Obama and the War Against Jews

8/9/2019 Obama and the War Against Jews

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OBAMAAND THE WAR AGAINSTTHE JEWS

BY

DAVID HOROWITZ

AND

JACOB LAKSIN


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Copyright 2010

David Horowitz Freedom Center

PO BOX 55089Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964

[email protected]

www.frontpagemag.com

ISBN: 1-886442-75-4Printed in the United States of America

$3.00 Each

$1.00 each for orders of 25 or more


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Obama and the War Against

the JewsBy David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin

No other country in the world faces an arrayof existential threats such as the nation of Israelconfronts daily. The worlds only Jewish state

is also its most precarious. Geographicallytiny, Israel is surrounded by theocraciesthat reject its very existence as a nakba a catastrophe and call for its destruction.To carry out these malignant ambitions, anti-Israel Islamists have mobilized three rocket-wielding armies, sworn to wipe Israel from theface of the earth.

First and most aggressive among them isthe Gaza-based Hamas, a fanatical religiousparty committed in its ofcial charter toobliterating Israel and killing its Jews. Hamas

is the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, theinspirer of al-Qaeda and the global Islamicjihad, whose ofcial motto declares: Death inthe service of Allah is our highest aspiration.In Gaza, Hamas has created a terrorist state and


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a national death cult whose path is martyrdom

and whose goal is openly proclaimed: O, ourchildren: The Jews brothers of the apes,assassins of the prophets, bloodsuckers,warmongers are murdering you, depriving you of life after having plundered yourhomeland and your homes. Only Islam canbreak the Jews and destroy their dream.1

Given that hatred for Jews is the animatingpassion of the Hamas militants, their responseto Israels unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in2005 was not surprising. Far from greetingthis as a gesture of peace, Hamas regarded theIsraeli withdrawal as a surrender to its terrorist

attacks and an opportunity to escalate them. Inthe days and months following the withdrawal,Hamas launched 6,500 unprovoked rocketstrikes on towns and schoolyards in Israeluntil the Israelis decided to strike back.

Israels western border is home to the al-

Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the Palestine LiberationOrganization and other terrorist groups, armedand protected by the Palestinian Authority, the

1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/15/

hamasandantisemitism


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so-called moderate wing of the Palestinian

jihad. Like Hamas, the Palestinian Authorityofcially rejects Israels existence and theright of its Jews to self-determination. LikeHamas, the Palestinian Authority provides acurriculum for Gazas school-children, thatteaches them to hate Jews and hope to killthem, seeking martyrdom and sainthood in

the process. In pursuit of these genocidal goals,all Palestinian schoolchildren are taught frommaps of the region from which Israel has beenerased.2

On Israels northern border, in Lebanon,is Hezbollah, the Party of God, which

is busily stockpiling tens of thousands ofIranian rockets in anticipation of the war ofannihilation it has promised to wage againstthe Jewish state. Created by Irans RepublicanGuard and supplied by Syrias (ofcially)fascist dictatorship, Hezbollah is the largestterrorist army in the world. Like Hamas, it

makes explicit its hatred for the Jews andits agenda in regard to them to nishthe job that Hitler started. Its fanatical

2 http://www.ict.org.il/Articles/tabid/66/Articlsid/592/

currentpage/2/Default.aspx


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leader, Hassan Nasrallah, leads thousands of

believers in chants of Death to Israel, Deathto America. He has said, If Jews all gather inIsrael, it will save us the trouble of going afterthem worldwide.3 Under the complicit eyeof UN peacekeepers Hezbollah continuesto amass rockets whose sole purpose is theobliteration of Israel. In May 2006, Nasrallah

boasted: Today all of Israel is in our rangePorts, military bases, factories everything isin our range.4

But it is Hezbollahs sponsor, the totalitarian and soon to be nuclear state of Iran thatpresents the most disturbing threat to Israels

existence. Its blood-soaked dictators havebeen targeting Israel for destruction since 1979 when Iran became an Islamic republic andits theocratic ruler, the Ayatollah Khomeni,identifed Israel and America as the Little

Satan and the Great Satan. Its formerpresident Akbar Hashem Rafsanjani haspublicly announced his support for nuclear war

3 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/books/the-enemy-

within.html?sec=&pagewanted=all4 Amos Harel, Avi Issacharoff, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah,

and the War in Lebanon, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 48.


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against the Jewish state, reasoning that since

Iran is more than 70times

the size of Israel itcould survive a nuclear holocaust while Israelcould not.5

Irans current leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,has called for America and Israel to be wipedfrom the map and there was no dissent

from the other 56 Islamic states that makeup the Organization of the Islamic Conference.Amateur semanticists insist that Ahmadinejads words were mistranslated, and that he reallymeant that both countries should be erasedfrom the pages of history. But this is adistinction without a difference. For what canthat threat possibly mean if Israel or Americashould continue to exist? Meanwhile, Irancontinues to build long-range nuclear missilesthat could be used for just such a purpose andno serious effort to check that ambition hasbeen made by the international community orby the United States.

Where, indeed, does the internationalcommunity stand in the face of this brazenpreparation to bring about a second Holocaustof the Jews? Since the creation of the state of

5 Mitchell Bard, Will Israel Survive? Macmillan, 2008.p.77.


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Israel in 1948, the Arab states have conducted

three unprovoked, aggressive, conventional wars against it. along with a continuousterrorist war that began in 1949. Yet, between1948 and 2004 there were 322 resolutions inthe UN General Assembly condemning thevictim, Israel, and not one that condemned anArab state.6

The United Nations is today dominated bythe Organization of the Islamic Conference,a group that was established in 1969 at asummit convened, according to its ofcialwebsite, as a result of criminal arson of theal-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem in

other words as a result of the criminal Jews.The Organization of the Islamic Conferenceregularly passes one-sided resolutions thatcondemn Israel, particularly for its effortsto combat Palestinian terrorism and disruptPalestinian weapon smuggling into Gaza.The U.N.s most notorious assault on Israelwas the so-called Goldstone Report, which was commissioned by the U.N. HumanRights Council in September 2009 and which

6 http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0704/prager_israel_

arab_stats.php3


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condemned Israels belated response to the

unprovoked Hamas rocket attacks.

Relying on the testimony of Hamasterrorists, the Goldstone report charged thatIsrael had deliberately targeted Palestiniancivilians and had committed war crimes inGaza. Outside the precincts of the Islamic

propaganda machine, however, Israels recordis, in fact, that of a nation more protective ofenemy civilians than any other. In testimonyignored by the Goldstone Report, for example,Col. Richard Kemp, the former commanderof British forces in Afghanistan, noted thatDuring Operation Cast Lead [the Israeli

response to the Hamas attacks], the IsraelDefense Forces did more to safeguard the rightsof civilians in a combat zone than anyotherarmy in the history of warfare.7 Hamas, bycontrast, is notorious for building militaryheadquarters under hospitals, for placing itsmilitary forces in refugee camps and for using

human shields provided by women andchildren to deter attacks. Hamass rocketsare known to be so inaccurate they cannotbe directed against military targets; they can

7 http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/55622


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only be used effectively against civilians. In

addition, since Hamass war against Israel wasa response to Israels unilateral withdrawal,it was a criminal aggression responsible forall the subsequent casualties, something theGoldstone Report and the U.N. Human RightsCouncil conveniently overlooked.

The Human Rights Council was created in2006. In its frst year, the council listed onlyone country in the entire world as violatinghuman rights: Israel. It condemned Israeldespite the fact that Israel is the only state in theMiddle East that recognizes human rights andprotects them. Not one of the worlds other

194 countries was even mentioned, includingNorth Korea, Burma, and Iran the last ofwhich hangs gays from cranes for transgressingthe sexual prescriptions of the Koran.8 Thereason for these oversights is no mystery. TheUN Human Rights Council has been presidedover by representatives of such brutal human

-rights violators as Libya, China, Saudi Arabiaand Cuba, and was such a travesty from itsinception that it was boycotted by the United

8 http://www.unwatch.org/site/c.bdKKISNqEmG/

b.3820041/#1st


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States until Barack Obama decided this year

to join its ranks. This decision by the Obamaadministration, along with its overtures toSyria, Iran, and other noxious regimes, lenta stamp of legitimacy to the hypocrisy of thecouncil and encouraged its malice.

In these sinister developments, which

have now stretched over a decade, the worldis witnessing a reprise of the 1930s, when theNazis devised a nal solution to the Jewishproblem, and the civilized world did nothingto halt its implementation. This time, thesolution is being proposed in front of the entireinternational community, which appears

unrufed by the prospect. It has turned itscollective back on the Jews, and refuses torecognize the gravity of the threat. Moreover,by enforcing the ction that there is a peaceprocess that needs to be brokered betweenthe sides, and ignoring the overt preparationfor Israels destruction by the Palestinian side,the peacemakers lend their support to itsdeadly agenda.

For decades now, Israel has been isolatedand alone in the community of nations with


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one crucial exception. That exception has

been the United States, a country on which ithas relied for its survival throughout its 60- year history. Every would- be aggressor hasunderstood that the worlds most powerfulnation was behind Israel and would not let herbe destroyed. Every government harboring ill-will toward the Jewish state has had to reckon

with the fact that the United States was inIsraels corner. Every vote of condemnationin the United Nations, had to confront a vetoby the nation that porvides its chief nancialsupport.

Until now.

In the words of a recent Reuters dispatch,Under President Barack Obama, the UnitedStates no longer provides Israel with automaticsupport at the United Nations where the Jewishstate faces a constant barrage of criticism andcondemnation. The subtle but noticeable shiftin the U.S. approach to its Middle East ally

comes amid what some analysts describe asone of the most serious crises in U.S.-Israelrelations in years.9

9 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6570SP20100608


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The Relationship Fractures

This change rst became apparent duringan ofcial visit to Jerusalem visit by VicePresident Biden earlier this year. On March9, The Vice President arrived for a dinner atthe home of the Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu nearly two hours late. His

tardiness was not accidental but a calculateddiplomatic slight specically, a punishmentfor Israels announcement of plans to build1,600 new homes in a predominantly Jewishsection of Jerusalem.10 The vice president wasembarrassed by the announcement.s beingmade during his visit.

In fact, the announcement was a routine

step, the fourth in a seven-stage bureaucraticapproval process for new construction. Whileits timing might be construed as inopportune,the building of homes in a Jewish neighborhoodin Israels capital city was hardly an issue to

create any sort of problem, let alone to causea rupture between allies. Nonetheless, Israeliofcials, conscious of their dependence on their

10 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.

aspx/182263


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American partners, immediately apologized

for any perceived offense.

But the Obama administration would

have none of it. As severe reproaches ofIsrael from top U.S. ofcials followed, thecrisis escalated. Secretary of State HillaryClinton berated Netanyahu, calling Israels

announcement a deeply negative signal forU.S.-Israel ties.11 Senior presidential advisorDavid Axelrod delivered the same scoldingmessage to an American audience, going oncable news shows to vent the administrationsdispleasure. Branding Israels announcementan affront and an insult, Axelrod claimed

that Israel had made the peace process withthe Palestinians much more difcult.12

Unlike Israels housing announcement, which was made without Netanyahusknowledge, Washingtons response wasdictated by President Obama. When the Israeliprime minister arrived in the United Statesfor a meeting with the president that same

11 http://www.reuters.com/articleidUSN1213959520100312

12 http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/03/axel-

rod-israel-settlement-approval-an-affront-insult.html


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month, there was no ceremony in the White

House Rose Garden and no posing beforepress cameras the usual good-will gesturesafforded visiting heads of friendly nations, notto mention long-time allies.

The reception was at least as cold inprivate. When Netanyahu arrived at the

White House for what he thought was goingto be a dinner with the president, Obamaunceremoniously presented him with a listof demands including that Israel cease allhousing construction in East Jerusalem andcurtly abandoned his guest to have dinner with his wife and daughters in the White

House residential wing.13 As Obama left themeeting room, he informed his stunned allythat he would be around should the Israelileader change his mind. As the Israeli pressreported afterwards, There is no humiliationexercise that the Americans did not try onthe prime minister and his entourage.14Washington Postcolumnist and Middle East

13 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamer-

ica/usa/barackobama/7521391/Obama-snubbed-Netanyahu-

for-dinner-with-Michelle-and-the-girls-Israelis-claim.html14 http://tinyurl.com/3xxz5wq


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expert Jackson Diehl was even more blunt,

writing that Netanyahu is being treated [byObama] as if he were an unsavory Third Worlddictator.15

Contrary to the administrations insistence

that Israel was jeopardizing peace byencroaching on negotiable terrain, the

construction site in Jerusalem was anything butdisputed territory. Jerusalem is Israels capitaland the construction site is in Ramat Shlomoa Jewish neighborhood. Housing constructionhad been underway in Ramat Shlomo sincethe early 1990s, and it would remain part ofIsrael in any conceivable peace settlement.16

Consequently, when Netanyahu had agreedunder pressure to a partial ten month freezeon settlements in the disputed territories,he specifcally excluded Jerusalem. By itsinsistence that Israel cease all building in EastJerusalem, it was the Obama administration,not Israel that was breaking with precedent,and opening up the political center of Israelitself to Palestinian claims.

15http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/obama_and_netanyahu_pointless.html

16 http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=170707


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In opposing Israeli construction in a Jewish

neighborhood in Jerusalem, the Obamaadministration embraced a version of MiddleEastern history that directly lent itself to theArab war against the Jewish state. In the Arabnarrative justifying that war, Jerusalem isalleged to occupy a central place in the historyof Muslims and Arabs. In the same narrative

Jerusalem is claimed as the capital of a futurePalestinian state. But the spiritual centralityof Jerusalem for Muslims is in fact a relativelyrecent claim and dubious on its face, while thereligious claims are by-products of Muslimmilitary conquests.

The Prophet Mohammed never visitedJerusalem and consequently Jerusalem is nevermentioned in the Koran. Today even Islamistsregard it as only the third holiest city in Islam,after Mecca and Medina. It was never thecapital of any Arab state. Indeed, for centuries,Jerusalem was a forgotten city to most Arabs,and it was allowed to fall into ruin underOttoman rule, which lasted until the creation ofIsrael and Jordan in the aftermath of the First World War. On a trip to Jerusalem in 1867,Mark Twain despaired that the city has lost all


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its grandeur, and is become a pauper village.17

When Jordan occupied Jerusalem between1948 and 1967, it was treated like a backwater.Only one Arab leader, Moroccos King Hassan,cared enough to pay a visit to the city Muslimsinvolved in the jihad against Israel nowsuggest is an essential part of their history.18

Origins of the U.S. Turn Against Israel

The sudden fracture in the U.S-Israelrelationship in March caught the Israeligovernment off-guard. But close observersof the Obama administration would have

recognized it as the logical endpoint of a series ofmarkers that had been laid down since Obamaemerged as a leading presidential contenderin 2008. With these markers Obama wassignaling a major shift in U.S. policy movingtoward the Muslim world and Americastraditional enemies, and away from allies likeIsrael.

17 Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, p. 393

18 Dennis Prager, Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The

Reason for Anti-Semitism, (Simon & Schuster, 2003), p.

168.


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The rst sign of this shift was visible

during a February 2008 presidential debate when Obama sought to differentiate himselffrom Hillary Clinton, his then opponent andfuture secretary of state, by announcing thatunlike her he would be willing to meet withhostile governments without preconditions.It was a position he justied by asserting that

it was critical for the United States to talkto its enemies. This was a rare example of acampaign promise Obama has kept.19

On entering the White House, Obamaquickly moved to set a new tone toward the Araband Muslim world. His very rst call to a foreign

leader from the Oval Ofce was to Palestinianpresident Mahmoud Abbas, and it was not aneffort to dissuade Abbas from his support forterrorism or his opposition to the existenceof a Jewish state.20 One of the rst interviewsObama gave, in January 2009, was to theDubai-based television network al-Arabiya. Init, Obama effectively offered an apology to the Arab world for alleged American misdeeds.

19 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5561241.html

20 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_

americas/us_elections/article5563280.ece


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other words, Turkeys refusal to help America

support the Muslim citizens of Iraq and topplea hated tyranny was a response to Americasprejudice againstMuslims.

In his review of past grievances, Obamadid not mention the millions of Muslimsincluding Palestinians in the West Bank

and Gaza who had cheered the 9/11 attackson U.S. soil by Islamic fanatics. Nor did hecomplain about the spread of anti-Americanand anti-Israeli conspiracy theories concerningthose attacks in the Muslim world, includingTurkey. As recently as 2008, polls found thatas many Turks (39 percent)believed the United

States or Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks asbelieved Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda werethe culprits.22

Even more worrisome, Obama used theoccasion of his Turkish visit to break with theU.S. policy of treating countries that harborterrorists as hostile nations. President Bushhad declared that there would be no room forneutrality in the war against terror You are

22 http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep08/

WPO_911_Sep08_quaire.pdf


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either with us or against us. But Obama now

assured his listeners in Turkey and throughoutthe Muslim world that their governments nolonger had to choose between America andal-Qaeda. Americas relationship with theMuslim world, Obama said, cannot and willnot be based on opposition to al-Qaeda.23

Obamas pandering to Arab and Muslimsensibilities has already been embarrassinglyon display a few days earlier, when he took thestep, unprecedented for an American president,of making an elaborate bow to Saudi ArabiasKing Abdullah, ruler of a nation in which itis illegal to carry a Bible or build a church orfor women to drive automobiles. The incidenttook place when President Obama attendedthe G-20 economic summit in London. Whencritics decried the presidents subservientgesture to the Arab despot, the administrationwas caught by surprise and attempted to denythat it had ever taken place. Inconvenientlyfor White House damage control, a video had

captured Obama in full obeisant mode.24

23 http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/04/06/obamas-

remarks-to-turkish-parliament/tab/article/

24 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077463.html


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Faulty History Fuels the Arab Cause

The shift in Washingtons policy towardthe Arab world reached a new level in Obamasspeech in Cairo two months later. On the onehand, the president defended the U.S. militarycampaigns in the Middle East as driven bynecessity, condemned the Holocaust denial

and Jew hatred that are rife in the Arab worldand promoted by its governments; and calledon Palestinians to abandon violence againstIsrael. But these statements were accompaniedby others that appear particularly troubling inthe light of subsequent administration moves.

While Obama rightly condemned Holocaustdenial, he left the impression that Israelslegitimacy derived solely from the legacyof European anti-Semitism and the Nazisextermination of six million Jews. This echoedthe Arab propaganda claim that Israel is aproblem created by Europeans and unfairly

imposed on the Arab world. Once again Obama was bolstering an Arab myth that served todelegitimize the Jewish state.

The Holocaust is not merely a European


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legacy. Arab states such as Iraq and Iran actively

sided with Hitlers armies, Arab generalsserved with Rommel, Hitlers commander inNorth Africa, and Arab leaders applauded andactively promoted the extermination of theJews. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood,Hassan al-Banna, was an admirer of Hitlerand had Mein Kampftranslated into Arabic

in the 1930s as a text to guide his followers.The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and founderof Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was an active and vocal supporterof Hitlers nal solution, and spent the war years in Berlin recruiting Arabs to the Nazicause. Al-Husseini, a man revered to this day

on the West Bank and in Gaza as the George Washington of a Palestinian state, organizedanti-Jewish pogroms in the 1920s and 1930s,actively planned to build his own Auschwitz inthe Middle East and was thwarted only whenRommel was defeated at El-Alamein.

The Arab canard that Israel is Europesattempt to unload its problem onto the backsof the Arabs ignores as did Obama the factthat Jerusalem has been the spiritual capital ofthe Jewish people for nearly 3,000 years and


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that Jews have lived in their historic homeland

continuously for all that time. Jerusalem is atthe center of the Jewish spiritual tradition, andJews have been its largest religious communitysince 1864. Prime Minister Netanyahu washistorically accurate when he admonishedObama, saying that the Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and

the Jewish people are building Jerusalemtoday. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is ourcapital.

In his Cairo speech, Obama also showedlittle appreciation of the modern history ofIsrael, a nation that was not built on Arab let

alone Palestinian land. The state of Israel was created out of the ruins of the TurkishEmpire.

In 1922, Great Britian created the stateof Jordan out of 80 percent of the PalestineMandate a geographical, not an ethnic,designation. The territory in the Mandate hadbeen part of the Turkish (not Arab) empire forthe previous four hundred years. Then in 1948,a U.N. partition plan provided equal partsof the remaining Turkish land to Arabs and to


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Jews living on the banks of the Jordan River.

In this plan, the Jews were assigned 10 percentof the original Palestine Mandate, while theArabs received 90 percent. None of this landhad belonged to a Palestinian nation or aPalestinian entity. In the previous 400 yearsthere had never been a province of the Turkishempire called Palestine. The entire region

out of which Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria,Israel, Gaza and the West Bank were createdwas known as Ottoman Syria.

In what would prove to be a continuingpattern, the Jews accepted the partitionsgrossly unequal terms their portion consisted

of three unconnected slivers of land, of which60 percent was arid desert. The Arabs, who hadalready received 80 percent of the Mandateland, rejected their additional portion as theywould continue to reject any arrangement thatwould allow for a Jewish state.

Immediately, fve Arab nations launched awar against the Jews, who repelled the Arabattacks and established a Jewish state. 25 When

25 Martin Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-IsraeliConfict, Routledge 2005, 187pp., pp. 36 37.


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the ghting ended, the parts of the partition that

had been earmarked for the Arabs namely, theWest Bank and Gaza were annexed by Jordanand Egypt, respectively and disappeared fromthe map.26 There was no protest from the Arabworld at the disappearance of Palestine intoJordan and Egypt, no Palestine LiberationOrganization, no complaint to the U.N. The

reason for the silence was that there was noPalestinian identity at the time, no movementfor self-determination, no Palestinianpeople to make a claim. There were Arabswho lived in the region of the Jordan. But theyconsidered themselves inhabitants of Jordanor of the Syrian province of the former Ottoman

Empire. The disappearance of the West Bankand Gaza was an annexation of Arab land byArab states.

Arab and Western revisionists have turnedthis history on its head to portray the Jewishwar of survival as a racist, imperialist plot to

expel Palestinians from Palestine. Thisis an utter distortion of the historical record.The term Palestine Mandate is a Europeanreference to a geographical section of the

26 Ibid.


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defeated Turkish empire. The claim that there

was a Palestinian nation from which ethnicPalestinians were expelled and which Israelnow occupies illegally is a political lie.

In 1967, the Arab states attacked Israelagain with the express aim of pushing theJews into the sea.Again they were defeated.

And once again defeat did not prompt the Arab states to make peace or to abandontheir efforts to destroy Israel. At an August1967 summit in Khartoum, Arab leadersdeclared that they would accept no peace, norecognition, and no negotiations with Israel.This is the permanent Arab war against Israel.

It is a war driven by religious and ethnic hate,which is the only durable cause of the conictin the Middle East.

It is hardly surprising given this historicalreality that Israel should regard withskepticism the Arab demands that Israelsurrender territory it captured in defendingitself against Arab aggression. As PrimeMinister Netanyahu has said, What kindof moral position is it to say that the failedaggressor should be given back all the territory


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from which he launched his attack? In fact, of

no other nation that has been victimized andvictimized repeatedly by aggressors is such aconcession demanded.

Yet Israeli concessionincluding anagreement not to build houses for its ownpeople in its own capital are precisely what

the Obama administration is demanding aprecondition of peace. It is ostensibly doingso on the dubious assumption that if onlyIsrael would make further concessions to thePalestinians, peace would be possible. Butthis assumption ies in the face of 60 yearsof continuous Arab aggression, including

unrelenting terror attacks against Israelicivilians and explicit commitments to wipeout the Jewish state.

The very idea that Israeli settlements (letalone Jewish houses in Jewish neighborhoods)are an obstacle to peace perpetuates themythical claims of the Arab cause. There area million Arabs settled in Israel, and theyenjoy more rights as Israeli citizens than dothe Arab citizens of any Arab Muslim state.So why are the settlements of a few hundred


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thousand Jews on the West Bank a problem?

The only possible answer is Jew hatred, thedesire to make the West BankJudenrein,andultimately the 60-year Arab campaign to pushthe Jews into the sea.

The Obama administrations pressureon Israel to give up its settlements or to

concede that its capital is disputed terrainfeeds the inherent racism of the Arab causeand undermines Israels ability to resist thegenocidal campaign against it. Such pressurecannot promote peace negotiations when theother party is openly dedicated to Israelsdestruction and has already shown that it will

derail even the most generous offers of peace(aswhen Arafat rejected the Clinton-Barak 2000plan). Its immediate consequences are toreinforce Palestinian intransigence, escalatePalestinian demands, incite Palestinian violence, and accelerate the drift toward aMiddle East war.

Directly following the Obama administrationsattacks on Israels building project inJerusalem, the Palestinians invoked Israeliintransigence as a pretext for pulling out of


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the indirect peace talks that had been taking

place. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbasfurther went on record as refusing to enterinto direct talks with Israel unless it institutedan immediate construction freeze in its owncapital city. Palestinians had previouslyparticipated in talks without that condition, but, as one observer noted, How could the

Palestinian position be softer on Israel than theAmerican position? Of course the Palestinianswould have to hold Israel to the newly raisedstandards of the Obama administration.27In this way, did the Obama administrationfurther the efforts of the Arabs to dismantlethe Jewish state.

Observers of this ominous developmentwarned that by attacking Israel over settlementsthe administration was encouraging a violent buildup that could eventually erupt into athird Intifada. A Hebrew-speaking Arabprotester interviewed on Israeli radio called forarmed resistance against Israels assault onJerusalem, declaring that the time had come

27 http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/1628/obama-effect-

in-muslim-world


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for a newIntifada.28 The call was taken up

by Hamas, which declared a day of rage tolash out against Israel. Arab rioters protestedin the streets, hurled stones at buses, carsand police, and clashed with Israeli securityforces. On Israels Highway 443, connectingJerusalem with the city of Modiin, Israeli Arabs rebombed passing motorists, with

one attack wounding a father and his nine-month old infant.29 Arab parliamentarians inthe Israeli Knesset further fueled the violenceechoing the Obama administration, one ofthem said, Anyone who builds settlements inJerusalem is digging a grave for peace.30

Emboldening Iran

Even as the new Obama policies wereigniting tinderboxes in the Palestinianterritories, their most dangerous effects werebeing felt in Iran. From the beginning of hispresidency, Obama had made reaching out

28 http://danielgordis.org/2010/03/26/obama-intifada/

29 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.

aspx/136490

30 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1156775.html


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to the Iranian police state a major part of his

approach to the Middle East. In March 2009,Obama addressed a special Persian New Yearmessage to the Iranian people and the leadersof what he called the Islamic Republic ofIran, itself an ingratiating reference thatserved to legitimize the totalitarian ruleimposed on the country by the 1979 overthrow

of the shah. Doubly shameful were Obamasdirect appeals to the mullahs, whom he urgedto move the Islamic Republic of Iran to takeits rightful place in the community of nations. At the time, Irans rulers were engaging insurrogate wars against the United States inIraq and Afghanistan, supplying al-Qaeda

and the Taliban with IEDs, which were theprincipal cause of the American deaths there.The contrast between Obamas appeasementof this enemy and his aggressive displeasuretoward a democratic ally could not have beenmore striking. It sent a dangerous messageto the many other dictatorships and hostileforces in the Middle East.

Obamas apologists insist that his message was no different from those that PresidentBush had previously delivered on the


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Persian New Year. But an actual reading of

Bushs messages reveals the absurdity of thecomparison.31 Unlike Obama, Bush addressedhis words directly to the Iranian people, notto the oppressive Iranian regime, which hecondemned for pursuing nuclear weaponsand depriving its citizens of the right to livein a free society. The word freedom appeared

three times in one of Bushs messages. It didnot appear once in Obamas. ConfrontingIrans deance of the world community, itsdetermination to build nuclear weapons andits brutal suppression of its own people, wouldhave interfered with the overtures Obama wasmaking towards a criminal regime.

In May 2009, Obama sent a personal letterto Irans supreme leader, the AyatollahKhameni, again disregarding his oppressedsubjects. The presidents letter appealed forbetter co-operation in regional and bilateralrelations.32 Khameini ignored the letter.Then, in mid-June, he mentioned it scornfully

31 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/

article/2009/03/20/AR2009032003512_pf.html

32 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/24/khamenei-

obama-letter


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in a sermon in which he inveighed against

alleged American interference in Irans riggedelections that month.33

Obamas acquiescence in the Iranianregimes brutal suppression of the oppositionduring its presidential elections demonstratedhow far the White House was willing to

compromise its values in the interests of anelusive dialogue that it had come to valueabove all else. As pro-democracy protestersshouting, Death to the dictator! were being brutally crushed on the streets of Tehran,the Obama administration maintaineda deafening silence. There was no ofcial

message of solidarity with the demonstrators,no serious admonition to the regime about theright of free assembly, no support for changinga regime that was killing its own citizens whilethreatening its neighbors. There was no stern warning to an aggressive power that wasbrazenly defying the international communityin racing to acquire nuclear weapons.

After a week of bloodshed and arrests, the

33 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/24/khamenei-

obama-letter


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closest the administration would come to an

ofcial reproach was when Vice PresidentBiden suggested that there was some realdoubt about Irans ofcial elections results in itself a generous understatement.34 Priorto the election, the victor had run close to hisopponent in the polls but when the ballots werecounted, Ahmadinejad won in a landslide,

claiming more votes than any politician inIrans history. However, so that Irans thugswould not mistake Bidens remark for a policystatement, the vice president made it clear thatneither the fraudulent election results nor thecontinuing repression would sway the Obamaadministration from its single-minded wooing

of the regime. We are ready to talk, Bidensaid. Without conditions.35

But the Iranian mullahs were in no moodto compromise. And why should they be? A year of deance had cost them nothing while gaining them precious time to carryout their designs. Ahmadinejad responded to

34 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/

ALeqM5j1SSLTI28ydxcun0zvJWLBeNmV0A

35 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/

ALeqM5j1SSLTI28ydxcun0zvJWLBeNmV0A


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Bidens wrist slap by attacking America as a

crippled creature but asserting that it wasstill an oppressive system ruling the world.Spurning Washingtons outstretched handof friendship, he baited Obama with aninvitation to take part in a debate about theinjustice done by world arrogance to Muslimnations. Speaking at a staged victory rally,

Ahmadinejad vowed that he would nevernegotiate with the United States or any foreignpower over his countrys nuclear ambitions:That le is shut, forever.36

Although it was not clear when Iran wouldnally be able to produce enough enriched

uranium for an operational nuclear weapon,the U.S. military warned in April 2010 thatthe time frame could be as short as a year.Besides its illicit work on a nuclear weapon,Iran continued to develop a range of missilesthat made it a regional and even a globalthreat. For instance, an unclassied DefenseDepartment report released in April estimatedthat by 2015 Iran could have a missile capableof striking the United States. With a nuclear

36 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124502114089613711.

html


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arsenal, Iran at last will have a chance to

realize its apocalyptic dream of a holy warthat will destroy the two countries it calls thesource of evil in the world, the Great Satanand the Little Satan.

Confronted with fresh evidence of Iransdeance, the Obama administration did

not so much stick to its guns as offer to laythem down. In April, Obama announcedthat the United States was no longer goingto develop new nuclear weapons and wouldnot use nuclear weapons to retaliate againstcountries that attacked the U.S. even if theyhad used biological or chemical weapons.37

The presidents policy of unilateral nucleardisarmament did include an exceptionfor rogue states like Iran, but given theadministrations track record of backingdown in the face of Iranian intransigence, itis difcult to imagine that the warning struckfear in the hearts of the mullahs.

With Obamas charm offensive failing,Washington was left without a strategy, a factObamas own secretary of defense conceded.In April, the press leaked the contents of a

37 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/06arms.html


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memorandum written by Defense Secretary

Robert Gates to the White House four monthsearlier. According to the press reports,the memorandum conceded that the U.S.possessed no effective policy to stop Iran frombuilding a nuclear bomb.

Appeasement and the GatheringClouds of War

Obamas multiple overtures, his apologiesfor Americas actions in the past and hisdeference to her enemies in the present havenot made the world a safer place. His attempts

to make Israel Americas most loyal ally in theMiddle East and the regions only democraticstate the culprit in the dramas engulng theregion have encouraged the jihadist causeboth at home and abroad.

It is hardly coincidental, therefore, that Obamastenure in ofce has been accompanied by arash of terrorist assaults. In September 2009,the FBI foiled a plot by three American al-Qaeda recruits to plant homemade bombs onthe busiest subway stops in Manhattan during


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rush hour. According to Attorney General

Eric Holder, the attacks would have beenthe most serious since 9/11. In November,army psychiatrist and jihadist Major NidalMalik Hasan went on a shooting rampage atthe army base in Ford Hood, Texas, killing 13people and wounding 32 others. In December,a 23-year jihadistfrom Nigeria was disarmed

by passengers as he tried to blow up Northwestight 253 over Detroit using explosives he hadsnuck aboard the plane in his underwear. InMay, a Pakistani-born naturalized Americancitizen, jihadist Faisal Shahzad almostsucceeded in turning New Yorks Times Squareinto a ery inferno when he abandoned an

SUV rigged to explode there.38

In the midst of these attacks by Islamicfanatics, the Obama administration refuseseven to recognize the religious nature of theenemy we face. In testimony before Congress, Attorney General Holder repeatedly refusedto make a connection between those terroristacts and any religious belief, although the

38 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamer-

ica/usa/7696765/Did-hard-times-create-the-Times-Square-

bomber.html


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perpetrators themselves proclaimed their

fealty to Islam and the Koran. On a seperateoccasion, Obamas deputy national securityadviser, John Brennan, explained theadministrations political correctness: Nordo we describe our enemy as jihadists orIslamists because jihad is a holy struggle, alegitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify

oneself or ones community, and there is nothingholy or legitimate or Islamic about murderinginnocent men, women and children39 eventhough many Islamic imams are on record asproclaiming that there is.

Obama insists that the U.S. is not at war

with Islam. But it is clear that many Muslims,including the leaders of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah,Hamas and Iran, believe that Islam is at warwith the United States and Israel. The name ofthe ruling party in Gaza, with much innocentblood on its hands, is Hamas, which standsfor Islamic Resistance Movement. While theObama administration maintains that Israelsenemies are not engaged in a religious war,the Hamas charter declares in the clearest

39 http://townhall.com/blog/g/a3d154df-ad05

4552-b838-8c067247dd81


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possible terms that it is engaged in one

mandated by the Prophet Mohammed whosegoal is the destruction of Israel and a genocideof its Jews:

The Islamic Resistance Movementaspires to the realization of Allahspromise, no matter how long that

should take. The Prophet, Allahbless him and grant him salvation,has said: The Day of Judgmentwill not come until Muslims fghtthe Jews and kill them. When theJew hides behind the stones andthe trees, the stones and trees

will say, O Muslim, there is a Jewhiding behind me, come and killhim.40

And further: Israel will exist and willcontinue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,just as it obliterated others before it.41

And: There is no solution for the Palestine

40 http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm

41 Ibid.


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question except through jihad.42

Because of its diminutive size, Israelis a country with little margin for error.Confronted by 300 million hostile Muslimneighbors, its security depends in no smallmeasure on the perception that it has theinalienable support of the worlds lone

superpower. It is this perception that has been gravely undermined by the Obamaadministration with consequences that arealready apparent. It is hardly coincidental,for example, that the United Kingdom chosethe precise moment of the row over housingin Jerusalem to expel unnamed Israelis from

its territory for an alleged connection to thedeath of a notorious Hamas arms dealer inDubai. But it is the regional ramications ofthis suddenly weakened U.S.-Israel alliancethat are truly worrisome.

It is only because Israel has had an

American security umbrella that there has been no conventional war against Israelsince 1973. If its enemies perceive Israel tohave been cast adrift by America, they will be

42 Ibid.


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emboldened to try once more the methods

that have failed to destroy Israel in thepast. Hezbollah is now operating bases andarms depots on Syrian territory, where it isstockpiling long-range Syrian-supplied Scudmissiles capable of striking Israeli cities likeJerusalem and Tel Aviv.43 Egypt has begunstaging war games in the Sinai Peninsula using

large numbers of infantry and artillery units aswell as warplanes.44 While Egypt has justiedthe maneuvers as essential to maintain thereadiness of its armed forces, many observerssee them as a dress rehearsal for war.

The shift toward Islamic militancy and

war preparations on Obamas watch is evenmore pronounced in Turkey. Turkey was oncea staunch NATO ally, and a friend to Israel but it has been moving for several years ina radical direction under its Islamist primeminister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ignoring thisdevelopment, Obama chose Turkey as the nal

stop on his rst overseas visit as president,and praised it as a model for the world. Said

43 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3895828,00.

html

44 http://www.haaretz.com/news/egyptian-army-condu series-

of-war-games-on-sinai-peninsula-1.270380


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43

Obama: Im trying to make a statement about

the importance of Turkey, not just to the UnitedStates but to the world. I think that wheretheres the most promise of building strongerU.S.-Turkish relations is in the recognitionthat Turkey and the United States can build amodel partnership in which a predominantlyChristian nation, a predominantly Muslim

nation a Western nation and a nation whichstraddles two continents, that we can createa model international community that isrespectful, that is secure, that is prosperous,that there are not tensions inevitabletensions between cultures which I think isextraordinarily important.45

At the very moment Obama was expressingthis vapid hope his Turkish host was moving hisNATO country closer to the mullahs of Iran.While Obama was wooing and being rejectedby Iran, the mullahs were forming an ententewith Turkey that would undermine his efforts

to keep them from building a nuclear weapon.Just a year after Obamas visit, the Turkishprime minister met with his opposite number

45 http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/06/obama.

turkey/index.html


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in Brazil to conclude a fuel-swapping deal.

The deal effectively allowed Iran to continueenriching uranium for a nuclear weapon. Withthis newly formed alliance, the mullahswouldbe able to avoid even the ineffective sanctionsthat the Obama administration had fnallycome around to considering.46

Turkeys embrace of the Middle EastsIslamist axis Syria, Iran, Lebanon, the WestBank and Gaza occurred simultaneouslywith an international conference to review theNuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. With theUnited States standing idly by, the conferenceignored the chief proliferator, Iran, while

singling out Israel as the principal nuclearthreat.

These ominous developments were theimmediate background to the brazen attempt by Hamas and its new patron, Turkey, tobreak the arms blockade of Gaza, which wasa joint effort by Israel and Egypt to prevent weapons from being smuggled into the

46 http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/06/01/brazils-

foreign-minister-says-nation-oppose-respect-new-iran-

sanctions/


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terrorist state. The six ships that attempted to

run the blockade departed from Istanbul andew under Turkish ags. The otilla politicalcamouage it described its mission ashumanitarian was provided by a Turkishnon-governmental organization associated with the United Nations and known by theacronym IHH. Posing as a humanitarian

aid group, the IHH is a well-documented allyof Hamas and al-Qaeda, and was identiedin the trial of the millennium bomber asplaying a key role in the plot to blow up LosAngeles airport. The real mission of the otilla to break the weapons blockade was madetransparent when it refused Israels offer to

unload any humanitarian aid it was carryingat the secure port of Ashdod.

On board one of the vessels, the MaviMarmara were active Turkish terrorists whohad been allowed to board without inspectionin Istanbul and had vowed on departure tobecome jihadist martyrs.47 The terroristsarmed themselves with steel pipes and knives,and were prepared to attack any Israeli soldiers

47 http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2010/06/idf-names-

fve-terrorists-on-mavi.html


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who boarded the vessel to enforce the blockade.

A principal organizer of the operation was theFree Gaza Movement, which had attemptedto break the blockade the previous June.Among its leaders were two close friends andpolitical allies of President Obama, former Weather Underground terrorists, William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who paid a

visit to the leader of Hamas after the effortfailed.48 Also among its company were majorObama donor and supporter Jodie Evans andSaddam Hussein supporter and founder of thepro-Hamas group Viva Palestine, British MPGeorge Galloway, along with many other pro-Hamas activists.49

Prior to the incident, the Obama WhiteHouse had exerted serious pressure on Israelto exercise maximum restraint. Consequently,Israeli authorities did not equip the commandoswho boarded the ship with riot gear and teargas, and their side arms were holstered.50 They

descended from a helicopter armed with paint48 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/

beltway-confdential/ayers-dohrn-helped-organize-otilla-

group-95435639.html

49 Ibid.

50 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/01/2915586.htm


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ball guns, which proved ineffective against

the steel bars and knives. They were quicklyoverwhelmed by what the media wouldinsist on describing as peace activists, whostabbed them, beat them with the steel pipes,threw one of them off the deck and stole tworearms which they began shooting until theother soldiers were able to draw their side

arms and ght back. Nine of the belligerentsaboard were killed and others wounded; also wounded were six Israeli soldiers, two ofwhom were in critical condition.51

An attempt to run a wartime blockade would in other circumstances have resulted

in a full armed naval assault. Israelsrestraint was rewarded by internationalmedia and governments alike describing theconfrontation as a brutal attempt to block ahumanitarian aid effort.Jihadists immediatelyseized on the event to further their campaignto de-legitimize the Jewish state. This effort was led by Turkey, the very country behindthe provocation and thus responsible for thedeaths.

51 http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.

asp?tid=14674&posts=2


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Prime Minister Erdogan denounced Israel

as guilty of state terrorism and called theefforts of the Israelis to defend themselvesa bloody massacre. He then claimed Theheart of humanity has taken one of the heaviest wounds in history.52 (This was from a manwho the previous year had defended Sudanesepresident Omar al-Bashir when he was

indicted by the International Criminal Courtfor killing half a million Sudanese Christiansand non-Arab Muslims.) Erdogan called for ajihad against Israel, and threatened that theTurkish navy would escort the next attempt torun the blockade. This threat was seconded byIran, which vowed to send two humanitarian

aid ships under escort by the Iranian navy. Ifcarried out, this threat would be, in effect, adeclaration of war.53

In Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, a leaderof the terrorist organization Fatah, Mounir al-Makdah, said, The freedom otilla brings amessage of the beginning of the end of Israel.He announced plans for a mass invasion onIsraels northern border, using civilians as

52 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3899490,00.html

53 http://ht.ly/1WdvU

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human shields. It could be that they will just

break through the border, with their childrenand their elderly; he explained, What willIsrael be able to do? Even if they kill all those who take part in the march, the number ofremaining Palestinians will still be more thanall the Jews in the world.54

Far from voicing alarm at the jihadistthreats or disapproval of Turkeys aggression,the international community expressed itssympathy for the Islamist runners of the armsblockade. Frances president Nicolas Sarkozydeplored Israels disproportionate use offorce, while Italys undersecretary of state for

foreign affairs, Stefania Craxi joined the Turksin condemning what she called the massacreof Gaza. U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon joined in, declaring himself shocked atIsraels actions.55

President Obama also failed to condemn

Turkeys role in the incident, and insisted

54 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.

aspx/137992

55 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870356

1604575282740991794622.html

49


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instead that Israel allow an international body

to investigate its actions. Obama then met withMahmoud Abbas, to promise $400 million ineconomic aid to the West Bank and to Gaza-- in other words to shore up the terrorist stateand its ruling terrorist party. At the same time,senior ofcials of the Obama administration began telling foreign governments that the

United States would support a U.N. resolutioncalling for a commission to investigate Israels(but not Turkeys or Hamass) role in theincident.56

This paved the way for a reprise of theGoldstone report, which had relied on Hamas

sources to condemn Israels defensive war inGaza the previous year. It was essentially a

demand that Israels right to self-defense besubject to international approval somethingno sovereign country could be expectedto tolerate.57 At the same time, the Obamaadministration was leaning on Israel to endits naval blockade in favor of some newapproach, such as an international naval

56 http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sources-obama-

administration-support-anti-israel-resolution-un-next-week

57 http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/03/israel-gaza-blockade-

obama-opinions-contributors-anne-bayefsky.html

50


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force.58 This was an even more direct assault

on Israels right to self-defense. Not only did itchallenge Israels fully justied efforts to keeparms and bomb-making materials out of thehands of the Hamas terrorists, but it shiftedresponsibility for Israels security to thesame international community that was nowsavaging the Jewish state for its efforts to stop

the ow of arms into the hands of Hamas.

During the year and a half Obama has beenin ofce so far, he has indeed brought change toAmerica and to the world. He has transformeda nation that had been the worlds bulwark ofdemocracy and freedom into an enabler ofthe very forces that are intent on destroyingthem. He has helped to isolate Americas onlyally in the Middle East, its sole democracy andmost vulnerable people. And he has broughtthe impending war of annihilation against thecrusaders and the Jews, which the jihadistshave promised, measurably closer to itsnightmare fruition.

58 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/world/

middleeast/04fotilla.html?pagewanted=1&hp

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David Horowitz is the founder of the DavidHorowitz Freedom Center.

Jacob Laksin is managing editor ofFrontpage Magazine. He is co-author, with

David Horowitz, ofOne-Party Classroom:How Radical Professors at AmericasTop Colleges Indoctrinate Students andUndermine Our Democracy.

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Obama and the War Against Jews

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