Obama's Wobbly on Israel...

A terrific essay from Mort Zuckerman...

This marks the success of the Palestinians in shifting the ground of the debate. Though their goal is to destroy Israel, they suggest they are simply trying to secure the right of a small minority of dispossessed Palestinian Arabs. The focus has shifted from the right of Israel to survive to human rights, to Israeli violations of Palestinian rights and not the human rights of people under siege in their homeland for 60 years. The truly brutal reality is that Palestinian maps still do not show the State of Israel; for the Palestinians, the occupation began in 1948, and they refuse even to accept the formula of two states for two peoples since it would imply a state for the Jews. How else to comprehend the Palestinian rejection of Jerusalem as the sacred city of the Jews and the Western Wall as the Second Temple, questioning the core of the Jewish faith and the legitimacy of the Jewish presence in the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph, the destination of Moses?

That is why it was disturbing to read of President Obama's rationale for the formation of Israel as a result of the Holocaust without referring to the 3,000-year-old connection that the Jews have to the Holy Land. It is but a short step from this historically inaccurate perception to conceive of the Jews as the guilty party. It is revealing that when the president speaks about daily humiliation of Palestinian Arabs, he ignores that every Israeli is searched numerous times during the day, even on the way to weddings or bar mitzvahs; that Jewish schoolchildren have to be protected by perimeter fences and armed guards at the schoolhouse gates; that guards are required in shops, cafes, restaurant, movie theatres. Arab villagers, on the other hand, do not need to have guards at their shops, cafes, or restaurants, or for children on the way to school or on hiking and camping trips. Why? Because the Israelis do not target the innocent. The president could have acknowledged the suffering of Israeli victims of Arab terrorism "for more than 60 years" when he talked of the "suffering" and "pain" of Palestinians "for more than 60 years." Even more disturbing was the juxtaposition of his reference to the Holocaust, the deliberate murder of 6 million Jews for the fact that they were Jewish, and his assertion of Palestinian suffering in pursuit of a homeland.