From: "Mortimer Zuckerman"
To: "jeevacation®gmail.com" <jeevacation®gmail.com>
Subject: FW: Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people
Date: Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:24:37 +0000
Anne Bayefsky, Israel's strong defender in the U.N., talks about the Cairo speech.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0609/bayefsky060909.php3
Jewish World Review June 9, 2009 / 17 Sivan 5769
Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people
By Anne Bayefsky
President yet again makes his intentions clear
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com I President Obama's Cairo speech was nothing short of an
earthquake - a distortion of history, an insult to the Jewish people, and an abandonment of
very real human-rights victims in the Arab and Muslim worlds. It is not surprising that Arabs
and Muslims in a position to speak were enthusiastic. It is more surprising that American
commentators are praising the speech for its political craftiness, rather than decrying its
treachery of historic proportions.
Obama equated the Holocaust to Palestinian "dislocation." In his words: "The Jewish people
were persecuted. .anti-Semitism .culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust.. Six million Jews
were killed.. On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people - Muslims
and Christians - have suffered in pursuit of a homeland." This parallelism amounts to the
fictitious Arab narrative that the deliberate mass murder of six million Jews for the crime
of being Jewish is analogous to a Jewish-driven violation of Palestinian rights.
Speaking in an Arab country to Arabs and Muslims, Obama pointedly singled out European
responsibility for the Holocaust - "anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented
Holocaust." In other contexts, the European emphasis would be a curiosity. In Egypt, it was
no accident. The Arab storyline has always been that Arabs have been forced to suffer the
creation of Israel for a European crime.
In fact, Obama's Egyptian hosts would have been only too familiar with Arab anti-Semitism
during World War II (and beyond). After all, Obama was speaking in the country that schooled
and later welcomed back Grand Mufti Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini as a national hero. This
was the man who spent the war years in Berlin as Hitler's guest facilitating the murder of
Jews.
Obama thought he would prove his even-handedness towards Israel by boasting of Friday's trip
to a concentration camp and rejecting Holocaust denial. In this context, however, the move of
doing Jews these supposed favors appears to be cynical political opportunism, especially
having just set the Holocaust side-by-side with the "suffering" and "pain" of Palestinians
"for more than 60 years." After all, the president made no emotive references to the
"intolerable" "suffering" of Israeli victims of Arab terror "for more than 60 years." The
word "terrorism" never left his lips. Far from bolstering the fight against terror and the
anti-Semitism driving it, such maneuvers embolden more hate and violence against Israelis.
Instead, Obama sought Arab and Muslim approbation by drawing a moral equivalence between
those who have rejected Israel from the outset (and still seek its outright destruction or a
"right of return" intended to terminate a Jewish majority) and the Jews who have kept them at
bay since May 14, 1948. In his words: "There has been a stalemate: two peoples with
legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history.. It's easy to point fingers - for
EFTA00775646
Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel's founding, and for
Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks." Calling the Israeli-Arab conflict a
"stalemate" represents an abysmal failure to acknowledge historical reality. The modern state
of Israel emerged after an internationally approved partition plan of November
1947 that would have created two states, one Jewish and one Arab; this plan was accepted by
Jews and rejected by Arabs. One people has always been prepared to live in peace, and the
other has chosen war in 1948 and 1956 and
1967 and 1973 and 1982, and renewed terrorism after its every loss.
Bereft of the most basic understanding of Judaism and Jewish history, Obama claimed that "the
aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied," for
"around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries." A Jewish homeland in
Israel is not rooted in tragedy or in centuries of persecution around the world. It is rooted
in a wondrous, unbroken, and spiritual relationship to the land of Israel and to Jerusalem
for thousands of years. Coupled with the president's stress on "European responsibility" for
the Holocaust, his words reinforced the lethal belief that Israel is the creature of
transplanted, alien Jews.
Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people went farther.
Israelis have come to occupy territory in response to Arab-initiated wars of intended
annihilation, but Obama analogized Palestinian "daily humiliations .that come with
occupation" to the "humiliation of segregation" of black slaves in America and the "moral
authority" of "people from South Africa."
His Arab audience understood that the president of the United States had just given a nod to
the single most potent defamation of the Jewish state today - the allegation that Israel is a
racist, apartheid state.
After expressing his belief in a moral equivalence between the claims of Palestinians and the
claims of the victims of slavery and apartheid, Obama juxtaposed his admission of Israel's
"right to exist" with his assertion that "the United States does not accept the legitimacy of
continued Israeli settlements." Every word of this speech was carefully weighed. It was
therefore no mishap that for the first time a U.S. president has denied the legitimacy of
Israeli settlements, period. Such an assertion abrogates every agreement between Arabs and
Israelis, which have always left the ultimate determination of which settlements will stay or
go to a bilateral peace process and final status negotiations. Even the Roadmap reads: "Phase
III:
Permanent Status Agreement and End of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict .a final, permanent
status resolution .on borders, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements."
Furthermore, the idea that Jews are not permitted to live in any territory that might become
part of a future Palestinian state means only one thing:
apartheid Palestine. Twenty percent of Israel's population,1.5 million people, are Arab (with
more democratic rights than in any Arab state). But the notion of any Jewish presence in
Palestinian territory is allegedly an abomination. Why should a future transfer of
governmental authority mean "no Jews allowed"?
But judging by Obama's speech, only one "dislocation" counts. After placing the Holocaust
side-by-side with the Palestinian "pain of dislocation," he ignored the dislocation of
800,000 Jewish refugees from all over the Arab Middle East in response to the creation of
Israel.
Jewish refugees from Arab intolerance were not the only human-rights casualties the president
chose to dismiss. Three different times Obama defended the right of Muslim women to cover up
their bodies. Never once did he mention the right of Muslim women to refuse to cover up their
bodies - a right denied on pain of arrest and death by many of the very communities he was
addressing. In the name of "freedom of religion" he chose to "welcome efforts like Saudi
Arabian King Abdullah's interfaith dialogue." The Saudi Arabian government criminalizes the
public practice of any religion but Islam. This manufactured human-rights fantasy has done a
tremendous disservice to the oppressed across the Arab and Muslim world.
President Obama's meticulously planned and executed Egyptian speech marks the lowest point in
the U.S. presidency's understanding and appreciation of the Jewish state, its history, and
its people's future. Added to his administration's evident infirmity on Iran, the speech of
June 4, 2009, by the supposed leader of the free world will be remembered as a major decline
in human history.
EFTA00775647
For more articles,please visit my Web page at: http://www.NaomiRagen.com
To subscribe, send a blank message to
To unsubscribe, send a blank message to To change your email
address, send a message to
with your old address in the Subject: line To contact the list owner, send your message
to
NaomiRagen-list-owner@mail-list.com
mail-list.com 1302 Waugh Dr. #438 Houston, Texas 77019 USA
To unsubscribe, or change your email address, click here.
http://cgi.mail-list.com/u?ln=naomiragenfinm=sak@baupost.com
This message was launched into cyberspace to
IMPORTANT NOTICE: This e-mail may contain information that is confidential, privileged or
otherwise protected from disclosure. If you are not an intended recipient of this e-mail, do
not duplicate or redistribute it by any means. Please delete it and any attachments and
notify the sender that you have received it in error. Unintended recipients are prohibited
from taking action on the basis of information in this e-mail. We reserve the right, to the
extent and under circumstances permitted by applicable law, to retain, monitor and intercept
e-mail messages to and from our systems.
Thomas H. Lee Partners Email Notice-
The information contained in this email is confidential, may be privileged, may constitute
inside information and is intended only for the use of the intended addressee and any others
who have been specifically authorized to receive it. Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. does not
provide legal, accounting or tax advice. Any statement in this email (including any
attachments) regarding legal, accounting or tax matters was written in connection with the
explanation of the matters described herein and was not intended or written to be relied upon
by any person. Unauthorized dissemination, distribution, disclosure or other use of the
contents of this email is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this
email in error, please notify us immediately by return email or by calling (617) 227 - 1050
and destroy this message and all copies thereof, including attachments.
This message is a private communication and is intended only for the named addressee. It may
contain
information which is confidential, proprietary and/or privileged under applicable law. If you
are not
the designated recipient, you may not review, copy or distribute this message. If you receive
this
message in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and delete this message from your
system.
Thank you.
EFTA00775648