Really bad form
US President Obama is reaching out to Muslims again. Ynet News:
President Barack Obama on Monday renewed his commitment to a “new beginning” with the Muslim world, vowing no let-up in US efforts to promote Middle East peace, curb militant violence and boost economic development. Seeking to build on his outreach to Muslims in a speech in Cairo last June, Obama used a US-hosted Muslim business conference to underscore what his administration has done so far and to pledge further work to overcome mistrust. While Obama has made progress toward mending America’s image in the Islamic world, he still faces stiff challenges in his handling of the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the nuclear standoff with Iran and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I knew that this vision would not be fulfilled in a single year, or even several. But I knew we had to begin and that all of us have responsibilities to fulfill,” Obama told the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship…..”There’s so much more we can do together, in partnership, to foster opportunity and prosperity in all our countries,” Obama said as he sought to focus more on talking about doing business together.
Like tell anti-Jew jokes. Ynet News:
VIDEO – National Security Adviser James Jones opened his remarks at the 25-year anniversary gala of the Washington Institute For Near East Policy last weekend with a joke in which a Jewish merchant fleeces a thirsty Taliban fighter. CBS reported that the joke, which many claimed was in bad taste, was conspicuously absent from the version of the remarks distributed to the media.
Here is how it went: “A Taliban militant gets lost and is wandering around the desert looking for water. He finally arrives at a store run by a Jew and asks for water. The Jewish vendor tells him he doesn’t have any water but can gladly sell him a tie. The Taliban begins to curse and yell at the Jewish storeowner. The Jew, unmoved, offers the rude militant an idea: Beyond the hill, there is a restaurant; they can sell you water. The Taliban keeps cursing and finally leaves toward the hill. An hour later he’s back at the tie store. He walks in and tells the merchant: “Your brother tells me I need a tie to get into the restaurant.”
Foreign Policy reported that the participants, many of whom were Jewish, laughed heartily, but conservative blogs and some Jewish community leaders pounced on the remark.
How Foreign Policy knew the ‘Jewish’ participants laughed is beyond me but maybe they polled the room after and as far as ‘conservative blogs and ’some’ Jewish community leaders pouncing on the remark replace ‘Jew’ with ‘Muslim’ and see if you understand the offence and perhaps spark a riot and a near-death experience for ’some’.Foreign Policy reported that the participants, many of whom were Jewish, laughed heartily, but conservative blogs and some Jewish community leaders pounced on the remark. Ethnic jokes are always a massive fail in the public political arena unless your poking yourself.
If the Democratic plan is to diverst themselves from Jewish Americans and their contribution to the political process on side of the Democrats; I’d say the plan was one of the few policies of the Obama Administration which is performing well.
J-Street, the Obama Administration’s pet nominal ‘Jewish’ advocacy group has decided to go on the attack and publish ads in various “Jewish” journals criticizing Elie Wiesel for speaking out against the Obama Administration’s tempter tantrum against Jerusalem. Again, I have to issue a massive F for the public relations failure on three levels.
J-Street published ads in ‘Jewish’ journals while Wiesel made his case in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune and he pitched his plea not just to a Jewish audience but the wider public. Secondly, publicly criticizing Wiesel for exercising his free speech rights and opinion on the significance of Jerusalem for Jews is the equivalent of beating up a holocaust survivor in a elevator for being a Jew. Thirdly, using hard leftist Yossi Sarid, the disposed head of Meretz (who doesn’t even live in Jerusalem) as your counterweight to the credibility of Elie Wiesel is like using the Pope as your posterboy for the anti-MAMBLA campaign.
You can do it but its just really bad form.
IF this particular “Policy” of Obama’s is working well – and I’m not sure it is – it’s because he can draw on an ever increasing amount of anti-Semitism on the left. I’ve been shocked at the caustic anti-Semitic comments that showed up in my blog when I wrote about a recent show at the CJM on “Notre Combat,” which is a response organized by a French artist of Tunisian-Jewish heritage. I deleted most of them as they were disgusting. A recent post in this blog (http://lotsasplainin.blogspot.com/) regarding the issues with the anti-illegal-immigration law in Arizona led to a comparison with Israel being labeled as a “Nazi” state. Even a mild protest by me in the comments section led to an even surlier response – that American Jews who supports Israel should move there immediately. If you or I or anybody would slander people because of their race, place of origin or whatever, the left would be on us like the proverbial flies. But if one is a Jew or, even worse, an Israeli, then no insult or slander is too bad. I wonder if they realize what they are doing – support those who would inflict another genocide on Jews. Or maybe they want that and don’t have the courage to admit it. I’m progressive in a lot of issues but not on this one and what’s happening makes me very worried as well as angry
What’s your blog Nancy?
I take a different sort of view of anti-Semitism. I think Jews have caught a break in the last 60 years and only now is the world slowly started to revert to type. But its just not on the left, its on the right as well. A perfect example of this is a recent post by a relatively well-known Cdn conservative blog where he spewed outrage about a Cdn soldier having to stand trial for murder for allegedly killing a disarmed injured Taliban fighter when just last spring he was spewing outrage that a group of new recruits in the IDF who had just finished their basic training and commemorated it with a vulgar and offensive t-shirts. It was a moral failure of the IDF command structure yadda yadda. Here’s the link to my post about it and his post with our exchanges are embedded in it.. But really, if it was an IDF soldier who stood accused; I doubt he would be so generous in overlooking it.
My first week of blogging I received my first death threat since then there have been others but my favourite comment was the one suggesting I was singularly responsible for the rise of anti-semitism in the world – really its quite an accomplishment and I don’t even have a seat at the Elder’s table.
This is the URL to my blog: http://cheznamastenancy.blogspot.com/. I’ve written two posts about current exhibits at the Jewish Museum here in SF and both times I’ve gotten nasty, anti-Semitic e-mails from all sorts of people. I KNOW some of them and they consider themselves politically left. That’s why I no longer consider myself a lefty; I’m a progressive who supports Israel, but not uncritically! However, there’s a big leap from being critical to being one who really advocates another Jewish Genocide and that’s what so many on the US left are really doing. You are probably right – the world is reverting to type. Matty – the guy who writes the blog that I linked to about – states that the Arabs have been in Palestine longer than the Jews (!), believes with uncritical fervor every thing in Jimmy Carter’s book on Israel and now, has a comment on his blog that the “Palestinians are the latest victims of Hitler.” Amazing! They have no knowledge of history, ignore what Israel has endured from the Infatada to suicide bombers, ignore the corrupt nature of Arab leadership – ignore everything except their rancid hatred of Jews which can now hide under another name.
My other theory is the world only likes dead Jews but funny you bring up the whole why do Arabs have to pay for the holocaust as I just read this post at Torat Yisrael you may find it interesting for future reference.
That’s a great post and I’ve saved it for future reference. As a student of Middle Eastern history, I knew about the Arab/Nazi links but this goes into great detail. Another thing that now seems “received truth about Israel” is the fiction that the Jews weren’t there before the 1930’s (give or take a decade). Never mind the evidence that shows Jewish occupation for at least 1000 years or more before the birth of Christ or the evidence that Jews have lived in the land (including Jerusalem) for centuries – even after being expelled from Jerusalem by the Christians. I suppose it’s another way to make Israel look like a rogue state and set her up for eventual destruction. I often wonder where the brains of our home grown lefties are because the Arab states do not stand for ANYTHING progressive – women, gays, minorities, political freedom, freedom of the press, zilch, nada. What do they think would happen if Israel is handed over the the Palestinians? It would be mass murder and I suppose they would either clap and cheer or raise their eyes with hypocritical horror.
Idiots!
Attempting to establish there was only a marginal or no Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael prior to the late 19th century and early 20th century is incredibly important as the Palestinian narrative depends entirely on the Arab presence pre-dating the Jewish one otherwise the whole ‘occupation/colonist’ narrative tends to fall apart and the Palestinian presence could be potentially construed or characterized as the ‘occupiers’. Although I have to admit staking a claim on a land historically called Judea as part of the Palestinian homeland takes more than a fair bit of chutzpah.
I really enjoyed the whole Dead Sea Scrolls dust up at the ROM in Toronto. There is just something incredibly humorous in claiming the Palestinians people are the rightful heirs of ancient Jewish religious writing.
I don’t remember when exactly, but sometime in the last year there was a video floating around about a chassidic man who believes a great many of the Palestinians in the disputed territories are actually of Jewish origin and some have kept up some very distinct religious rituals in secret which few want to openly acknowledge. Anyway, he’s made it his mission to try to lead them back to their roots. I found an English version of the video.
Both Daled Amos and Elder of Ziyon have recently posted some interesting historically pieces on the huge waves of illegal Arab immigration which occurred during the Palestine Mandate.