WarSclerotic

By any other name, Israel Hayom, Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, June 14, 2016

Obama refuses to acknowledge the threat (of Islamic terrorism — DM), as he has for the past eight years, and the world is a more dangerous place because of it. If it wasn’t quite as dangerous and frightening, Obama’s dance around reality and beautiful semantic avoidance game would be parodic or even hilarious. Rather than calling a spade a spade, Obama invents tools that never were, and a jihadi mass killing becomes “attitudes” and gun control and a stern speech to his disciples on embracing the LGBT community.

Hopefully, the next president will see that the attacks on Sarona and Pulse are branches of the same tree and hatred from the same source and that the war is best fought together with Israel, rather than against it.

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Just a few weeks ago, I sat on a beach in Tel Aviv and read the morning paper as the waves rolled in over my feet, enthralled enough by the intensity of the message that I didn’t even notice the gradual dampening of the pages. The particular article that had caught my eye that day was on the Israeli Left’s theory that the Israeli government uses so-called “pinkwashing,” superficially pandering to the gay community to distract the world from the “occupation” and the reality of its “oppression” of minorities, including the LGBT community. The message of the piece was that yes, we have a pride parade and yes, Tel Aviv may be a choice destination for gay tourism, but shame on us for not doing better and shame on Israel for not being everything the author wanted it to be.

As with many articles, that one entered and left my consciousness, but something must have stuck because it popped back up today after I learned about the horrific massacre in Orlando, Florida. The attack took place at Pulse, a popular gay nightclub, and the shooter has been identified as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American citizen who, 20 minutes before the shooting, called 911 and declared his allegiance to Islamic State. Mateen had been under surveillance by the FBI in 2013 for alleged ties to American suicide bomber Moner Mohammad Abusalha, and his father runs an anti-American web TV show in which he expresses pro-Taliban sentiments and makes political speeches with no small amount of anti-Western sentiment.

Given all that, this should be an open and shut case, right? It would be a given that President Barack Obama call this a jihadi terrorist attack, that he would mention Islamic terrorism and vow to fight it, after what was the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

But that didn’t happen.

Obama did call it terror, but engaged in an intricate and well-rehearsed dance to avoid mentioning what type of terror or from where it came. Instead, he gave a speech about how the American people need “strength and courage to change its attitude toward the gay community,” as if the general public’s attitude toward the LGBT community is what shot up that gay club and murdered 49 people.

In short, Obama would rather point the finger of blame at his entire country than at one single Muslim at any given time.

It was after seeing the president’s speech that the pinkwashing article came back to my mind because it represented the same moronic panic that defines the Left and its inability to correctly identify a culprit. I have traveled the world, and Tel Aviv is one of the top three most gay-friendly cities I have been to. And Israel, a country solidly based on religion and tradition, manages to balance this alongside a social agenda that is sometimes too progressive for my conservative tastes. The attempt to call the Tel Aviv pride festival “pinkwashing” or to call Israeli society an oppressive or homophobic one, having oh-so-many not so distant neighbors to compare to, is embarrassing bordering on the offensive. Rather than focusing on the actual threat, they choose to invent one that doesn’t force them to confront their worldview or the political theory that not only is their bread and butter but their identity and raison d’etre.

Obama refuses to acknowledge the threat, as he has for the past eight years, and the world is a more dangerous place because of it. If it wasn’t quite as dangerous and frightening, Obama’s dance around reality and beautiful semantic avoidance game would be parodic or even hilarious. Rather than calling a spade a spade, Obama invents tools that never were, and a jihadi mass killing becomes “attitudes” and gun control and a stern speech to his disciples on embracing the LGBT community.

There’s a hugely important difference between Israel and the U.S., despite both countries having a Left that invents problems rather than solving the ones at hand. In Israel, the Left yells and blames, but the government still speaks honestly and governs in accordance with reality, all too familiar with the threats of terror and murderers. In America, the yelling Left has been at the helm for the past eight years and the progressive logic has been put into law, and whoever gets passed the baton in January has their work cut out for them just reversing the damage of a president intent on governing according to his worldview rather than reality.

Hopefully, the next president will see that the attacks on Sarona and Pulse are branches of the same tree and hatred from the same source and that the war is best fought together with Israel, rather than against it.

Many lives have been lost this week, or rather, they have been taken, and out of respect for the dead we need to call the culprits by name and not make up stories to save face or protect our hollow fantasies. Reality is rarely pretty, but the alternative is even worse, and we have neither time nor blood to spare for another round of make-believe.