When it came to protecting the right of the Libyan Ambassador to
\nthe UN living immediately next door to me in Englewood, my Democratic
\nCongressman, Steve Rothman, found his voice, issuing a three page press
\nrelease about a deal he had brokered with the State Department 27 years
\nago for the Libyans to bizarrely remain in a New Jersey suburb. But when
\nI asked Rothman, who is Jewish, to give me a comment on Obama’s
\ndegrading treatment of Israel’s elected officials and the
\nAdministration’s opposition to Jews building in all parts of Jerusalem,
\nhis Chief of Staff sent me an email that said the Congressman was “away
\nfor the holidays so we won’t be able to provide you with a statement.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Attitudes
\nlike these on the part of influential Jewish members of the American
\nestablishment explain why Obama has been allowed to get away with his
\nappalling treatment of Israel. Yes, it is we Jews who allow it, afraid
\nto take a stand against a President who is rapidly emerging as the new
\nJimmy Carter.<\/p>\n
Don’t think Obama isn’t listening.<\/p>\n
When it came to endorsing a recent Congressional vote to label the
\nTurks’ slaughter of over one million Armenians during the first World
\nWar a genocide, Obama quickly broke a campaign pledge, and a moral duty,
\nto do just that and publicly distanced himself from the term genocide
\nin order not to offend the Turkish government. And when it came to
\nhosting the Dalai Lama at the White House, the President of the world’s
\nsole superpower quickly bowed to Chinese bullying, not only refusing to
\ngreet the great humanitarian publicly but sending him out through the
\nservice entrance of the White House where the Dalai Lama was
\nphotographed surrounded by giant bags of garbage. But when it comes to
\ntreating America’s most reliable ally like a pariah nation, Obama has no
\nfear of the American Jewish community because he’s convinced there will
\nbe no price to pay. The Jews are too timid to react.<\/p>\n
How sad that we Jews have become so politically pathetic. Although
\nthere were grave suspicions about Obama’s position on Israel before the
\ncampaign, greatly compounded by his having sat through 20 years of
\nvitriol toward Israel from his own pastor, American Jewry gave Obama the
\nbenefit of the doubt. Nearly eighty percent of American Jews voted for
\nhim against a proven friend of Israel in John McCain. But fool me once,
\nshame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Amid the Jewish propensity to
\nblindly pull the Democrat lever in every vote without even thinking, if
\nObama gets anything more than twenty percent of the Jewish vote in 2012
\nit will be a manifestation of a community which simply doesn’t know how
\nto stand up for its itself and has contempt for its own interests.<\/p>\n
And spare me the lectures on dual loyalty. If there is one thing the
\nAmerican people have learned it’s that the Israeli people are their
\ncanaries in the coalmine. Attacks that Israelis experience first just
\npresage what Americans will later face. Why? Because the Islamic nations
\nhate Israel for the same reason they hate America. Israel is a bastion
\nof freedom in a region of tyranny. The Mullahs are religious, the Arab
\ndictators mostly secular. But what they share in common is an absolute
\ndesire to rule absolutely. They hate Israel and America for its
\nfreedoms. They know that elections will knock them out of power and,
\nlike Saddam, they would face trial for crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n
Ahmedenijad hates his own people even more than he hates Israel,
\nbrutalizing and slaughtering them in the streets whenever they stand up
\nfor themselves. The last thing the House of Saud wants is democracy,
\npreferring to plunder their country’s oil wealth and concentrate it in
\nthe hands of princes of the blood all of whom live like kings. The same
\nhatred of liberty is harbored by all the other Arab potentates who have
\noppressed their people for decades, from Mubarak who has been in power
\nfor three decades, to Kaddafi and the Assads who have stolen power for
\nfour.<\/p>\n
The same is true of Israel’s policies of human rights. Israel is the
\nonly country in the Middle East where gays can march openly. Any attempt
\nto do so in Riyadh would end with the marchers all being decapitated.
\nOf course, we don’t have to worry about that in Iran since Ahmedenijad
\nassured us in his lecture at Columbia that Iran has no homosexuals.<\/p>\n
And this applies even more importantly in the area of women’s rights.
\nIsrael is the Middle East’s greatest champion of women’s rights, with
\nwomen enjoying all the freedoms of men. But the Islamic countries do
\neverything in their power to oppress women, afraid of the possible
\ncorruption women would bring if they showed an ankle or drove a car.<\/p>\n
Rather than pressuring Jews not to build condos in Jerusalem, Obama
\nought to pressure the Arabs to liberalize and democratize. He ought to
\nuse his considerable eloquence to state the obvious truth. That until
\nsuch time as the Arabs allow their citizens to be free, there will never
\nbe peace in the Middle East. Israel is the solution rather than the
\nproblem. The more Arab countries emulate its market economy and liberal
\ndemocracy, the more our oppressed Islamic brothers and sisters will
\nprosper. They will not need scapegoats, like Jews, to vent their
\nunderstandable frustration at their wretched, impoverished lives, all
\nbrought about by clerics and dictators whose steal their money and their
\nfreedoms.<\/p>\n
According to many estimates, Muammar Kaddafi is the richest man in
\nthe world, with a net worth of over $70 billion. That a thief and a
\nmurderer of that magnitude is allowed to own a tax-free mansion next
\ndoor to me where we, honest and hard working Americans, pay for his
\npolice protection and trash removal, is a travesty of truth and justice.<\/p>\n
When American Jews stand up to the lie that Israeli intransigence is
\nthe reason there is war in the Middle East, they end up helping their
\nArab brethren as well. Because the last things the five hundred million
\nArabs who live under state censorship and political oppression need is
\ntheir rulers and clerics finding a convenient scapegoat upon whom to
\nplace the blame for their people’s suffering.<\/p>\n
And every time Obama falsely puts the blame on Israel for the Middle
\nEast’s tensions, he puts another nail in the coffin of future Middle
\nEast freedom and Arab democracy and liberty.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nRabbi Shmuley Boteach is founder of This World: The Values Network.
\nHis most recent book is ‘The Blessing of Enough: Rejecting Material
\nGreed, Embracing Spiritual Hunger. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it came to protecting the right of the Libyan Ambassador to the UN living immediately next door to me in Englewood, my Democratic Congressman, Steve Rothman, found his voice, issuing a three page press release about a deal he had brokered with the State Department 27 years ago for the Libyans to bizarrely remain…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":203,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n