religion is better or worse than any other.

As I argued most recently here and here, Israel is fighting for her survival against regimes that want her to cease to exist because she is Jewish, not Islamic, and her government is free and democratic, not dictatorial. She is, therefore, an outsider in the Middle East.

This video identifies many of the reasons why Israel is viewed harshly by other Western civilizations while Islamic nations, which are neither free nor democratic, are viewed favorably.

I suspect that Dr. Ben Carson, who recently visited Israel and was much impressed, would agree with the points made in the video.

Although the U.S. remains Israel’s closest and most important ally, Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have little personal chemistry and have frequently clashed. The U.S. has been outspoken in its criticism of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — captured areas claimed by the Palestinians as parts of a future state. At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has made numerous trips to the region and elsewhere to try to broker a peace deal.

Carson said the criticism of the settlements has been exaggerated, and he asserted that Palestinian hostility toward Israel is what is preventing peace in the region. Of Netanyahu, Carson said, “I think he’s a great leader in a difficult time.” [Emphasis added.]

Categories: Antisemitism, Dr. Ben Carson, Foreign policy, Freedom, Islam, Israel, Middle East, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Obama, Palestinians, Peace process
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 2 Comments

The Muslim Council of Britain on the Peshawar Massacre

December 20, 2014

The Muslim Council of Britain on the Peshawar Massacre, American Thinker, Paul Austin Murphy, December 20, 2014

(Islam is taqiyya all the way down. Examples of the same sorts of Islamic distortion and public acceptance of them as true are commonplace and guide foreign policy in the United States of Obama and Europe. — DM)

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) seems to spend almost its entire time publishing apologies for Islamic slaughter, killing, terrorism, violence, misogyny, sexual-grooming gangs, and so on. And it usually does so with Islamic taqiyya: lies, prevarications, evasiveness, equivocations, ambiguity, deceit, dishonesty, obfuscation, deception, dissembling and dissimulation (all used to advance and/or protect Islam).

Predictably, in the aftermath of the Islamic slaughter in Peshawar, the MCB has given its own response to the event in a very short piece entitled, ‘A Massacre of Children: An Ummah in Shock’. And equally predictably, it quotes the one quote that Muslims always use in such circumstances.

Basically, you hear this passage all the time at Interfaith meetings, in the Guardian, on the BBC, etc. Try Googling the phrase and you’ll get literally dozens of links; almost all will be from Muslim or interfaith groups.

This is a passage from the Koran which even many non-Muslims will recognize. The MCB version goes:

“Whosoever kills a human being, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whosoever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.”

This quote is a perfect and despicable example of Islamic taqiyya and it is so for many reasons.

What surprises me, however, is that — after the deceitful nature of this passage has been demonstrated so many times and in so many different places — Muslims and Islamophiles are still using it. The MCB, for example, must think its non-Muslim supporters/readers are either stupid or even (fellow) liars.

This following is the MCB’s lead-up to its citation:

“While it is very hard to find the words to respond to the tragedy before us, I can only quote a verse from the Koran in which it says…”

And then we have the passage itself:

“Whosoever kills a human being, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whosoever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.”

(The passage is verse 32 of sura/chapter 5.)

Virtually no religion or ideology believes or accepts what is purported to be the meaning of that Koranic statement. In order to fully accept it, the religion or ideology concerned would have to be fully pacifist in nature (e.g., Jainism or Quakerism); which makes its use by Muslims all the more ironic or even somewhat sick.

This passage — at least within a MCB and indeed Islamic context — is at best meaningless (a mere soundbite) and at worse a piece of gross deceit.

The relevant point is that the MCB has cynically removed the middle clause knowing full well that it more or less negates the surrounding clauses. After all, the erased central clause isn’t long: it’s a mere ten words in length. This, I suggest, is classic Islamic taqiyya or deceit. And no Islamic organization does that better than the Muslim Council of Britain.

Here’s the passage in full:

“… We ordained for the Children of Israel that if anyone slew a person – unless it be for murder or spreading mischief in the land [my italics] – it would be as if he slew the whole people.”

Immediately after that, we have:

“And if anyone saved a life, it would be as he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them our messengers with clear signs, yet even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.”

It can be seen that the opening clause is also always deleted by Muslims when they quote it at non-Muslims. That is, for a while I didn’t even know — because of the deliberate misquotations from Muslims (or their use of Kitman) — that the passage begins with the clause: “We [i.e., Allah] ordained for the Children of Israel…” That is followed by: “…. that if anyone slew a person…”.

So not only is this supposedly peaceful — or even pacifist — passage not aimed at Muslims in the first place (it was aimed at Jews), on only a tiny bit of analysis it can be seen not to be very peaceful or positive in the first place!

(This well-used passage is from Jewish scripture (Mishnah, Sanhedrin: 4:5) anyway. It was stolen from Jewish sources by Muhammad and his immediate followers (something they often did).

In addition, the passage doesn’t appear to have been abrogated like so many other “peaceful verses” in that book. Perhaps this is so precisely because of the surgically removed central clause.)

Here’s another equally-positive translation used by Muslim:

“That whosoever killed a human being, it shall be deemed as though he had killed all mankind.”

The actual version (again) is:

“That whosoever killed a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy [sometimes ‘mischief’] in the land, shall be deemed as though he had killed all mankind…”

This, of course, prompts the question: What would be deemed as “villainy” by Muslims?

What about what the Taliban has claimed about the Pakistani Army and others?

Anyway, here’s a list of what has been — and still is — classed as “villainy in the land” by millions of Muslims:

apostasy, churches, the possession of Bibles, homosexuality, preaching a religion other than Islam, all criticism of Islam, Muhammad, the Koran, not going to the mosque, sex outside marriage, atheism, Zionism, materialist philosophies and political views, secularism… basically anything non-Islamic and certainly everything anti-Islamic.

Let’s not mess about here.

Millions of Muslims today believe the very existence of people who aren’t Muslims — or lands that aren’t Islamic — are examples of “villainy in the land”.

 

Categories: Fairy tales, Foreign policy, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Jews, Middle East, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 4 Comments

Jihadists Using Liberalism Against Itself

December 19, 2014

Jihadists Using Liberalism Against Itself, Commentary Magazine, , December 19, 2014

This of course is the war that Israel has been fighting for years, ever since its creation in fact. Most recently there have been feverish blood libels about the IDF harvesting Palestinian organs, of summary executions during the 2010 flotilla incident, and of a supposed massacre and mass graves in Jenin during the Second Intifada. With all of these accusations Israel is obliged to investigate the conduct of its military, and so it does. That was what was so outrageous about the UN’s Goldstone investigation and indeed the subsequent attempt to have a Goldstone II following the war in Gaza this summer. Such international inquiries are only supposed to be mandated where a state has failed to adequately investigate itself first–but in Israel’s case the international community simply steps in and puts on its own investigation regardless, usually with the conclusion having been written at the outset.

The problem is that while many of them may now realize that the Islamists their armies encounter are unreasonable fanatics, they are equally convinced that the Islamists Israel faces have a legitimate grievance and a just cause.

********************

While the West’s enemies become ever more unrestrained in the barbaric nature of their attacks, Islamist militants are increasingly pursuing tactics aimed at limiting what the West can do in its own defense. As a recent case in Britain has demonstrated, jihadists and their supporters are more than happy to fabricate the most outlandish allegations in an often successful attempt to hinder the fight against them. This is the kind of thing that Israel has been having to deal with for decades, and at some point other Western states need to comprehend that they are all up against the same enemy, one which is willing to employ the same underhanded tactics against all of us.

In May 2004, British troops became embroiled in a three-hour gun battle with insurgents of the Mahdi Army at Al Amara, Iraq. Following the battle it was alleged that British soldiers tortured, executed, and then mutilated the bodies of twenty Iraqi detainees. These accusations have dragged on for a decade now and in response the UK government commissioned the al-Sweady Inquiry, an investigation which has cost the British taxpayer almost $49 million, with the accusers having been able to claim financial assistance from the British state to fund their case against it.

And what did the tribunal discover? The al-Sweady Inquiry has stated unequivocally that the allegations made against the British soldiers are “without foundation,” and that those making these accusations had given evidence that was “unprincipled in the extreme” and “wholly without regard for the truth.”

So after years of investigation, and tens of millions in public money spent (much of it having been used to assist those bringing claims against the British army), the soldiers have at long last had their names cleared while the jihadi militants have been exposed as liars. Hardly surprising; it’s simply delusional to imagine that those who are so unprincipled as to use terrorism to achieve their aims would suddenly become upstanding and honest witnesses once stood before a war-crimes investigation. What these people are, however, is mendacious and calculating in the extreme, and regardless of what al-Sweady may have concluded, by using public money to advance these outrageous allegations the jihadists have won by hijacking the West’s liberalism and respect for the rule of law for their own advantage.

Quite apart from the tremendous financial cost that this investigation and many more like it have carried, the decade that these allegations circulated for have been an outstanding public-relations victory for the insurgents. The media–large parts of which were eager to see Western forces fail in Iraq and Afghanistan–were all too ready to believe the stories spun by the militants and to think the worst of our soldiers. By parroting these lies ad nauseam, the Western media assisted the militants in undermining public morale at home, eroding belief in the rightness of the cause we were fighting for and convincing many that intervention overseas is rarely a defensible or admirable undertaking. In Europe particularly, these tales provide the recruiting fodder that radicalizes young Muslims into believing that their host societies are evil and that they too must join the war against the West. If nothing else, the constant fear of these damaging war crimes allegations persuade Western governments and militaries to be still more restrained in the tactics that they feel able to use in the increasingly muted attempt to counter our enemies.

This of course is the war that Israel has been fighting for years, ever since its creation in fact. Most recently there have been feverish blood libels about the IDF harvesting Palestinian organs, of summary executions during the 2010 flotilla incident, and of a supposed massacre and mass graves in Jenin during the Second Intifada. With all of these accusations Israel is obliged to investigate the conduct of its military, and so it does. That was what was so outrageous about the UN’s Goldstone investigation and indeed the subsequent attempt to have a Goldstone II following the war in Gaza this summer. Such international inquiries are only supposed to be mandated where a state has failed to adequately investigate itself first–but in Israel’s case the international community simply steps in and puts on its own investigation regardless, usually with the conclusion having been written at the outset.

Israel, like Britain and America, does undertake costly and time-consuming investigations where there are allegations of war crimes. But as we have seen so many times before, within hours the international media will have beamed the most tarnishing accusations against Israel around the world several times over. Months later when investigators have established the allegations as baseless, no one is listening anymore and the damage is done.

The debacle of the al-Sweady Inquiry has naturally caused some outrage in Britain, and so one hopes that some lessons will have been learned. But if observers have been reminded that jihadists are readily prepared to use war crimes accusations as a second front in the war against the West, they should also recognize the same tactic when they see it being deployed against Israel. The problem is that while many of them may now realize that the Islamists their armies encounter are unreasonable fanatics, they are equally convinced that the Islamists Israel faces have a legitimate grievance and a just cause.

Categories: Europe, Fairy tales, Foreign policy, Freedom, Ideology, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Israel, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Palestinians
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Geert Wilders Was Right

December 19, 2014

Geert Wilders Was Right, Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, December 19,2014

“Hate Speech” was invented in the Kremlin of the USSR by political operatives who saw that it could be used effectively against anyone who did not agree with you, whom you wanted to silence.

It would seem indispensable for all people who want to defend their liberty to take a stand against criminal and violent people who aim to destroy or damage their societies. If those people are extremist Muslims, why should they be exempt? And if they are not extremist Muslims, why should they not be protected from the same threats and violence that menace us?

Ironically, however, it is not the violent Islamic teachings inspiring these crimes that are questioned, criticized — or prosecuted — as hate speech on major media outlets or among political circles. It is, instead, the victims of these teachings: among others, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lars Hedegaard, Susanne Winter, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, Imran Firasat, and Geert Wilders.

What Geert Wilders does cannot be called hate speech. It is legitimate a struggle, if occasionally imperfect, to protect the liberties of all of us in the face of unending threats and attacks, most recently from Islamic extremists.

Geert Wilders is not an extremist of any kind. He is a democrat who defends Western values, the most important of which are liberty and life. We should not prosecute Wilders. We should thank him for sacrificing his life to defend us — and defend him back.

What a week. In an Australian café, a self-declared jihadi seized at least 17 hostages, two of whom were killed; and in Pakistan, 148 people, including 132 children, were massacred by the same branch of the Taliban that tried to murder Mala Yousafzai to prevent her from being educated.

Whether the terrorist in Australia acted alone or had an organization behind him is irrelevant. It did not stop him from killing two hostages. The manager of the Lindt cafe, 34-year-old Tori Johnson, and a 38-year-old lawyer and mother of three, Katrina Dawson, lost their lives.

What we have in both slaughters are individuals motivated by the same ideology, Islamism, and committing attacks against innocent civilians. More alarming is that many people apparently seem not to want to talk about the motivations, apart from mental illness, behind both attacks: Islamic ideology. Perhaps they fear being exposed to the same violence one day, or perhaps they fear jeopardizing business deals or votes. There may also be the temptation to run away from reality, in the hope that the more you deny it, the farther you are from it.

The ideology that flew planes into the World Trade Center in the U.S. and that took people hostage in Australia and that murdered over a hundred schoolchildren is one and the same. Without discussing it — what is there in or about it drives people to violence and hatred? — violent attacks, threats and intimidation are here to stay.

A wise and courageous man in Europe, Geert Wilders, has been speaking out about these truths for years — and has been made to pay a huge price for it. When the filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered in 2004 over his short film, Fitna [ordeal], the paper on the knife in his back promised that Wilders (and Ayaan Hirsi Ali) would be next. Wilders lives in a state-provided house with high security; for his defense of freedom, he has received countless death threats and has been called “a hate mongering racist,” “a bigot,” “an extremist” and other names intended not to flatter. He is the founder and leader of the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom (PVV), ranked number one in the polls; the creator of the film Fitna, and also author of the book, Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me.

Wilders warned Australia. He has devoted his life to warning us all. In a February 2014 television interview, he spoke to Australians about Islamism:

“Look how in societies today where Islam is dominant and prominent, how any non-Islamic person, whether it’s a Christian or an apostate or a woman or a critical journalist, how they are treated. This is in a very bad way, often with the death penalty or imprisonment or all those kind of terrible things.”

846Geert Wilders warns Australians about the dangers posed by Islamism, multiculturalism and mass immigration, on ABC Lateline, Feb. 13, 2014.

Due to an enormous influx of people from Islamic countries in the last decades, he continued, Dutch society has changed and worsened, so that,

“unfortunately non-Western immigrants, often Muslims, are over-represented in statistics of crime, of dependency on social benefits, that we have honor killings, that we have genital mutilation, that we have streets where women with headscarves and burqas are not the exception any more. And that it’s getting worse… What I’m trying to do when I visit your beautiful country, Australia, is warn Australians that even though it might not be the case today, learn from the mistakes that we made in Europe: be vigilant and look at Islam for what it really is. Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a totalitarian ideology. The best example is that if any person, any Muslim wants to leave Islam, then the penalty is death. It is not even allowed to leave it.”

Wilders made clear that he was not threatening or attacking anyone for a religious or ethnic identity:

“I have nothing against the people. I have nothing against the Indonesian people or the Arab people or the Muslim people. I’m talking about the ideology. And indeed, as long as a country has a culture, a religion, an ideology where Islam is dominant, it will never be a democracy. It’s also happening in Indonesia. Look at how they treat Christians in Indonesia or how they treat Christians in any other country where Islam is dominant.”

…

“Why is it not possible to build a church in Saudi Arabia, where, as we in the Netherlands, have almost 500 mosques being built; why is it not possible to buy or sell a Bible in any Muslim or most of the Muslim countries, whereas we can buy a Koran here on every street corner? This is the exact example of the fact that Islam is an intolerant society.”

Wilders emphasized that there is no moderate or non-moderate Islam, but there are moderate and non-moderate Muslims:

“As a matter of fact, the majority of the Muslims living in our society are moderate people. But don’t make the mistake that even though there are moderate and radical Muslims that there is a moderate or a radical Islam. There is only one Islam, and that is a totalitarian ideology that has no room for anything but Islam. You see it once again in any country in the world where Islam is dominant.”

Wilders’s critics claim he is a bigot who hates all Muslims and wants to drive all of them out of Western countries, regardless of who they really are and what they do. Those claims are completely false.

Wilders has made it clear countless times that what he opposes is Islamic violence and totalitarianism, and that he has no problem with Muslims who are peaceful and law-abiding. The problem, he says, emerges when Muslims engage in violence or criminal acts, or try to impose their religious beliefs on non-Muslims, or attack or threaten those who do not agree with them, or try to establish the parallel legal system of sharia courts in their neighborhoods, or rape (with our without a gang) European girls, and so on.

“I believe that Muslims that are in our society today are of course equal as anybody else, as long as they adhere to our laws, to our constitution, to our values. And as long as they do not cross this red line — if they commit crimes, if they start beating up women, if they start the genital mutilation, if they start to commit other crimes and honor killings as they unfortunately do in Western Europe, many times — if they do that, I believe we should expel them, the same day if possible, from our country.”

“So to stop the immigration to our societies — because we have had more than enough Islam in our societies — and people who are here and who are behaving according to our laws and our constitutions are happy to stay, are equal to anybody else, or even want to help them with the better education, but if they cross the line of crime, start acting according to Sharia law, there will be no place for them in our free societies….”

It would seem indispensable for all people who want to defend their liberty to take a stand against criminal and violent people who aim to destroy or damage their societies. If those people are extremist Muslims, why they should be exempt? And if they are not extremist Muslims, why should they be not protected from the same threats and violence that menace us?

In September 2010, an Australian Islamic fundamentalist preacher, Feiz Mohammad, in an internet chat room incited his Muslim followers to behead Wilders.

Ironically, however, it is not the violent Islamic teachings inspiring these crimes that are questioned or criticized — or prosecuted — on major media outlets or among political circles. It is, instead, the victims of these teachings: among others, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Lars Hedegaard, Susanne Winter, Elisabeth Sabaditsch Wolf, Imran Firasat, and Geert Wilders. They are threatened by Muslims, accused by progressives of being “extremists,” interrogated by authorities, and even sued and made to stand trial.

Wilders lives in a state-provided house, outfitted to be bulletproof, and heavily guarded by police. He is driven from his home to his parliament office in an armored police vehicle, has round-the-clock bodyguards, and wears a bulletproof vest. “I am in jail, he says, “and they are walking around free.”

The life Wilders is forced to lead stands as proof that there is something terribly wrong with the current Western stand toward Islamic terrorism and “hate speech.” “Hate speech” was invented in the Kremlin of the USSR by political operatives who saw that it could be used effectively against anyone who did not agree with you, whom you wanted to silence[1]. It is a way to try forcefully to coerce others to your religion or way of thinking, or, failing that, to make them afraid to speak and neutralize them. Islamists and jihadists use hate speech to convert impressionable people, as Adolf Hitler did, to their way of thinking, and to recruit followers and jihadists who might enjoy torturing and beheading.

What Geert Wilders does cannot be called hate speech. It is a struggle, if occasionally imperfect, to protect the liberties of all of us in the face of unending threats and attacks, most recently from Islamic extremists. Geert Wilders is not an extremist of any kind. He is a democrat who defends Western values, the most important of which are liberty and life. We should not prosecute Wilders. We should thank him for sacrificing his life to defend us — and defend him back.

[1] Flemming Rose, The Tyranny of Silence (Cato Institute, 2014. 240 pp.)

Categories: Freedom, Geert Wilders, Islamic slaughter, Jihad, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Political correctness, Terrorism
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Andrew Klavan: Defend Cancer Against the Jews!

December 18, 2014

Andrew Klavan: Defend Cancer Against the Jews! Truth Revolt via You Tube, December 17, 2014

(There just might be metaphors here. — DM)

Categories: Andrew Klavan, Cancer, Israel, Leftists, Moral equivalence, Peace process, Political correctness
Tags: , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Chutzpah redefined

December 18, 2014

Chutzpah redefined, Israel Hayom, Sarah N. Stern, December 18, 2014

(When reality is unpleasant, as it often is, those not personally experiencing reality make decisions based on pleasant fantasies. — DM)

[T]his is supposed to be a “peace process.” The operative word here is “peace.” How dare we dictate anything to the Israelis, who are forced to live with the deadly consequences of this obviously flawed foreign policy paradigm? How can we presume to know better than they what it is that the Israelis can actually live with?

**************

In September 1993, when Yasser Arafat was recast from the role of “granddaddy of terrorism” to that of “peacemaker,” the Oslo Accords were marketed to the Israeli public and to world Jewry wrapped in the package of “reversibility.” I remember clearly when a friend of mine, a leftist television personality, assured me: “Don’t worry, Sarah. We will be watching Arafat very closely. It all depends on his compliance with our strict guidelines. He has to stop all the incitement and all the terror. It’s only Gaza and Jericho first. If it doesn’t work, we can always go back and retrieve it.”

That was 21 years ago. Since then, not a day goes by without another fiery Palestinian Authority incident of incitement (painstakingly documented and broadcast to the world by the good work of Palestinian Media Watch). This hatred has metastasized like a cancer and an entire generation has grown up steeped in it. The horrific result is the vast number of Israelis murdered at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.

This past week Khalil Shikaki from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted a poll which indicated that a full 80 percent of Palestinians support stepping up violent attacks against Israelis, including random stabbings and traffic attacks. Over 86 percent believe that Haram al-Sharif (or the Temple Mount, where Al-Aqsa mosque is located) is in danger.

That comes as no surprise because 93 percent of Palestinians consider themselves to be religious Muslims, and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority has been constantly stirring up hysteria that “the Jews are desecrating Haram al-Sharif.”

Although the Oslo Accords were presented as conditional, successive Israeli governments have upheld them, despite the steady stream of constant, daily incitement and increasing number of what the Left used to euphemistically call “korbanot shel shalom” (“victims of peace”).

We Jews seem to have gotten ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole. And many of our leaders do not seem to understand the basic philosophy that “when you are in a hole, you should stop digging.”

American presidents, politicians and diplomats have consistently argued that “Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should be left up to parties themselves.”

Which brings us to Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett’s spirited debate with Martin Indyk at the Brookings Institute’s Saban Forum last week. Bennett courageously uttered the words: “We’re stuck in the conventional directions that we’ve been working on over the past three decades. There’s only one game [foreign policy paradigm] in town and that is a Palestinian state in the heart of Israel. Now, regardless of whether you support it or not, the reality is, it’s not working. It’s not working.”

The outcry from American journalists and officials, who have based their careers on the success of the peace process and the two-state paradigm, was so intense one would have thought Bennett had said something highly irresponsible, such as that Arabs are the descendants of apes and pigs (a remark that official Palestinian Authority media frequently uses to describe Jews).

After all, this is supposed to be a “peace process.” The operative word here is “peace.” How dare we dictate anything to the Israelis, who are forced to live with the deadly consequences of this obviously flawed foreign policy paradigm? How can we presume to know better than they what it is that the Israelis can actually live with?

The premise of “land for peace,” which has dominated American foreign policy and the its attitude toward Israel over the last two decades, might well work in the West when dealing with a land dispute between the United States and Mexicans or Canadians. But it is patently obvious, when listening to the inflammatory rhetoric that comes directly out of the mouths of Palestinian Authority officials, that they have never laid down the societal groundwork for peace, but rather for its very opposite.

This has been going on for over a generation. Words and ideas matter. These hateful words have seeped deep into the consciousness of an entire generation of Palestinians. They lead to tragedies like the recent attack at the Har Nof synagogue in which four Israelis were killed while reciting morning prayers (and a Druze policeman was killed coming to their aid); or earlier this week, when an Israeli family of five stopped to pick up a hitchhiker in Judea and Samaria and was subjected to an acid attack; or in October when a three-month-old, the first child for a couple who had endured years of infertility, was murdered when a Palestinian terrorist rammed his car into a group of Israelis waiting at a light rail station in Jerusalem.

For some, in America, this is merely a statistic. But for Israelis and Jews, this was somebody’s father, somebody’s mother, somebody’s brother, sister or child. Israel is a tiny country. By now there is hardly anyone in the country who does not personally know someone wounded or murdered at the hands of Palestinian terrorists.

If this were a scientific experiment, we would have reached the null hypothesis a long time ago, and realized it was time to go back to the drawing board.

Whether or not one agrees with Bennett, it is impossible not to admire his moral courage and intellectual honesty for publicly declaring something every Israeli and every Palestinian already knows. He is like the little boy in the story who, in front of everyone, points to the naked monarch and declares: The emperor wears no clothes!

As Bennett said, “Let’s stop looking at perfection, the ideal dream of two states living side by side in peace and democracy. Let’s stop talking perfection that has led us to disaster.”

Yet Indyk, who has made a career out of the peace process industry, had the audacity to tell him, “You are talking pure mythology. … You live in another reality. … You live in what Steve Jobs called ‘a distorted reality.'”

Bennett responded with, “This is quite a sentence. I have been through the First Intifada, the Second Intifada. You attend conferences. I have been on the ground there. How many missiles have to fall on Ashkelon until you wake up? How many people need to die before you wake up from this illusion? When will you say you were wrong?”

Bennett deserves high praise for injecting a bit of reality into the fantasy world that exists inside the beltway, where everyone continues to cling to the illusions of 1993. So many of our think tanks, diplomats and scholars look at the Taliban attack in a school in Pakistan or the hostage crisis in a cafe in Australia as a deplorable acts of terrorism, but when it comes to Palestinian terrorists taking the lives of Israeli citizens, our State Department officials say, “Both sides have to try harder,” as Secretary of State John Kerry said at a press conference in London this week.

This is a hypocritical double standard that no one but Israel would be expected to endure. When people impose a standard on Israel, the Jewish state, that they would never impose on themselves, we have one word for it and that word is anti-Semitism.

Sometimes this anti-Semitism comes directly out of the mouths of Jews. Two thousand years of living in the Diaspora has had an indelible effect on our collective psyche. Many Jews are self-conscious of their Judaism, and want the love of the world so desperately that they have to prove to the world how liberal and broad minded they are … at the expense of their own Israeli brothers and sisters.

I could never understand how anyone sitting in a comfortable living room on this side of the Atlantic, never knowing what it is like to constantly fear for their lives and never worrying about having 60 seconds or less to gather the entire family and hide from incoming missiles, can claim to know better than the Israelis about what is good for them.

This gives new meaning to the definition of the term “chutzpah.”

Categories: Abbas, Europe, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Ideology, Islam, Israel, Leftists, Moral equivalence, Obama administration, Palestinians, Peace process, Terrorism, Two state solution
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Op-Ed: Going from Bad to Worse

December 14, 2014

Op-Ed: Going from Bad to Worse, Israel National News, Ted Belman, December 14, 2014

(Please see also Caroline Glick tells off Danish ambassador and Preacher at Al-Aqsa Mosque to the Jews: “We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy” — DM)

From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.

***************

The world is totally committed to the two-statesolution. European country after country is passing non-binding resolutions to recognize Palestine in principle. The parameters of the deal which have been set in stone, notwithstanding that all issues are to be decided by negotiations, are the ’67 lines plus swaps and the division of Jerusalem.

Never mind that such a deal is not good enough for the Arabs.  Hamas rejects it outright. Mahmoud Abbas, as President of the PA, is still clamoring for the so called right of return and is unwilling to recognize Israel as the home of the Jews while at the same time insisting that “Palestine” be yudenrein.

The EU has already put a boycott on goods from Judea and Samaria and is drafting legislation imposing sanctions on Israel. It is even rumored that the US is contemplating doing the same. That’s ironic considering that both want to ease sanctions on Iran.

Israel, for its part is going along to get along, at least that is, to a degree. Netanyahu has agreed to negotiate the two-state solution subject to three pillars, “One, genuine mutual recognition; two, an end to all claims, including the right of return; and three, a long-term Israeli security presence.” This is according to his remarks to the Saban Conference.  He did not mention borders. Would he accept ’67 lines plus swaps?  He didn’t say but I think it is implied. Even so, there are no takers.

The Palestine Authority (PA) has turned its back on negotiations which would require it to accept these pillars and instead is getting ready to ask the UN Security Council to recognize the state of Palestine and to call for Israel to evacuate the territories calling for a full Israeli withdraw to the pre-1967 lines by November 2016.

The Obama administrations is working to prevent this but at the same time is considering the implications of not vetoing it. From the point of view of Obama, the more pressure on Israel, the better. Europe agrees. The European parliaments, one after another, have favoured the recognition of Palestine in non-binding resolutions.

Congress, on the other hand, in their spending bill, provides as follows, according to the Washington  Post, “The bill stops assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it becomes a member of the United Nations or UN agencies without an agreement  with Israel. It also prohibits funds for Hamas.” and provides “$3.1 billion in total aid for the country (Israel) plus $619.8 million in defense aid”. It has yet to pass.

Meanwhile the PA continues its incitement and lies. A recent poll of Palestinians showed that 80 percent supported individual attacks by Palestinians who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations and 59.6 percent supporting rocket fire at Israel. Is this a partner for peace? This poll may have been intended to promote the resistance.

At long last Israel is mounting certain responses. 1) Greater police presence in Jerusalem with fewer restrictions on them, 2) Greater penalties, like longer sentences, for any violent rioters and 3) Enacting zero tolerance laws prohibiting incitement.  The Bill, not yet passed into law, states, “A call to an act of violence or terror deserves condemnation in the criminal realm as well, even if it is insufficient to lead to violence or terror. It does not deserve to be protected by the principle of freedom of expression.”

Wednesday, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon attributed  the building freeze in Judea and Samaria to pressure from the Obama administration and suggested Israel has to wait him out.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that objection to “settlements” was longstanding and would not change after President Barack Obama leaves office in 2017 and said “Our policy has been consistent for quite some time,”

I am not so sure. Besides, she misses the point. While all administrations, from President Reagan on have considered settlements, while not illegal, to be an “obstacle to peace”, none of them forced Israel to freeze construction and even planning for construction and certainly not in Jerusalem.

The US and the EU continually allege that ‘settlements’ are an obstacle to peace. Have you ever heard them claim the same about PA incitement, or its support of terror or its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or its unwillingness to forego the “right of return”? Maybe, a little bit in passing, but they have done nothing to change their position and hardly condemned them.

Furthermore, Obama’s decision to back negotiations based on borders along the ’67 lines plus swaps was a big mistake. Doing so was contrary to his often stated position that any settlement must come through direct negotiations. He has forever repeated the mantra that neither side should take any unilateral moves which pre-determine the outcome.  He himself, by predetermining the borders, is pre-determining the outcome.

Had he not pre-determined the borders of the final settlement, then Israel would have been entitled to build everywhere at its peril, meaning that when borders are agreed upon, if ever, the housing on Israel’s side would remain and the housing on the Palestinian side would have to be vacated if the PA insists on the Nazi doctrine of making the land yuden frie (Jew free) and the West supports such a doctrine.

The only unilateral moves proscribed by the Oslo Accords and all subsequent agreements, are those which change the status of the land. By this is meant, claiming sovereignty. So Israel can’t annex the land andthe PA can’t go to the UN and ask them for sovereignty, not so long as the Oslo Accords have not been formally abrogated. The construction of housing by Israel in no way changes the status of the land. And neither does land use planning.

And if you think that Israel will agree to divide Jerusalem, their eternal capital, think again. Nir Barkat, the Mayor of Jerusalem, when addressing the JPOST Diplomatic Conference attended by over three hundred of diplomats, gave a very upbeat assessment of the transformation of Jerusalem that is taking place and will continue to take place.  He stressed the commitment by him and the government to maintain the status quo between all religions. He ended by disabusing the audience of any thoughts they might have about dividing Jerusalem. It will never happen, he said, and I believe him.

Israel is consumed with the issue of whether to pass the nation-state bill which essentially declares that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people. To do so, claims the left in Israel, is to diminish it as a democratic state. But there is no evidence to support this.

Eugene Kontorovich wrote a two part article in the Washington Post onThe legitimacy of Israel’s nation-state bill in which he said the bill was unremarkable when compared to many European constitutions with similar, and stronger, national homeland provisions.

He also argued that:

“The proposed measure must also be understood in the context of Israel’s diplomatic situation. Israel’s biggest diplomatic issue is the status of Jerusalem and the West Bank, and international pressure to create a new Arab state there and in Gaza. The major argument by proponents of territorial withdrawal (including President Obama and Sec. Kerry) is that despite the serious security risks, Israel must retreat in order to maintain a “Jewish state.” Indeed, even foreign leaders, like President Obama and Secretary Kerry have both justified their pressure on Israel by invoking the preservation of the Israel’s Jewish identity.”

And went further:

“Thus supporters of Israel leaving the West Bank believe having a Jewish state is worth security risks, surrendering historical homeland and religious sites, and expelling over 100,000 Jews. That suggests a Jewish state is not merely a legitimate thing, but one that is worth a great deal. Yet the same voices calling for Israel to undertake dangerous diplomatic concessions in the name of preserving the state’s Jewish identity balk at legislation declaring that the state in fact is what they claim they want it to remain.”

According to a Israel Democracy Institute recent Poll, 75% of Israeli Jews see no contradiction between Israel being Jewish and being dermcratic.

MEMRI, the NGO that for years has translated the Arab media to document what the Arabs including the PA say among themselves as opposed to what they say in English to the West, prefaced their latest report with this:

“Preacher At Al-Aqsa Mosque In Jerusalem Tells Jews: ‘We Shall Slaughter You Without Mercy’ and ‘I Say To [You] Loud And Clear: The Time For Your Slaughter Has Come’; Says Koran Depicted Jews ‘In The Most Abominable Images,’ Allah Turned The Jews ‘Into Apes And Pigs’; Calls To ‘Hasten The Establishment Of The State Of The Islamic Caliphate’”

Is there any making peace with these people?

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Europe, Fatah, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, International Community, Israel, Moral equivalence, Multiculturalism, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Peace process, Temple Mount, Two state solution, United Nations
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Obama on Ferguson and Jerusalem

November 20, 2014

Obama on Ferguson and Jerusalem, American Spectator, , November 20, 2014

p110414ps-0347

On the one hand, in Ferguson, with an entire population on edge, the president and his attorney general are plainly siding with the lynch mob. On the other hand, when it comes to the Israelis and Palestinians in response to the killing of rabbis in a synagogue, the response is moral equivalence.

********************

Moral equivalence on parade.

Ferguson, Missouri, where the facts of the police shooting that killed Michael Brown have yet to be presented by the grand jury, an entire community braces for violence if the “wrong” decision is announced. While waiting, the Obama administration huddled with those who have a history of inciting racial violence and are heading to Ferguson.

In Jerusalem, where the bloody trail of Jihad streams from a synagogue, the response of the Obama administration is to play the moral equivalency card between Palestinians and Israel.

The contrast could not be more stark — or more telling.

First Ferguson: As headlined at The Gateway Pundit reports:

President Obama met with Ferguson protest leaders on November 5th, the day after the midterm elections. The meeting was not on his daily schedule. He was concerned that the protesters “stay on course.”

There was no Oval Office meeting or similar words of encouragement for those supporting either officer Darren Wilson or the simple concept of letting a grand jury work its will without intimidation.

Meanwhile, about Jerusalem, the New York Times tells the story this way:

The Orthodox Jewish men were facing east, to honor the Old City site where the ancient temples once stood, when two Palestinians armed with a gun, knives and axes burst into their synagogue Tuesday morning, shouting “God is great!” in Arabic. Within moments, three rabbis and a fourth pious man lay dead, blood pooling on their prayer shawls and holy books.

The assailants, cousins from East Jerusalem, were killed at the scene in a gun battle with the police that wounded two officers; one died of his injuries Tuesday night. Politicians and others around the world condemned the attack and the rising religious dimension of the spate of violence, which has been attributed mainly to a struggle over the very site the victims were praying toward.

And what was the president’s response? Mr. Obama read a statement in which he said that “too many Palestinians have died,” and “I think it’s important for both Palestinians and Israelis to try to work together to lower tensions and reject violence….We have to remind ourselves that the majority of Palestinians and Israelis overwhelmingly want peace.” There was no summoning of the Israeli ambassador no suggestion for Israel to “stay the course.”

What are we seeing here? It’s very clear and utterly unsurprising. On the one hand, in Ferguson, with an entire population on edge, the president and his attorney general are plainly siding with the lynch mob. On the other hand, when it comes to the Israelis and Palestinians in response to the killing of rabbis in a synagogue, the response is moral equivalence. Moral equivalence uttered while — quite literally, as seen here — Palestinians take to the streets to wave hatchets, and hand out food to gleefully celebrate the murders. Just as, it should not need to be reminded, Palestinians were in the streets celebrating on 9/11 when the twin towers fell and some 3,000 Americans were murdered.

This follows six years worth of the Obama administration absolutely trashing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel itself — whether rudelyleaving Netanyahu waiting around the West Wing while the president went off to dinner, or having an anonymous minion snarking to the Atlantic that Israel’s prime minister is a “chickens–t.” Recall the moment that played out in front of cameras at the 2012 Democratic Convention when it was discovered that somehow, mysteriously, the Democratic platform refused to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — and it had to be undone while delegates booed? As seen here it wasn’t pretty, the cameras picking up a delegate loudly shouting “no” while displaying an “Arab American Democrats” sign. Not to be forgotten is Obama’s personal history with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi, both of whom have frequently been labeled as anti-Semites.

Thus the vivid illustration of the core of the modern left. A president stands with the lawbreakers in Ferguson as the town braces for riots. At the same time, confronted with the murder of rabbis in a Jerusalem synagogue — another chapter in the war of Islamic fascism against the Jews — he responds with moral equivalence. The Palestinians this…but on the other hand the Israelis that. And so on.

From Ferguson to Jerusalem, this is the mindset of the modern left that is on display. That mindset isn’t just ugly — it’s dangerous.

Categories: Fatah, Hamas, Israel, Israel, Palestinians, Jerusalem, Jihad, Leftists, Moral equivalence, Obama, Palestinians, Two state solution
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

Newer Entries »