Posted on 10/15/2008 5:32:23 AM PDT by SJackson
The Obama campaign is encouraging Jewish kids to fly Florida to visit their grandparents over Columbus Day weekend. The Web site for the initiative features comedienne Sarah Silverman instructing Jewish youth in Lysistrata tactics: Threaten to withhold future visits unless granny agrees to vote for Barack Obama. Here's another suggestion: Tell them that if they don't vote for Obama, "the goodest person we've ever had as a presidential choice," it can only be because they are racists.
John McCain and Barack Obama shake hands at the end of their town hall-style presidential debate, Tuesday. Photo: AP My guess is that bubbie and zaidie will not be too impressed by such bullying; nor should they be. The grandchildren will seek to prove that Obama is good for Israel, but their identification with Israel bears no relationship to that of their grandparents. For them the Holocaust is the stuff of history books, not a living memory. Ditto the UN vote on Israel's creation. They did not huddle around TV sets listening to the UN debates leading up to the 1967 war. Nor do they remember the 10,000 graves dug in Tel Aviv in anticipation of war casualties. Many have never heard of Entebbe.
A 2007 study by sociologists Stephen Cohen and Ari Kelman found that more than half of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 would not view the destruction of the State of Israel as a personal tragedy. The death and/or expulsion of millions of fellow Jews is something they can live with. By those standards, they probably would not see the Holocaust as a personal tragedy either.
Indifference to Israel, Cohen and Kelman found, "is giving way to downright alienation." Israel complicates the social lives and muddles the political identity of young Jews. Only 54 percent of the under 35 cohort profess to be comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state at all.
THE GRANDCHILDREN will cite Obama's high rating from AIPAC as proof of his pro-Israel bona fides. Irrelevant. Every senator with national ambitions has such a high rating, which is based on nothing more than voting for appropriation resolutions. Far more crucial to determining a candidate's likely relationship with Israel as president is his worldview.
Obama views talk as a universal solvent, and seems to believe that most conflicts can be solved by sitting people down around a conference table to air their grievances. That makes him remarkably sanguine about resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict, which he says would be a high priority from day one of his administration. The last time an American president made solving the conflict a high priority, Israel ended up with the Aksa intifada and open warfare.
If Obama thinks there is an easy solution to the conflict, it can only come in one form: Israel's return to its 1967 "Auschwitz borders." He basically confirmed that in a June interview with Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz, in which he allowed that Israel might justify "67 plus" in terms of a security buffer, "but they've got to consider whether getting that buffer is worth the antagonism of the other party."
Yet an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would almost surely result in a third Iranian-armed and financed adversary confronting Israel, just as previous withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza led to the takeover of heavily armed Iranian proxies in the form of Hizbullah and Hamas. Israeli security officials estimate that absent an Israeli presence in the West Bank, Hamas would take over there almost as quickly as it seized Gaza.
Not that the Palestinian Authority is much better. Its leader Mahmoud Abbas made a special trip to personally congratulate child-murderer Samir Kuntar on his release from Israeli jail, and the PA recently honored Dalai Mughrabi, the mastermind of the 1978 Coastal Road massacre that killed 37 Israelis.
OBAMA'S FAITH in the power of words is equally dangerous with respect to the Iranian threat. In June, Obama told the AIPAC convention that face-to-face negotiations with Iran would be necessary before any military response could be justified. In the last presidential debate, he dropped any reference to military action and said negotiations must precede any strong sanctions, and must include the Russians and Chinese.
But the Europeans have been engaged in futile, unconditional negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program for six years. If Obama has a better offer to make than they have, he should at least say what it is. As for the Russians and Chinese, they have made clear that their economic interests lie in supporting Iran. Negotiations will do nothing more than provide Iran with more crucial time to perfect its nuclear technology and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with greater internal legitimacy.
So an Obama presidency would likely result in an Israel living within indefensible borders and in the crosshairs of a nuclear Iran. Bubbie and zaidie should tell their progeny that in Jewish tradition wisdom flows from the elders to young, not vice versa.
0bama supporters:
Either racist (vote for him because of skin color)
brainwashed (vote for cult of personality)
or selfish (vote for freebies and irresponsibility)
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel. or WOT [War on Terror]
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As a Catholic supporter of Israel this is difficult to take. As a Jew with a tatoo on their hand this must be heartbreaking.
Never again gives way to who gives a crap.
Got to remember that as both the generation and the memory of the holocaust fades the younger generations are going to be forgetting bigtime.
Seems as if the lefty MSM is really running with the story of the "Great Schlep" initiative. Even Katie Kouric on CBS had big coverage of it. Looks like a tip-off that the 'Rats are finding it difficult keeping the elderly Jews in FL on their reservation.
Granny and Gramps are not without their own leverage in this matter - money.
Ping!!!
“1967 Auschwitz borders”
What ridiculous crap. So, therefore, the State of Israel was formed in “Auschwitz.” Brilliant choice.
Or did it only become “Auschwitz” in 1967, after over a million people were driven out of their homes.
Destruction of people is a personal tragedy for...humanity.
Destruction of an apartheidist/theocracy is no tragedy...in fact it’s inevitable.
This Jew was always voting McCain. And so was my grandfather, who liberated Ordhuf Nord along with a lot of his buddies. I am horrified many of my co-religionists are content to be sheep. I am not.
Apartheidist theocracy? You must mean Fraudi Arabia!
The “great schlep” is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in politics... Grandparents will be happy to see their grandkids... and I’m sure joyously humor them, and then go vote for who they intended to vote for all along.
No seasoned citizen is going to be lectured by a 20something done nothing, but knows everything about who and why they should be voting for anyone.
I’d think perhaps grandchildren should think that if the only reason they are visiting their grandparents is over an election, they are pretty piss poor grandchildren to begin with.
I grew up with a lot of Jewish friends in New York and several of their Moms and/or Dads had the tatoos. Very sad to see this but I don’t paint the whole canvas with the same brush. I know there are folks who won’t forget.
“and then go vote for who they intended to vote for all along.”
Exactly what I said out loud yesterday when I heard this ad being discussed on talk radio.
That the campaign would even waste money on something like this is further proof that it is getting so much illegal, foreign money that it doesn’t matter.
I know, but I’ll say it...I am scared for this country. My family has had every male since my great-grandfather do his time in uniform, except me (epilepsy, though when I found out, I was in Army ROTC with plans to go career). I am almost ready to weep for what things have gotten to. We are at war for our survival, and 50% of the electorate can do no better than yawn and stick their hand out.
And the worst part? If the worst is true about Obama, and I have this horrible feeling it is (even during Clinton, I wasn’t this scared...), then those 20 somethings are going to be in the Gulag right along with us...
No gulag for us my friend, we die with our boots on!
Go Army!
That’s true...yeah, I intend to go that way if it comes to that. I just feel like, well, torn. I remember my oath..and what it means. But darn it, could we really, really go down that bloody road again? Wasn’t Cold Harbor, Antietam, and Fredricksburg, not to mention Gettysburg enough for people?
What ridiculous crap. So, therefore, the State of Israel was formed in “Auschwitz.” Brilliant choice.
Tjhank you for proving your ignorance and unwillingness to do a simple search. "Auschwitz borders" was phrased by the liberal Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban. The basis is the untenable borders of 1948 Israel where the country is less than 20km wide in some places and lacks any strategic borders except in the south. Virtually the entire population was in artillery range of people who called for turning the Mediterranean incarnadine with Jewish blood.
Destruction of an apartheidist/theocracy is no tragedy...in fact it’s inevitable.
Please explain how Israel is a theocracy. Also explain that given the fact that Israeli Arabs have a higher GDP and more rights than the neighbors and get affirmative action and own more personal property, how there is appartheid.
If the issue is the Arabs of the disputed territories, that is not apartheid. Not that you care about facts or indigenous rights.
bttt
WHAT MORAL EQUIVALENCY!!!!
I think my head is going to explode.
I didn't think it was possible for my opinion of 0bama to sink any lower, but this statement indicates a new low of vacuity by 0bama.
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