Category Archives: Politics

Send Obama a Message

The Obama administration considers Israel a sponsor of terror —at least according to Dick Morris, the disgraced ex-advisor to Bill Clinton, and a host of self-styled “conservative” media. The news was shocking—well, maybe not to the clever folks who knew all along that the president is a secret Muslim, but certainly to the rest of us.

What turned out to be the case is that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency maintains a list of 36 “specially designated countries” whose immigrating citizens get extra scrutiny because their nations “promote, produce or protect terrorist organizations or their members.” Note the word “or.”

“Produce,” in this context, means that terrorists reside in the country. Thus, countries like the Philippines and Morocco, along with Israel, are on the list. Approximately a million and a half Israeli citizens are Arabs—many of whom have ties to Arab residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. So no, with apologies to Mr. Morris et al, the U.S. does not consider Israel a terror sponsor.

What makes some people all too ready to misrepresent such things is that many Americans, especially in the Jewish community, have deep concerns about President Obama’s Middle East policies. My personal view is that these concerns are overblown. While I realize there are other opinions, as far as I can tell Mr. Obama’s positions on building in the settlements and on the terms of Israel-Palestinian negotiations have been American policy since long before his presidency.

Even doubters of Mr. Obama’s good will, though, should recognize the import of the administration’s declared readiness to veto any U.N. Security Council resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood. That stance risks the U.S.’s international political capital and may even, G-d forbid, come to threaten Americans’ safety. Might it speak more loudly about the president than his opposition to new settlements?

Speaking equally loudly is what happened on September 9, when Mr. Obama acted swiftly to warn Egyptian authorities that they had better protect Israeli embassy guards in Cairo besieged by a mob. When Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minster Barak were unable to reach the apparently indisposed Egyptian military leader Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spent hours hounding the Egyptian, finally reaching him at 1 AM to let him know that if anything happened to the Israelis, there would be “very severe consequences.” Egyptian soldiers protected the hostages until an Israeli Air Force plane safely evacuated them.

Mr. Netanyahu later recounted that he had asked for Mr. Obama’s help and that the president had replied that he would do everything he could. “And so he did,” testified the Prime Minister.

It may not be meaningful for many, but I was struck two days later on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks when the president, betraying his Islamic beliefs (joke!), chose for his reading at the New York ceremony the 46th chapter of Tehillim. The one including the words (in the White House’s translation):

“Though its waters roar and be troubled… there’s a river whose streams shall make glad the City of G-d, the holy place of the Tabernacle of the Most High.”

And: “The God of Jacob is our refuge.”

Whatever our takes on this or that statement or position, hard facts are not up for debate.

Let’s not forget some such facts: The Obama administration has provided more security assistance to Israel than any American administration; he has repeatedly declared (first in 2009 in Cairo during his speech to the Arab world) that the bond between the U.S. and Israel is “unbreakable”; his Secretary of State lectured Al-Jazeera that “when the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon they got Hezbollah and 40,000 rockets and when they pulled out of Gaza they got Hamas and 20,000 rockets”; his State Department has condemned the Palestinian Authority’s “factually incorrect” denial of the Western Wall’s connection to the Jewish people; and much more.

Last week, in the lead-up to a Congressional election in Brooklyn  in which Jews had ample other reason to vote against the Democratic candidate, some ads presented the contest as an opportunity to “Send Obama a Message”—which some Jews took to mean an angry message about Israel.

Many thoughtful Jews, though, have a different message for Mr. Obama: Thank you.

© 2011 AMI MAGAZINE

 

Zero-Sum Game

Anyone entertaining the notion that the advancement of “gay rights” needn’t adversely affect those with moral objections to the normalization of homosexual unions should pay close attention to what happened to Christopher Kempling.

The British Columbia public school teacher was suspended for a month without pay and  received a black spot on his professional record for writing letters critical of the practice of homosexuality to a local newspaper, the Quesnel Cariboo Observer.

The Canadian Charter of Rights protects citizens’ freedom of expression and religion, but that was apparently no bar, in the eyes of the British Columbia Supreme Court, to a local teachers panel’s punishment of Mr. Kempling.

As one of the justices wrote for the court in denying Mr. Kempling’s appeal of the penalty: “Discriminatory speech is incompatible with the search for truth.  In addition, [Mr. Kempling’s] publicly discriminatory writings undermine the ability of members of the targeted group, homosexuals, to attain individual self-fulfillment…”

The lesson of the Kempling case transcends its Canadian context; it is of no less import to Americans or Europeans. The issue of “gay rights” is not benign; the struggle between those who wish to make homosexuality acceptable as a normative lifestyle and those who do not is, simply put, a zero-sum game.  To the degree that the gay movement’s program is advanced, those who adhere to a traditional moral system will be not merely ignored, but vilified, demonized and penalized.

That “gay rights” zero-sum truism is at the core of a legal brief recently submitted to the United States Supreme Court by the organization I am privileged to represent, Agudath Israel of America.  We asked the Court to review and reverse a lower court’s decision permitting the state of Connecticut to disqualify the Boy Scouts from inclusion on a list of charities to which state employees were encouraged to contribute.  The reason the Boy Scouts were disqualified was the group’s policy of not allowing homosexuals to serve as scoutmasters or in leadership positions

One of the brief’s main points is that decisions like the lower court’s patently malign traditional religious groups for their deeply-held beliefs.  As The New York Sun noted in an editorial shortly after the Massachusetts Supreme Court’s “same-sex marriage” ruling, “with a few exceptions, this cause [the acceptance of same-sex marriage] is being advanced through the denigration of Jews and Christians who adhere to the fundamentals of religious law.”

The editorial went on to recount the reaction of “a friend” of the editorialist to the opposition to same-sex marriages asserted by “Agudath Israel and its Council of Torah Sages.”  Said the gentleman: “I see them as bigots…”

Similarly, an American Civil Liberties Union advertisement several years ago in The New York Times compared those who object on moral grounds to homosexuality as akin to vicious racists of yesteryear.  Those who espouse a traditional view of acceptable sexual behavior, the ACLU asserted, seek “to hide behind morality.”  But, the ad continues, “we all know a bigot when we see one.”

If disapproving of homosexual behavior is bigotry, then adherents of most religions – along with nonbelievers who nevertheless accept the validity of the traditional moral code – are, ipso facto, villains.  What is more, there is no reason why the label is any less applicable to those who disapprove of other affronts to the moral ideal – like multi-partner or incestuous relationships.  Either morality has true meaning and trumps what some people, even many people, wish to do, or it does not.

And if moral scruples are indeed conceptually devolved into bigotry, there will be not only denigration and derision of traditionalists, but discrimination and legal action against them too – as Mr. Kempling’s treatment and Connecticut’s action against the Boy Scouts well demonstrate.

The scenario of Catholic organizations, or Jewish religious schools, or devout Muslims being branded – and even prosecuted as – bigots, simply for operating or living according to deeply-held religious convictions is not unthinkable.

It is, on the contrary, but the logical outcome of a process that began as a plea for “rights,” is continuing as a demand that marriage be redefined, and that – unless it is stopped soon – will end as a triumphant crushing of the ability of religious, or just morality-minded, citizens and communities to live their lives freely, in accordance with their consciences and beliefs.

 

© 2004 AM ECHAD RESOURCES