UPDATES:
7 pm Israel time, Wednesday, June 3 2015
**You will recall, dear reader, that yesterday’s blog described the appearance of famed Iranian General Qassem Suleimani in Syria in the past few days, and his statement that the world would be surprised by coming Iranian actions.
Today, those actions are coming into sharper focus. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has declared that Iran will go to any length to defend Syrian president Assad. To that end, Iran is apparently rushing 50,000 soldiers to Syria immediately.
**A blistering “discussion” took place in the Knesset today in a meeting about BDS chaired by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. The fireworks started when Shaked made the following lengthy statement:
“There is currently a large-scale campaign to delegitimize against Israel, and against its existence as a Jewish nation. The aim of the campaign is not only to influence Israeli policy one way or another, but to demonize Israel, hurt its vital interests and its ability to defend itself, and eventually eliminate existence as a Jewish and democratic state.”
BDS aspires to portray Israel as the source of all evil in the world, as anti-Semitism previously presented the Jews. Boycotters are not talking about Judea and Samaria, but the existence of the state of Israel. This is the new face of anti-Semitism, these symptoms are the same old symptoms as anti-Semitism, which dehumanized Jews, and now does so for the Jewish state.
What a hypocritical and self-serving world. In Syria hundreds of thousands of children, women and men are being slaughtered, and the world is silent.In Arab countries around us women are raped and beheaded and the world is silent. Iran executed homosexuals and the world is silent.
It’s not politically correct to be anti-Semitic, but it’s super correct to be anti-Israeli.
Many years ago the perception was that if we give up a little everything will be fine. Like the Jews in 1933 who thought that, if they would be good Germans, their problems disappear.
The solution to BDS is fighting back. We’ll recruit the world’s Jews and supporters of Israel and boycott those boycotting back to us. Boycott the boycotters. We will stop the funding of these bodies, we will be cutting ties. They will pay the price for boycotts.”
Every word of what Shaked said is true.
Nevertheless, as soon as Shaked began speaking, leftists in the room began heckling her led by Meretz leader Zahava Gal-On, Herzog-Livni party member Michal Rozin, and Arab Joint List member Ahmad Tibi.
When Shaked finished, Gal-On and Rozin demonstrated their utter intellectual vacuity– while Tibi indicated where his true allegiance lies.
Gal-On: “We cannot bear to hear you [Shaked] say that anyone who dares to criticize the policy of the occupation is helping anti-Semites. Because of you, there is an international delegitimization campaign against us.”
Rozin: “We are becoming like South Africa in the eyes of the world. Are settlements worth it? Do we realize that being an occupying power is contrary to international law?”
Tibi: “Settlements under international law are war crimes. Not only are they not allowed, everyone should boycott them.”
Occupation. Occupation. Occupation. Settlements. Settlements. Settlements.
Because of you there is an international delegitimization campaign against us?
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If your humble servant has written it once, he has written it a thousand times: there is no Israeli occupation of anything. Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are absolutely legal. Period.
What is more is that anyone who supports a boycott against Israel is anti-Semitic. Period. BDS does not urge a boycott against “settlements in Judea and Samaria; BDS wants an economic, academic, and cultural boycott against Israel.
Gal-On and Rozin should remember what BDS leader Omar Barghouti has said. Even if the Palestinians receive every square inch of Judea and Samaria and the area is ethnically cleansed of every Jew, the BDS campaign will not stop–until every one of the 5,000,000+ UNRWA-described “Palestinian refugees” are given homes in Israel.
As for Tibi, he is a Palestinian wannabe and invariably acts like the adviser of the PLO and Hamas. Expect him to show up at The Hague in the coming months to speak in favor the coming Palestinian suit against Israel for “settlement war crimes.”
TODAY’S BLOG
By now, you have undoubtedly heard of Barack Obama’s interview on Israeli television’s Channel 2 last night with Israeli “newscaster” Ilana Dayan.
It should come as no surprise that in an Israeli media dominated by “leftists”, Dayan is an “uber-leftist”. During last summer’s war with Hamas, Dayan earned the revulsion of most Israelis by her endless reporting on the “Palestinian perspective”–even as thousands of missiles were raining down on Israel men, women, and children.
If anyone is a sycophant of Barack Obama in the Israeli media, it is Ilana Dayan.
Today, your humble servant will give Part 1 of his analysis of the interview, though in reality, the interview requires little analysis because Obama’s words are clear. The text that we are using today is the text of the interview provided by the White House.
We begin several minutes into the interview, when Obama goes to some lengths to explain why he is not loved nor are his ideas embraced in Israel (emphasis in bold mine) [analysis in brackets mine]:
President Obama:
“. . . I think there are a lot of filters between me and the people of Israel. They’re not generally receiving a message directly from me. When I’ve visited Israel, when I was in Sderot, talking to families who had seen missiles crash through their living rooms, when I was with young people in Jerusalem and talking to them about the possibilities of peace, the reception was incredibly warm.
And the challenge I think that I have when it comes to these issues is that I do think part of my obligation of being a friend of Israel’s is to speak the truth as I see it. And the truth as I see it is that the very moral imperatives that led to the founding of Israel—the belief that all of us share a basic humanity and dignity and rights that make it important for us to speak out against anti-Semitism—those things also require me from my perspective to say clearly that a Palestinian youth in Ramallah who feels their possibilities constrained by the status quo, that they have a claim on us, that they have a claim not just on Palestinian leaders, they have a claim on Israeli leaders. They have a claim on U.S. leaders in the same way that children around the world who are locked out of opportunity have those claims.
And so I think it’s—when you speak in those terms, so often these days, here in the United States as well as overseas, what I consider to be a constructive and necessary admonition to live up to the core values that led to Israel’s founding can be twisted or interpreted as not being sufficiently supportive of Israel.”
[Are you following this? Obama, who refused for years to come to Israel as president, and when he did come refused to speak in the Knesset, and was allowed to put together a hand-picked audience at another venue in Jerusalem (for a guaranteed “warm reception”), and given 50 minutes on Israeli television–this same Obama says now that Israelis do not receive his unfiltered message.
The fact is that Israelis receive Obama’s direct message everyday because Israeli media outlets obsessively report it. If it is not Obama himself delivering it, it is John Kerry, or the spokespeople for the White House and State Department.
Note how quickly Obama becomes patronizing Obama, giving Israelis a history lesson on the moral imperatives involved in the founding of Israel. He concludes by suggesting that he is giving a “constructive admonition” to Israel about its core values. And because he is “telling Israelis what they should be hearing”, his words are “twisted” as not being supportive of Israel.
What utter hubris. What petty “feeling sorry for himself.” And how dare Barack Obama give a morality lesson to Israel.]
The interview continues with Dayan revealing her bias.
Dayan: But you know what, because the very same Prime Minister with whom you disagreed on parts of those issues was elected by the vast majority of Israelis. They want him to be its leader. So that’s part of the problem.
[It’s a problem that Israel is a democratic country?]
Obama: Well, I think—I’m not an expert on Israeli politics. You are. But I’m a student of it, and an observer. And I think what’s true in Israel is true in the United States and is true everywhere—that we’re always trying to balance a politics of hope and a politics of fear.
[You can see, dear reader, where this is heading. Just as Obama sees himself as the man of hope and the Republicans as the party of “fear” in the United States, so does Obama see Netanyahu as the purveyor of a politics of fear.]
Obama continues:
And given the incredible tumult and chaos that’s taking place in the Middle East, the hope of the Arab Spring that turned into the disasters of places like Syria, the rise of ISIL, the continuing expressions of anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli settlement in so much of the Arab world, the rockets coming in from Gaza, the buildup of arms by Hezbollah—all those things, justifiably, make Israelis concerned about security, and security first. And I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is somebody who’s predisposed to think of security first; to think perhaps that peace is naïve; to see the worst possibilities as opposed to the best possibilities in Arab partners or Palestinian partners.
[Note how disingenuously Obama begins by saying that Israelis have every right to put security first because of the chaos in the Arab world around Israel, but then criticizes Netanyahu for thinking that “peace is naive” and for seeing the worst possibilities in Arab or Palestinian partners. And can we forget that it was Obama who so idiotically supported the so-called “Arab Spring” to begin with–an “Arab Spring” that made matters demonstrably worse for Israel and the world?
Side note: did Obama really say “settlement” instead of “sentiment”?]
Part 2 of this Obama interview will be discussed in tomorrow’s blog.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.