So, what do you do if you’re head of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and a Democrat president “suggests” Israel should retreat to its pre-1967 borders, which the prime minster of Israel considers “indefensible?” If you’re Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, you demand Jewish Republicans “pledge to refrain” from making an issue of it during the 2012 election campaign.
Ms. Wasserman-Schultz pulled this little stunt during a meeting last week of representative delegates from the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The purpose of the meeting was ostensibly to shore up bipartisan support for Israel from American Jewish organizations. Yet Wasserman-Schultz decided to turn it into a “partisan bickering match” which, according to RJC executive director Matt Brooks, made Netanyahu uncomfortable enough to ask, “Do you guys want me to leave the room and give you guys some privacy?” “[The NJDC] decided to hijack these meeting in order to, in front of the prime minister, put a gag order in effect to prevent us from speaking out on Israel,” Brooks says.
The RJC was having none of it, as this letter to Wasserman-Schultz reveals.
One certainly can’t blame Wasserman-Schultz for trying. 78 percent of the Jewish vote went to Obama in the 2008 election, and the last thing this president needs going into next year’s campaign is Jewish-Americans having second thoughts about their votes – and perhaps more importantly, their substantial campaign contributions to the Democrat party. And if the black American community is any indication, Democrats have been enormously successful shutting down debate to the point where blacks themselves have effectively eliminated any free and open exchange of ideas within their own community. This now self-perpetuating totalitarianism is so prevalent, that prominent black conservatives, including Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, have been routinely ostracized.
No doubt Wasserman-Schultz, who regularly demonizes the Republican party in general, would like to see the same thing happen within the Jewish community. To a large extent, it already has, if nearly eight-in-ten Jews could vote for a man who sat in the church of rabid anti-Semite Rev. Jeremiah Wright for twenty years, and who maintained a friendship with terrorist Bill Ayers, an integral player in the Free Gaza Movement involved with both the flotilla that tried to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza last year and the second one upcoming in June.
Yet one suspects this year is different, and Wasserman-Schultz knows it. Already some Democrats have expressed reservations about Obama’s “vision” regarding Israel’s borders, including see-no-evil stalwarts such as former NYC Mayor Ed Koch and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Koch claimed he wouldn’t vote for Obama unless his stance changes, and Reid told a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that ”no one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else.”
Perhaps Debbie should consider shutting up some of her own before taking on Republicans.
Jews who actually care about Israel – as opposed to those who pay it lip service – have every right to be concerned with an American president whose “allegiance” to Israel is a cruel joke. This past weekend, Egypt officially opened its Rafah border crossing with Gaza. Democrats would like Jewish-Americans to ignore the fact that this development is one of the first tangible outcomes of the Obama administration’s decision to abandon Hosni Mubarak and, by extension, Israel’s treaty with Egypt. Perhaps abandoning Mubarak was unavoidable, but what “pressure” has the president since put on Egypt to maintain the treaty? He forgave a billion dollars worth of loans to Egypt – and wants to give them an additional billion dollars in aid.
Strings attached? None.
When Israel’s border was stormed on three sides by activists “celebrating” Nabka, which is a day of mourning bemoaning the creation of the Jewish State in 1948, administration Press Secretary Jay Carney called for “restraint on all sides.” To this day, the president has yet to condemn the Muslim Brotherhood, even as his administration has been forced to walk back a ludicrous statement by Intel Chief James Clapper regarding its “largely secular” nature, and the fact that it has ”no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence.“ It’s also had to walk back a howler by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who referred to Syria’s bloodthirsty thug leader, Bashar Assad, as a “reformer.”
Jewish Americans might also consider perhaps the Mother of All Inconvenient Truths regarding the possible nature of the so-called “Arab Spring” – itself a laughable slogan that has become an integral part of the left’s determination to shape the narrative about the recent upheavals in the Middle East, irrespective of the events on the ground. An audio message published on al-Qaeda website Al-Sahab, by Ayman al-Zawahiri, long thought of as the terrorist organization’s number two man, lauded the uprisings in the Middle East. In the message, reportedly made ”prior to the martyrdom of Sheikh Osama bin Laden,” al-Zawahiri also called for the implementation of Sharia Law in Egypt.
Those would be the very same uprisings lauded by the Obama administration and their progressive soul-mates. Only those Jews blinded by leftist ideology would fail to notice what this means: the interests of the Obama administration and those of al-Qaeda are aligned in some respects.
And Debbie Wasserman-Schultz wants as few Jews as possible to be aware of any of the above. Nothing could be less surprising, except perhaps that which might occur if Debbie and the Dems sense the tide is turning against them. Democrats, whose mantra has always been, “when in doubt, demagogue,’ will not deviate from that game plan, even if demagoguery devolves into outright lying, just as it has regarding the Medicare debate.
Meanwhile, the facts on the ground are indisputable: Hamas on one side of Israel, Iran-backed Hezbollah on the other; another “peace” flotilla on its way in June, the threat of a unilaterally created Palestinian state in September, a now wide-open border from Egypt into Gaz, al-Qaeda leadership applauding the Arab Spring, and an Obama administration calling for restraint “on all sides.“ If I were Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, I’d want people like me and others keeping their mouths shut too.
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