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*Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people*
By Anne Bayefsky
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President yet again makes his intentions clear
*http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |* President Obama's Cairo speech was
nothing short of an earthquake — a distortion of history, an insult to the
Jewish people, and an abandonment of very real human-rights victims in the
Arab and Muslim worlds. It is not surprising that Arabs and Muslims in a
position to speak were enthusiastic. It is more surprising that American
commentators are praising the speech for its political craftiness, rather
than decrying its treachery of historic proportions.
Obama equated the Holocaust to Palestinian "dislocation." In his words: "The
Jewish people were persecuted. …anti-Semitism …culminated in an
unprecedented Holocaust…. Six million Jews were killed…. On the other hand,
it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians —
have suffered in pursuit of a homeland." This parallelism amounts to the
fictitious Arab narrative that the deliberate mass murder of six million
Jews for the crime of being Jewish is analogous to a Jewish-driven violation
of Palestinian rights.
Speaking in an Arab country to Arabs and Muslims, Obama pointedly singled
out European responsibility for the Holocaust — "anti-Semitism in Europe
culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust." In other contexts, the European
emphasis would be a curiosity. In Egypt, it was no accident. The Arab
storyline has always been that Arabs have been forced to suffer the creation
of Israel for a European crime.
In fact, Obama's Egyptian hosts would have been only too familiar with Arab
anti-Semitism during World War II (and beyond). After all, Obama was
speaking in the country that schooled and later welcomed back Grand Mufti
Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini as a national hero. This was the man who spent
the war years in Berlin as Hitler's guest facilitating the murder of Jews.
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Obama thought he would prove his even-handedness towards Israel by boasting
of Friday's trip to a concentration camp and rejecting Holocaust denial. In
this context, however, the move of doing Jews these supposed favors appears
to be cynical political opportunism, especially having just set the
Holocaust side-by-side with the "suffering" and "pain" of Palestinians "for
more than 60 years." After all, the president made no emotive references to
the "intolerable" "suffering" of Israeli victims of Arab terror "for more
than 60 years." The word "terrorism" never left his lips. Far from
bolstering the fight against terror and the anti-Semitism driving it, such
maneuvers embolden more hate and violence against Israelis.
Instead, Obama sought Arab and Muslim approbation by drawing a moral
equivalence between those who have rejected Israel from the outset (and
still seek its outright destruction or a "right of return" intended to
terminate a Jewish majority) and the Jews who have kept them at bay since
May 14, 1948. In his words: "There has been a stalemate: two peoples with
legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history…. It's easy to point
fingers — for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by
Israel's founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and
attacks." Calling the Israeli-Arab conflict a "stalemate" represents an
abysmal failure to acknowledge historical reality. The modern state of
Israel emerged after an internationally approved partition plan of November
1947 that would have created two states, one Jewish and one Arab; this plan
was accepted by Jews and rejected by Arabs. One people has always been
prepared to live in peace, and the other has chosen war in 1948 and 1956 and
1967 and 1973 and 1982, and renewed terrorism after its every loss.
Bereft of the most basic understanding of Judaism and Jewish history, Obama
claimed that "the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic
history that cannot be denied," for "around the world, the Jewish people
were persecuted for centuries." A Jewish homeland in Israel is not rooted in
tragedy or in centuries of persecution around the world. It is rooted in a
wondrous, unbroken, and spiritual relationship to the land of Israel and to
Jerusalem for thousands of years. Coupled with the president's stress on
"European responsibility" for the Holocaust, his words reinforced the lethal
belief that Israel is the creature of transplanted, alien Jews.
Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people went farther.
Israelis have come to occupy territory in response to Arab-initiated wars of
intended annihilation, but Obama analogized Palestinian "daily humiliations
…that come with occupation" to the "humiliation of segregation" of black
slaves in America and the "moral authority" of "people from South Africa."
His Arab audience understood that the president of the United States had
just given a nod to the single most potent defamation of the Jewish state
today — the allegation that Israel is a racist, apartheid state.
After expressing his belief in a moral equivalence between the claims of
Palestinians and the claims of the victims of slavery and apartheid, Obama
juxtaposed his admission of Israel's "right to exist" with his assertion
that "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli
settlements." Every word of this speech was carefully weighed. It was
therefore no mishap that for the first time a U.S. president has denied the
legitimacy of Israeli settlements, period. Such an assertion abrogates every
agreement between Arabs and Israelis, which have always left the ultimate
determination of which settlements will stay or go to a bilateral peace
process and final status negotiations. Even the Roadmap reads: "Phase III:
Permanent Status Agreement and End of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict …a
final, permanent status resolution …on borders, Jerusalem, refugees,
settlements."
Furthermore, the idea that Jews are not permitted to live in any territory
that might become part of a future Palestinian state means only one thing:
apartheid Palestine. Twenty percent of Israel's population,1.5 million
people, are Arab (with more democratic rights than in any Arab state). But
the notion of any Jewish presence in Palestinian territory is allegedly an
abomination. Why should a future transfer of governmental authority mean "no
Jews allowed"?
But judging by Obama's speech, only one "dislocation" counts. After placing
the Holocaust side-by-side with the Palestinian "pain of dislocation," he
ignored the dislocation of 800,000 Jewish refugees from all over the Arab
Middle East in response to the creation of Israel.
Jewish refugees from Arab intolerance were not the only human-rights
casualties the president chose to dismiss. Three different times Obama
defended the right of Muslim women to cover up their bodies. Never once did
he mention the right of Muslim women to refuse to cover up their bodies — a
right denied on pain of arrest and death by many of the very communities he
was addressing. In the name of "freedom of religion" he chose to "welcome
efforts like Saudi Arabian King Abdullah's interfaith dialogue." The Saudi
Arabian government criminalizes the public practice of any religion but
Islam. This manufactured human-rights fantasy has done a tremendous
disservice to the oppressed across the Arab and Muslim world.
President Obama's meticulously planned and executed Egyptian speech marks
the lowest point in the U.S. presidency's understanding and appreciation of
the Jewish state, its history, and its people's future. Added to his
administration's evident infirmity on Iran, the speech of June 4, 2009, by
the supposed leader of the free world will be remembered as a major decline
in human history.
Comment by clicking here.
Anne Bayefsky is a senior fellow of the Hudson Institute, director of the
Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and editor of
www.EYEontheUN.org.
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