The Holocaust Survivors: Who Are They and What Is Their Responsibility?

Yesterday, January 27th, marked the day the United Nations General Assembly has set aside as International Holocaust Remembrance Day - the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

On this annual day of commemoration, every member state of the UN has been charged with honoring the victims of the Nazi era.  Of course, more often than not, in a deliberate attempt to take advantage of the memorial and the Holocaust's single most effected people, the Jewish people, many across the globe have used this day to vilify Israel, as causing a new holocaust in the Middle East vis a vis the Palestinians.

Yesterday, the Sunday Times of London took this contempt and set it in stone by publishing a cartoon depicting a large-nosed Jew hunched over a wall, building it with the blood of Palestinians as they writhe in pain within it: stereotypical blood-libel Anti-Semitism intended deliberately to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance day.

A significant plurality of UN member states not only do not honor the victims of Hitler's ultimate evil, but continue to foment categorically that the Holocaust, at least the Jewish portion, either never occurred or has been blown significantly out of proportion by Jews to gain support for the creation and propitiation of the Jewish State of Israel.

Such is the world we live in.  And it is the world we live in that suffers both by cause and effect as a result of the denigration of this Memorial.  For holocausts continue as we see the true suffering of genocide, mass murder and repression throughout the world, with little or no response...we have certainly not seen any cynical cartoons vilifying the death dealer who has caused 40,000 Syrian men, women and children to breathe their last.

So, who is responsible for declaring the world as misguided because of its continual obsession with maligning the Jews?  And let us not make the fruitless argument that it is not the Jews that are the victims of any calumniation, but the Israelis, who continue to repress the poor Palestinians - they are deserved of correction through any means possible.  No, it was not an Israeli in yesterday's cartoon, but a large-nosed Jew...let us not mistake the intentionality of equating Israel with the Jewish people in all anti-Zionist propaganda...we are one and the same.  It is not the Israeli that is depicted daily in the Arab press as the sons of pigs and apes, but the Jew.

Who shall stand up and say, "Enough!" - and refuse to allow the Jews to be effected by the scapegoating for the ills of the world?  Whose responsibility is it to remind the world, indeed, to stand up to the world and proclaim that the right of the Jewish people to live in freedom AND security in their homeland is undeniable?  Whose obligation is it to announce the truth that the reason there is no peace between Jew and Arab in the Middle East has nothing to do with the repression of an indigenous population...but is unequivocally a result of the ultimate aspiration of the majority of the Arab population to eliminate the Jews of the region - by any and all means possible?

It is, of course, the Holocaust survivors' responsibility first and foremost.  Those who survived the "Final Solution" to obliterate the world's vermin Jews, they are the ones tasked with the burden to "Never Forget" more than anyone else...to remind all of what can happen when one's destiny is in another's hands.  The Holocaust survivor cannot rely on others to take up their cause.  Moreover, the Holocaust survivor cannot rely on others to sympathize with them...as alliances are fickle and can easily be manipulated by selfish or misguided means.

In fact, it is incumbent upon the Holocaust survivors to strengthen themselves with a fortitude that says not only "Never Forget" - but "Never Again"!  And that even if the entire world attempts to deny the rights of the Jewish people their land, their freedom, their destiny and Israel and its Jewish people are friendless, alone and held in contempt by all, it is the Holocaust survivor who must not even blink when responding..."Not on my watch, not an inch, not even a millimeter of our freedom and destiny will we give back!  Never again will we place in others' hands the ability to deny us protection."

My father Zvi would have been 89 had he still been alive...he was the only survivor of his entire family - all murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  My mother Ina, who still remembers clutching her sister, my aunt Vita, G-d rest her soul, while they watched the SS capture their father - my grandfather...gassed in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  I've met hundreds, maybe thousands of others over the years who have survived and whose loved one's memories they never relinquished...whether they chose to talk about it or not.

The youngest survivors of the death camps are in their late 70's by now...most of the rest either no longer with us or old, frail and often have lost the fire of remembrance and some even the memories themselves.  But, who are the survivors, really?  As the generation that saw, that experienced the vilest form of human hatred and evil this world has yet seen...as they flitter like butterflies one by one to the Heavens to join those who went before them...who are the Holocaust survivors?  

The answer: I am!  My children are!  All of Israel and, in fact, every Jew on the face of this Earth is!  We are now the Holocaust survivors.

I have heard the argument, from Jews nonetheless, that we cannot live in the past.  We must move on from the memory of the death camps and the slaughter and begin an era of engagement, of assimilation into our "New" world.  My response is, Baruch HaShem.  As soon as the "New" world demonstrates that it is ready to move on from scapegoating the Jews...as soon as the "New" world is ready to give up its obsession that the "Old" world had with the "Jewish Problem" - whether it be in the Middle East, Asia, Europe or the Americas - I'm ready.

Unfortunately, for the better part of 4000 years the world has demonstrated that it's not ready, or willing, to move on.  It is not paranoia or delusion, it is simply historical fact.  From the Amelikites and Philistines of ancient days, through the Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, ancient Muslims to the present day, history has repeated itself.  The Jews, for many reasons beyond the scope of this discourse, have been targeted for annihilation.  Of course, we are not alone in this as I pointed out above...witness Darfur, Somalia, Bosnia, and now Syria.  None of these unfortunate peoples have been targeted for centuries simply because they were born...Jews.  The reasons have evolved, the regions have changed...but the facts remain the same.

More than one-third of the world's Jewish population was exterminated in the death camps of the 1930s and 40's.  Had the Third Reich completed its task of conquering the world, not one Jew would have survived.  And so, every Jew, whether of European descent or otherwise, is a survivor...a Holocaust survivor.

My uncle Zvi, G-d rest his soul, fought side by side with my father against Rommel in North Africa, lived with the memory of many of his family members...massacred in Auschwitz-Birkenau.  He and my aunt Vita settled in Israel along with my parents in 1946.  They helped build the nation, the Jewish nation of Israel, with their bare hands.  But, they were not the only survivors of the Holocaust.

My cousin, Ruthi, and her brother, Villi, G-d rest his soul, their children and grandchildren, the four generations of our family to live in the Jewish Nation of Israel - THEY ARE THE SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST!  My brother, Benny, G-d rest his soul, born in Israel, his two children and their children - THEY ARE THE SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST!

Unless we as Jews, no matter where we are from, understand that WE ALL are the survivors of the Holocaust...unless we ALL take up the gauntlet and say, "ENOUGH" to the agenda of much of the world to limit our destiny, what will the end result be?  It is time to put political correctness aside.  It is time to extract the notion that the Jewish people will be loved by the world if they and the Israelis can only make peace with the Palestinians.  We must open our eyes to the reality around us.

The isolation Israel is facing today is not a result of the stubbornness of Netanyahu, the Israeli right, the "settlers" of Judea and Samaria or any other person or group of Jews.  It is purely and simply the result of others attempting to usurp the right of Israel, the National Homeland of the Jewish people, to control their own destiny and security...end of story.  No land for peace agreement, no two-state solution will ever alter that conclusion.  We have been there, we have done that...

Yes, we must never stop praying for peace.  Yes, we must follow the understanding that we have been given a divine responsibility, a mandate from Heaven, to stand up and to say to the world, "We are here for a purpose - we will do good, will we do right, we will be a light to the world, we will glorify our Maker with our actions and deeds."

Yes, we must align ourselves with those few in the world that are truly our friends, those who support us both ethereally and materially.  But, in doing so, we must not twist ourselves into thinking we can place our trust in anyone but our Maker above and our unity and strength together.  And, above all, we must understand that we, Jews throughout, are responsible for fulfilling our purpose as SURVIVORS.  We owe that much to those that gave the ultimate sacrifice - to forever resolve...NEVER AGAIN.

So, I adjure you, all of those who call themselves Jews, all of those who support the Jews, all of those who pray earnestly for the Jews, to let go, not of the notion of doing good, but of thinking that doing what may be expedient and good by the world's standards will gain our acceptance and bring peace and safety.  It will not.  It is a fait accompli.  And, we must, with it, also let go of the notion that we can surrender even one millimeter of land in Israel, or even support that notion.  For, if we do, we place our people at risk and we void our responsibility - our commitment as Holocaust Survivors - to those who have gone before us.

Andrew C. McCarthy tells about The "Real" John McCain

Michele Bachman or John McCain...who understands the Middle East reality better?

I wonder if the jihadists of eastern Libya are still “heroes” to John McCain. That’s what he called them — “my heroes” — after he changed on a dime from chummy Qaddafi tent guest to rabid Qaddafi scourge.

See, the senator and his allies in the Obama-Clinton State Department had a brilliant notion: The reason the “rebels” of eastern Libya hated America so much had nothing to do with their totalitarian, incorrigibly anti-Western ideology.   No, no: The problem was that we sided with Qaddafi, giving the dictator — at the insistence of, well, McCain and the State Department — foreign aid, military assistance, and international legitimacy. If we just threw Qaddafi under the bus, the rebels would surely become our grand democratic allies.

This, of course, was a much more sophisticated theory than you’d get from lunatics like Michele Bachmann. Sit down for this, because I know it’s hard to believe anyone could spout such nutter stuff, but Bachmann actually opposed U.S. intervention in Libya. She claimed — stop cackling! — that many of McCain’s heroes might actually be jihadists ideologically hostile to the U.S. and linked to groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terror enterprise’s North African franchise. She even thought — yeah, I know, crazy — that if Qaddafi were deposed, the heroes would get their hands on his arsenal, ship a lot of it to AQIM havens in places such as Mali and Algeria, and maybe even turn rebel strongholds such as Benghazi into death traps for Americans.

Good thing we listened to McCain, no?

This week, while the guys the senator and the Obama administration aligned us with in Libya (and would like to align us with in Syria) were busy taking Americans and other foreigners hostage in Algeria, in addition to using Qaddafi’s arsenal to fight the French in Mali, McCain was working his magic in Cairo.

An unfortunate hiccup: McCain and his entourage, including fellow Libya hawk Lindsey Graham, showed up on President Mohamed Morsi’s doorstep just as it was revealed that Morsi, while a top Muslim Brotherhood official in 2010, had inveighedagainst Jews, calling them “blood-suckers” and “the descendants of apes and pigs” and claiming it was incumbent on Egyptians to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred” toward them.

Thank goodness Morsi was able to explain to McCain that his remarks had been “taken out of context.” I mean, you can see how that could happen, right? You’re making a few benign remarks about perpetuating hatred for enemies you describe as subhuman and all of a sudden they’re calling you an anti-Semite. Why, next thing you know, they’ll be saying Morsi could be an Islamic supremacist who is hellbent on imposing a sharia constitution on Egypt when he’s not otherwise rolling out the red carpet for Hamas and demanding the release of the Blind Sheikh!

Not to worry: McCain & Co. have promised to go to bat for Egypt’s swell president. Sure, he has imposed a sharia constitution just as crazies like Michele Bachmann predicted the Muslim Brotherhood would do if it took power. That would be the same sharia that, less than two years ago, McCain condemned as “anti-democratic — at least as far as women are concerned.” Back then, McCain was warning that the Brotherhood had to be kept out of the government if there was to be any hope for democracy in Egypt. After all, he explained, the Brothers “have been involved with other terrorist organizations.”

Now, however, McCain says he will push for American taxpayers to fork up another $480 million for Morsi. Or, to be accurate, borrow another $480 million. You see, the United States is already so deep in the red that a $16.3 trillion debt ceiling is not high enough. In fact, we’re such a basket case that our debt-service and “entitlement” payments alone put us in a quarter-trillion-dollar deficit hole even before we borrow and print another trillion-plus for such ancillary expenses as the Defense Department, the Obama family’s vacations, and the $80-odd million that funds “democratization” programs at McCain’s International Republican Institute. But hey, no problem — what’s another $480 million on top of the $2 billion–plus the Obama administration has already extended to Morsi’s regime . . . to say nothing of the sizable U.S. taxpayer chunk of the $4.8 billion IMF loan the Brotherhood government is also about to get its mitts on?

Naturally, “extremist” conservatives like Michele Bachmann are wet blankets when it comes to this gravy train, too. Get this: She thinks that when you get to the point where you have to borrow in order to pay the interest on the loans you already can’t pay off, somebody needs to cut off your credit line — not inflate it by another two or three trill. Even more daft: She thinks that if you subsidize an organization, like the Brotherhood, that promotes sharia and Hamas, you’re apt to get more sharia and more terrorism.

But look, that’s the kind of passé thinking we’ve come to expect from Bachmann. She’s the one, you may recall, who had the audacity to argue last year that it might not be a good idea for the secretary of state to keep as a key staffer a woman who worked for several years with a notorious al-Qaeda financial backer whose “charity” is formally designated as a terrorist organization — indeed, worked with him at a sharia-promotional journal he founded and in charge of which he put her parents, Muslim Brotherhood operatives (the surviving one of whom runs an Islamist organization, the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child, that is part of an umbrella entity called the Union for Good — a designated terrorist organization run by Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the notorious Muslim Brotherhood jurist).


Congresswoman Bachmann was acting on the obviously irrational belief that Muslim Brotherhood influences in our government might lead to pro-Islamist policies detrimental to American security and interests — as if the State Department might tell pro-American Egyptian military rulers that they should stand down so the Brotherhood could take over; as if the Obama administration might order that information about Islamist ideology be purged from the materials used to train our intelligence agents; as if the Brotherhood, even as it counted its American aid dollars, would impose sharia, prosecute its detractors, and green-light the persecution of minority Christians.

Such insane, Islamophobic scaremongering! Insane enough that McCain, between praising his Islamist “heroes” and championing ever more funding for Islamist Egypt, made certain to lambaste Bachmann on the floor of the Senate over her concerns about Brotherhood infiltration of our government – leading other influential Republicans to follow suit. And now, aping that display, People for the American Way — “PAW,” the outfit created by a hard-left Hollywood icon to smear Robert Bork and derail his Supreme Court nomination — is campaigning to have Bachmann booted from the House Intelligence Committee.
There is a war on over the course of American foreign policy and the security of the United States. The Left has aligned with the Brotherhood — some naïvely relying on the fiction that the Brothers are not the enemy vanguard, others seeing the Brothers as comrades in the quest for a utopian, post-American future. In opposition, the GOP can either continue looking to McCain for leadership or rally behind Bachmann the way the Left always circles the wagons around its stalwarts.

Anyone want to bet me on which way the Republicans will go?

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center. He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy, which was published by Encounter Books.

Obama Courting The New Egyptian Leadership...

Business As Usual: The Obama Administration Continues To Court The Muslim World At The Expense of Its Allies

The US has committed F-16 jets and dozens of new Abrams tanks to Egypt...against who will they be used?  Was this a signal to Netanyahu to "get in line or else?"

No matter what face of moderation the Muslim Brotherhood's new leader of Egypt puts on to the world, it has and always will be clear what Mohammed Morsi and the Brotherhood stand for. 

And no matter what duplicitous stance this administration takes toward the middle east in its rhetoric, the actions on the ground tell the true story of were the intentional alliances are being drawn.  The results will be disastrous for both the US and its only true ally in the middle east, Israel.

As to the foundation of Morsi's goals vis a vis Israel and the US, Rachel Avraham writes a poignant article for "United With Israel" that helps us understand the true intentions of Morsi and what he envisions his new "Democracy" to nurse their children on - "hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them."  This further helps us grasp the backdrop for why the policies of the Obama administration are so misaligned.

"MEMRI has uncovered that Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi evidently stated, “One American president after another – and most recently, that Obama – talks about American guarantees for the safety of the Zionists in Palestine. Obama was very clear when he uttered his empty words on the land of Egypt. He uttered many lies, of which he couldn’t have fulfilled a single word, even if he were sincere – which he is not.”

Morsi continued, “Dear brothers, we must not forget to nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred towards those Zionists and Jews, and all those who support them. They must be nursed on hatred. The hatred must continue.” Morsi furthermore declared, “Who is our enemy? The Zionists. Who occupies our land? The Zionists. Who hates us? The Zionists. Who destroys our lands? The Zionists. The land of Palestine will not be freed except through resistance.”

These above statements proves yet again why Israelis find it very difficult to trust that a Muslim Brotherhood dominated Egypt will honor the peace treaty and why many people are opposed to the United States sending advanced weapons to Egypt at this time. Indeed, this latest revelation from MEMRI follows the publication of another anti-semitic statement by Morsi, where he declared, “These bloodsuckers who attack the Palestinians, these warmongers, the descendants of apes and pig,” in a reference to the Jews of Israel. In the past, Morsi has also compared Zionists to Dracula’s and vampires, another clearly anti-semitic imagery.

The revelation of all of these anti-semitic statements follows an increased atmosphere of repression within Egypt, where minority groups, women’s rights activists, liberals, and any one else opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood is facing difficult times. History has demonstrated that how a society treats the Jews is often a litmus test for how other groups of marginalized people are treated.Given this, the fact that almost all of Egypt’s Jews have been expelled, that the few Jews who remain in Egypt live in fear, should be taken as a warning sign for other oppressed groups in Egypt.

As Egyptian-American human rights activist, and founder of Arabs For Israel, Nonie Darwish, once stated regarding the situation in Egypt, “Minorities have left or been pushed out of Muslim countries. Today the Copts of Egypt are departing in large numbers. It’s reminiscent of the time when close to 900,000 Jews were driven from Arab countries, a terrible loss. I know from personal experience that the culture of Egypt was never the same. Israel is the only non-Muslim state in the Middle East. That’s why it’s a target; many Muslims want the Middle East to be exclusively under Muslim control.” Nonie Darwish, as a strong advocate for religious diversity, sees a connection between the persecutions of Egyptian minority groups and hatred for Israel. Indeed, the same people who hate Israel often mistreat non-Muslim minority groups and other repressed peoples within the Middle East."  [United With Israel]

Democracy: The Real Winner in Israel's Election

A few observations about the Israeli election results:

Yair Lapid

Right-left split changes, but not a game changer: From an outsider's perspective, Israel would seem to be a very politically unstable place. The biggest party in the previous Knesset, Kadima, crashed from 28 seats to two. The No. 3 party, Yisrael Beiteinu, hitched its wagon to the ruling party, Likud, but their combined list lost about a quarter of its seats, down to 31 from 42. Meanwhile, a party that didn't exist until a few months ago, Yesh Atid, emerged as the 120-seat Knesset's second largest with 19 seats.

Yet despite the swapping of party labels, not much has changed in the right-left power split. Yes, the right wing lost a little ground -- from 65 seats in the last Knesset to 60 seats in the new one. But within the rightists' camp, votes moved rightward from the more moderate Likud to the Jewish Home party. 

Also, it would be a mistake to lump together all the centist and left-wing parties. The biggest winner of the center, Yesh Atid, espouses positions on Palestinian-related issues that in many respects are not dissimilar to Likud's: Both favor negotiations with the Palestinians (though skeptics say Likud's position is more rhetorical than genuine) and retaining the large Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank while opposing any division of Jerusalem. Most notably, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid has made clear that he wants to join a coalition with Likud, which is led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Even if centrist parties such as Yesh Atid are massed with the leftists, they constitute a minority of fewer than 50 seats; the balance goes to the Arab parties.

New priorities: With Israelis deeply pessimistic about the chances for imminent peace, a significant number of voters went for parties that made socioeconomic issues, not security, the centerpiece of their campaigns. Yesh Atid ran a campaign about social and economic issues, and Labor leader Shelly Yachimovich, who led the party to 15 seats, up from eight in the last Knesset, virtually ignored security issues in her campaign. This represents a sea change from the old days, when campaigns were all about security. Tzipi Livni's Hatnua bucked the trend, emphasizing peace with the Palestinians. The result: six seats.

New faces: The 19th Knesset will see a plethora of new members, with more than a quarter of the parliament occupied by first-timers, most of them from Jewish Home and Yesh Atid. Jewish Home is led by a son of American immigrants to Israel, businessman-turned-politician Naftali Bennett, and Yesh Atid is guided by Lapid, a former TV personality and the son of the late politician Yosef "Tommy" Lapid.

Women: The new Knesset will have more women; Yesh Atid leads the way with eight female representatives. The Likud-Beiteinu list has seven, Labor has four, Meretz has three and Jewish Home has two. Hatnua and Hadash each has one. Among the newcomers will be the body's first Ethiopian-Israeli woman, Penina Tamnu-Shata of Yesh Atid, an attorney who immigrated to Israel at age 3 during Operation Moses.

The end of Kadima: Twice in its short history, the Kadima leader occupied the prime minister's office. But in just one election cycle, the party went from Israel's largest faction to just two seats. Various factors doomed Kadima: the rise of Yesh Atid, whose socioeconomic-focused platform and charismatic leader peeled away centrist voters; Livni's failure to gain adherents for Kadima and subsequent defection to her new party, Hatnua; and Shaul Mofaz's decision to join, albeit briefly, the Likud-led ruling coalition. It's not the end of centrist politics in Israel, but it appears to be nearly the end of the road for the party started by Ariel Sharon as a breakaway from Likud.

Bibi weakened: Netanyahu supporters used to herald him as Bibi, King of Israel. So did Time magazine just a few months ago. But with the combined Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu list falling by a quarter after what was widely panned as a lackluster campaign, it's difficult to make the case that Netanyahu's star is burning brighter. He's almost sure to capture the premiership again -- now comes the horse trading that is Israeli coalition building -- but it seems it will be more for lack of an alternative than enthusiasm for Netanyahu.

Hello, Naftali Bennett: If there was any enthusiasm on the right wing this time, it appeared to be for Naftali Bennett, leader of the newly constituted Jewish Home party (itself a successor to the National Religious Party). The party captured 11 seats, up from just three as the NRP in the last Knesset. Bennett, who supports annexation of parts of the West Bank, is likely to apply pressure on Netanyahu to shift further right on security issues.

[From "Virtual Jerusalem"]

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Israel Beware: Demagoguery Has Been Sworn In For A Second Term

Daniel Pipes, president of The Middle East Forum recently wrote an article in the Washington Times that succinctly summarizes the anticipated direction that this US administration will move now that President Obama has officially taken the reigns again for a second term:

"The election is over, President Obama has just been sworn in for a second term, and cold treatment of Israel is already firmly in place. Mr. Obama has signaled during the past two months what lies ahead for U.S. relations with Israel through several actions.

First, he chose three senior figures — John Kerry for the State Department, John Brennan for the CIA and Chuck Hagel for the Defense Department — who range from clueless to hostile about Israel.

He also approved a huge gift of advanced weapons — 20 F-16 fighter jets and 200 M1A1 Abrams tanks — to the Islamist government in Egypt. This is despite Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who calls Jews “blood-suckers warmongers, the descendants of apes and pigs,” becoming increasingly despotic.

Reiterating the patronizing, 35-year-old tactic relied upon by anti-Israel types to condemn Israeli policies while pretending to be concerned for the country’s welfare, Mr. Obama said: “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are.”

He ignored evidence of Cairo importing Scud missile parts from North Korea. He rebuffed the 239 House members who called for closing the Palestinian Liberation Organization office in Washington in response to the Organization’s drive for state-observer status at the United Nations.
Asked about Mr. Obama’s nomination of Mr. Hagel, Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor who, despite his astringent criticism of Mr. Obama, nonetheless endorsed him for re-election, offered an astonishing response: “I thought that there would come a time when [Mr. Obama] would renege on his support of Israel, [but this] comes a little earlier than I thought.” Even Mr. Obama’s pro-Israel supporters expected him to turn against the Jewish state.

These anti-Israel steps raise worries because they jibe with Mr. Obama’s early anti-Israel views. We lack specifics, but we know that he studied with, befriended, socialized with and encouraged Palestinian extremists.

For example, a picture from 1998 shows him listening reverentially to anti-Israel theorist Edward Said. Mr. Obama sat idly by as speakers at an event in 2003 celebrating Rashid Khalidi, a former Palestinian Liberation Organization public relations operative, accused Israel of waging a terrorist campaign against Palestinians and compared “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden. Ali Abunimah, an anti-Israel agitator, commended Mr. Obama in 2004 for “his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” code words for distancing the U.S. government from Israel. In turn, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Abunimah for his obsessively anti-Israel articles in the Chicago Tribune, urging him to “keep up the good work.”

Mr. Abunimah also reveals that, starting in 2002, Mr. Obama toned down his anti-Israel rhetoric “as he planned his move from small-time Illinois politics to the national scene.” Mr. Obama made this explicit two years later, apologizing to Mr. Abunimah: “Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up-front.”

Mr. Obama dutifully made the requisite policy changes, if in a cramped and reluctant manner. (“I have to deal with him every day” he whined about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.) He supported Israel in its 2008-09 and 2012 wars with Hamas. His administration called the Goldstone Report “deeply flawed” and backed Israel at the United Nations with lobbying efforts, votes and vetoes. Armaments flowed. The Israeli exception to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remained in place. When Ankara canceled Israeli participation in the 2009 “Anatolian Eagle” air force exercise, the U.S. government pulled out in solidarity. If Mr. Obama created crises over Israeli housing starts, he eventually allowed these to simmer down.

Returning to the present: Mr. Netanyahu’s likely re-election on Tuesday as Israeli prime minister will mean continuity of leadership in both countries. This does not imply continuity in U.S.-Israel relations, however. Mr. Obama, freed from re-election constraints, can finally express his early anti-Israel views after a decade of political positioning. Watch for a markedly worse tone from the second Obama administration toward the third Netanyahu government.

Recall what Mr. Obama said privately in March 2012 to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev: “This is my last election and after my election, I have more flexibility.” There is every reason to think that having won that re-election, things have now “calmed down” and, after a decade of caution, he can “be more up-front” to advance the Palestinian cause against Israel.
Mr. Obama has won his second term, and Israel’s troubles have really begun. Jerusalem, brace for a rough four years."

Daniel Pipes (DanielPipes.org) is president of the Middle East Forum.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/22/obama-second-term-bodes-trouble-for-israel/#ixzz2IovIr516
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