“Obama revealed gross ignorance of the Jews’ unique claim to the land of Israel. He said that America’s unbreakable bond with Israel was based upon:
the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust…
“The Jews’ attachment to their homeland does not derive from the Holocaust, nor their overall tragic history. It derives from Judaism itself, which is composed of the inseparable elements of the religion, the people and the land. Their unique claim upon the land rests upon the fact that the Jews are the only people for whom Israel was ever their nation, which it was for hundreds of years – centuries before the Arabs and Muslims came on the scene. As for antisemitism, he made no mention of the alliance between the Palestinians and the Nazis during the 1930s, and the fact that Nazi-style Jew-hatred continues to pour out of the Arab and Muslim world to this day.
Building upon this ignorance, he then adopted the Arab propaganda version of Israel’s history. He thus delivered a travesty of the facts:
On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.
“On the contrary, it is not undeniable because it is untrue. The Palestinians have been offered a homeland repeatedly – in 1936, 1947, 2000 and last year. They have repeatedly turned it down. The Arabs could have created it between 1948 and 1967, when the West Bank and Gaza were occupied by Jordan and Egypt. They chose not to do so. They could have created it after 1967, when Israel offered the land to them in return for peace with Israel. They refused the offer. The Palestinians have suffered because they have tried for six decades to destroy the Jews’ homeland.
Obama: For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation.
“The ‘pain of dislocation’ was caused by the fact that six decades ago they went to war against the newly recreated Israel to destroy it, and were subsequently deliberately kept in ‘refugee’ camps by the Arab world. What other aggressor in the world is described as suffering ‘the pain of dislocation’ caused by its own aggression — which has continued for sixty years without remission and shows no sign of ending?“
Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead.
“There is one reason for that and one reason alone – the Palestinians have ensured that Israel has never lived in peace or security, because they have continued to attack it and murder its citizens. And Gaza? Doesn’t Obama realise the Israelis no longer occupy Gaza? It is run by Hamas, which shows its commitment to the peace and security of its inhabitants by throwing them off the tops of tall buildings.
So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.
And what about the intolerable situation of Israel, forced to live in a state of siege for sixty years because of the unending aggression of the Palestinians and the wider Arab and Muslim world? The Palestinians could have lived in peace and prosperity alongside Israel at any time since 1948. If they were to end their attempt to destroy Israel and accept insteadthe right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state — that crucual qualification Obama omitted to mention –– they could do so tomorrow. The only reason their position is intolerable is because they themselves have made it so. What other aggressor in the world has its situation described as ‘intolerable’?
Palestinians must abandon violence.
Good. But then:
Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed.
‘Resistance’? ‘Resistance’ is a term of moral approval. ‘Resistance’ describes a fight against injustice. But the Palestinians have been engaged in an attempt to wipe out Israel. Obama sees this as ‘resistance’ – even though he says violence is wrong. And then this:
For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia.
So Obama has equated genocidal terrorism by the Palestinians with the civil rights movement in America and the true resistance against apartheid in South Africa. Thus the moral bankruptcy of the relativist.
Next, he repeated that the settlements (all of them? just new ones?) undermined peace and so had to stop. But they don’t undermine peace. It is Arab rejectionism that prevents peace in the mMddle East, and the settlements are a palpable excuse. Yet Obama delivered no ultimatum of any kind to Iran, the real threat to peace in the region and the world; indeed, he repeated that Iran
should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,
– an alarming indication that he might view as acceptable a formulation which might enable Iran to continue to make nuclear weapons under some kind of verbal and political camouflage.
For his egregious sanitising of Islam and its history, and his absurd claims about its contribution to western civilisation, read Robert Spencer here. But in this regard, one of Obama’s references in particular made me catch my breath. It was this:
The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.
This is boilerplate misrepresentation by Islamists and their apologists. The fact is that it is Judaism which teaches this as a cardinal precept. The Talmud states:
Whoever destroys a single soul, he is guilty as though he had destroyed a complete world; and whoever preserves a single soul, it is as though he had preserved a whole world.
The Koran appropriated this precept – but altered it to mean something very different. Thus:
That was why we laid it down for the Israelites that whoever killed a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind; and that whoever saved a human life shall be regarded as having saved all mankind. Our apostles brought them veritable proofs: yet many among them, even after that, did prodigious evil in the land. Those that make war against God and His apostle and spread disorder in the land shall be slain or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off on alternate sides, or be banished from the land. (My emphasis)
In other words, this turns a Talmudic precept affirming the value of preserving human life into a prescription for violence and murder against Jews and ‘unbelievers’. Yet Obama passed it off as evidence of the pacific nature of Islam.
So in conclusion, yes, there was some positive stuff in this speech – but it was outweighed by the United States President’s shocking historical misrepresentations, gross ignorance, disgusting moral equivalence between aggressors and their victims, and disturbing sanitising of Islamist supremacism
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UPDATE:
Clearly I am not alone in surmising that Obama has lost the plot entirely. His recent announcement that America ‘is one of the largest Muslim countries’ is raising both eyebrows and suspicions in all sane observers. Here’s Melanie Phillips again, in the Spectator, saying what many are thinking:
“Having previously declared that America is ‘no longer a Christian nation’ – to be precise:
… At least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers…
Obama has now announced, on the eve of his pilgrimage to make obeisance to the entire Islamic world, that the US can be seen as a Muslim country:
‘And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,’ Mr. Obama said.
Uh? Here are some statistics of the number and percentage of Muslims in various countries:
Indonesia: 207,105,000 (88.2%);
Pakistan: 167,430,801 (95%);
India: 156,254,615 (13.4%);
Turkey: 70,800,000 (99%);
Egypt: 70,530,237 (90%);
Nigeria: 64,385,994 (45%);
Iran: 64,089,571 (98%);
Algeria: 32,999,883 (99%);
Morocco: 32,300,410 (99%);
Afghanistan: 31,571,023 (99%)
Saudi Arabia: 26,417,599 (100%)
USA: 4,558,068 (1.5%)
Just what planet is this US President on?
Or is this not a statement but an aspiration?“
Across the pond, Wesley Pruden in the Washington Post also picks up on this point, as well as rightly lambasting Obama for his pitiful love letter to Islam while in Cairo:
“Now it’s on to Normandy, to apologize to the Germans. It’s the least an American president can do after the way the Allied armies left so much of Europe in rubble. There’s a lot of groveling to do for what America accomplished in the Pacific, too.
This prospect should appeal to Barack Obama, who relishes the role of Apologizer-in-Chief. Apologizing for manifold sins against civilization is not always easy, but it’s simple enough: “Blame America First.” You just open a vein and let it flow. In Cairo, Mr. Obama opened an artery.
In an interview before the Cairo speech, he called the United States one of “the largest Muslim countries,” based on its Muslim population, and he later put the number of Muslims in America at 7 million, more than even most Islamic advocacy groups claim.
Mr. Obama described himself as “a Christian, but,” and offered a hymn to the Muslim roots he insisted during the late presidential campaign he didn’t have. He invoked his middle name, “Hussein,” as evidence that he was one of “them.” The Obama campaign insisted last year that anyone who uses the middle name was playing with racism.
The article notes also:
“But it was more fun to fish for applause by berating America and throwing rocks at Israel…. Israel, he said, must “live up to its obligations,” but he had hardly a word of rebuke for the long record of broken Palestinian promises. It was a remarkable insult to an absent ally, delivered to the applause of Israel’s sworn enemies.”
And the piece concluded:
“The great Cairo grovel accomplished nothing beyond the humiliation of the president and the embarrassment of his constituents, few of whom share his need to put America on its knees before its enemies. No president before him has ever shamed us so. We must never forget it.”
A Jew With A View 