Posted on 12/31/2006 6:08:51 AM PST by yochanan
Selective Outrage: Why Can’t Jewish Leaders Speak Truth to Power?
by Ruth S. King, AFSI Sunday, December 31, 2006
On December 14, a group of 150 prominent Jewish leaders, attorneys, intellectuals, journalists, and diplomats assembled in New York under the auspices of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The stated goal was the indictment of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide.
As is predictable at such august gatherings, there was much soap box rhetoric. Most were enraged and sincere, but some statements were over the top. Irwin Kotler, a former minister of justice in Canada, went so far as to compare Ahmadinejad to (gasp) Pinochet! If only Israel’s enemies were like Pinochet.
Alan Dershowitz announced that he was drafting a legal brief justifying the use of preemptive force against Iran: “If the international community fails, we reserve the right of self-defense.” Kotler accused Ahmadinejad of “state-ordered, state-sanctioned genocidal anti-Semitism.” Meir Rosenne, a former Israeli ambassador added: “When 6 million Jews were killed, countries remained silent. At that time, everyone said they didn’t know. Today, they know, but…they don’t care…The apathy of the civilized world when it comes to killing Jews is probably a matter of tradition.”
Other speakers denounced the United Nations for its inaction in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. The editor-in-chief of The New Republic, Martin Peretz, slammed Kofi Annan as a “handmaiden to Darfur” and compared James Baker to Neville Chamberlain.
Hello? They denounce the United Nations even as they bring their lawsuit to the United Nations International Court of Justice? Forgive my cynicism, but the long and the short of it is that they will sue the bastard. Well, as they say on the farm “that‘ll learn him.” Continue reading this article »« Fold this article up
My, my. Did the noble gentlemen ever listen to the daily “state-ordered, state-sanctioned, genocidal anti-Semitism” that prevails throughout the Arab world? Have they heard the sermons or read the newspapers or seen the schoolbooks calling Jews vermin, bacteria, and dogs? What about the daily and ritual chants of “death to the Jews”? And how about the fact that ‘’Mein Kampf'’ and the ‘’Protocols of the Elders of Zion'’ are best sellers throughout the Arab world? Did they ever see the vicious cartoons of Israelis and Jews that flood Arab newspapers or witness the daily flag burnings and street theater calling for the destruction of “evil and illegitimate Israel.” Have they a clue that jihad and Jew hatred have a long and deadly history among the Moslems of the world?
No, dear sirs. These atrocities do not take place only in Iran. They are random and routine in the Arab gutters of all Israel’s enemies. But you do not denounce them, you do not sue them, you do not curse them, You accept this in the name of peace processing. You brandish your collective fist at Iran, but you ask Israel to negotiate with the rest of this genocidal scum. In fact, you sanction Israeli concessions to these thugs whose aim is identical to that of Iran’s lunatic president.
Did you not gather like fools in the White House to applaud Yasser Arafat, a genocidal anti-Semite if there ever was one? Did you protest when Sadat, author of a fawning letter of praise to Hitler, went to Israel to issue demand after demand rather than an apology for the nearly devastating sneak attack on Israel on Yom Kippur of 1973? Do you not call Mahmoud Abbas, a well known terrorist and Holocaust denier, “Mr. President” and a “moderate”? Did you not urge Israel to leave Gaza and do you not urge Israel to leave Judea and Samaria even in the face of the chaos and murder that ensues after each Israeli concession? Do you not indulge in the massive identity theft that has usurped the title “Palestinian” by changing its definition and history?
To be sure among those gathered were decent people. Among those protesting against Ahmadinejad is Elie Weisel whom I like and respect. Who could forget his speech when he was invited to the White House shortly after it was announced that President Reagan was to visit a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where members of the SS, the Nazi elite notorious for their murderous anti-Semitism, were buried.
At the ceremony where Weisel was to be honored with a Congressional Medal of Achievement, he invoked the Jewish tradition which commands one “to speak truth to power” and asked the president to cancel his visit to Bitburg with the stirring words “That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.”
Why can’t Jewish leaders speak truth to power? Why, instead of posturing about indicting Iran’s president, can’t they urge President Bush to abandon the “road map” and why don’t they openly denounce those who bend the president’s ear and mind with respect to Israel and its enemies? Why can’t they gather in Hebron, the cradle of the Jewish faith and the locus of the unbroken chain of Jewish survival which our tormentors sought to break? Their place is with the intended victims.
Instead, the convenient whipping boy is Ahmadinejad, while so many of the “Jewish leaders” continue to nurture the hallucination of the “two state solution.”
It is their indifference and ignorance and indolence that will certainly speed up the two state solution–the state of war and the state of extinction.
About the Writer: Ruth S. King is on the executive committee of Americans for a Safe Israel and a member of the editorial board of “Outpost” where she contributes a monthly column .
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
----------------------------
Leftist phsycobabble.
I read Gabriel Rosenfeld's item on American Jews and the Democrats with interest.
The article takes it as a given that American Jews strongly support Israel. And, speaking as one who has spent much of his life in Brooklyn and adjacent suburbs can attest, that is a reasonable inference.
Certainly, if Israel bond drives, teenage summer trips, accounts at Bank Leumi, coin boxes for Magen David Adom and all the other ephemera of American Jewish life add up to support for Israel, that is.
But many American Jews, certainly most of them who are Democratic Party and leftist activists, seem to support an Israel other than the one that actually exists. That is to say, they support an Israel whose existence on earth is derivative of a fading, post-1945 international order, an Israel with a mythical "right to exist" granted by the mob of terror states and dictators at Turtle Bay, an Israel that is (somehow) to fit into a multicultural, post-nationalist world as one of its component parts.
The actually existing Israel, the blood-and-soil state granted and guaranteed not by Resolutions 181 and 242, but by Genesis 12 - the support of American Jews for THAT Israel is decidedly in question.
As the opinion of the "international community" turns decisively against Israel, I suspect that many American Jews will side with their beloved "international community" (which, by the way, will train its sights on America after it disposes of Israel), reasoning that Israel is being done in by its "right-wing" leaders and not by the forces of evil now rising all over the world.
Unfortunately most American Jews are the Waffen SS of the DEmocratic party.
For most abortion is more important than Israel.
This is a sad but true statement.
'Our tormentors'? Christian hero Bibi Netanyahu surrendered Hebron to the Muslims without a fight. He talks tough but chickens out when the going gets tough, just like an Arab.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.