Divider-in-Chief (23 page)

U.S. Army Chief of Staff George Casey said, “I'm concerned that this increased speculation [about Hasan's motives] could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that... [because] as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse.”
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That's right. According to the Obama administration, a fictitious backlash that potentially curtails diversity is a greater tragedy than the horrific deaths of fourteen service members.

As former Reagan official Gary L. Bauer wrote in response to the “anti-Muslim backlash” meme, “Our journalistic and political elites have become terrorism's unwitting domestic enablers, perceiving religion-based violence where there is none, while ignoring it where it is widespread and intensifying.”
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He continued:

That is undoubtedly true. It is also undoubtedly true that more Muslims will be welcomed as Obama continues his obsessive crusade to eradicate negative stereotypes of Islam.

Americans are more tolerant of differing religions than any other nation. Obama seeks to take that unity on religious freedom—a source of great strength for this nation—and use it to divide us, claiming that there is some sinister internal hostility toward peaceful Muslims, while denying the persecution of Jews and Christians worldwide. He heightens suspicions among Americans and neutralizes decent Americans' ability to point out concerns about the growing influence of Islam in our country.

There
are
reasonable concerns about Islam—such as the growing inf lu-ence of Sharia law—that should be discussed in a free, open, and intellectually respectful atmosphere. Obama is systematically neutralizing our ability to have those discussions. In ObamaWorld, we have rights, and we are united, only when we agree with our leader's radical perspective.

I
n November 2011, President Obama attended the G20 summit in Cannes, France. Items on the agenda at the two-day conference included coordinating economic policies and strengthening financial regulation.

But it was an embarrassing exchange caught on an open microphone between Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy that made the most headlines.

Obama approached Sarkozy and began questioning him about why he had not warned him in advance that France would vote in favor of Palestinian membership in UNESCO. Then the conversation quickly turned to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Sarkozy said, “I don't want to see him anymore, he's a liar.” Obama responded, “You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day!”
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Obama's moment of unscripted candor clashes with what he wants America and the Jewish lobby to think he feels about the country Netanyahu leads. Running for president, Obama said, “Peace through security
is the only way for Israel,”
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and “When I am president, the United States will stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel.”
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He has talked about America's “unshakeable” commitment to Israel's security and about how the “friendship” between the two countries is “rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values.”
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Vice President Biden has said that America has “no better friend than Israel.”
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But if there is one thing we've learned about Obama, it's that words often mean very little.

Obama signaled his antipathy toward Israel early on. Before becoming president, he said, “Nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people”
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—a profound misstatement by any objective measure—and “the Israeli government must make difficult concessions for the peace process to restart.”

Anti-Israel activist Ali Abunimah claimed to have known Obama well when Obama was a state senator in Chicago, and claimed that they met at several pro-Palestinian events. Abunimah said, “Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation.”
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Obama's former pastor and mentor Jeremiah Wright is a raging anti-Semite. His church, Trinity United Church of Christ, published many anti-Semitic rants on its website. One letter claimed that Israel committed “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians and that Israelis “worked on an ethnic bomb that kills blacks and Arabs.”
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Wright gave anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan an award for being a leader who “truly epitomized greatness.”
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Wright even traveled to meet with Libyan terrorist leader Muammar al-Gaddafi and has compared conditions in Israel to the apartheid of South Africa.
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After Obama shunned him, Wright told PBS it was because Obama “can't afford the Jewish support to wane or start questioning his allegiance to Israel.”
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Before the 2008 elections, some polls suggested Obama was preferred by Israelis over the staunchly pro-Israel John McCain. But by June 2009, a
Jerusalem Post
-sponsored Smith Research poll of 500 Israeli Jewish adults found just 6 percent believed the Obama administration was pro-Israel.
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A similar poll conducted two months later showed Israelis' support for Obama had declined to 4 percent.

The poll also found that half of Israeli Jews considered the administration's policies to be more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli. It's not a stretch to think that, like many Americans, many Israelis initially bought into Obama's rhetoric about hope and change. But also like many Americans, Israelis have been sorely disappointed.

One of the Obama administration's first offenses against Israel occurred when Vice President Biden visited the Jewish State in early 2010. While Biden was there, the Israeli government announced plans to construct 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem. The United States does not recognize Israel's sovereignty over East Jerusalem, but it's part of Israel's capital city, and the housing units were needed because of natural population growth.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the settlement area “is an ultra-Orthodox city very close to the green line [dividing Israel from the Palestinian Authority], and these are housing units for people who are struggling and cannot buy elsewhere.”
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The housing expansion had been in the works for three years.

The Obama administration, however, erupted. Biden declared that the announcement from the Israeli district planning committees “is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”
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Obama senior adviser David Axelrod called the move “an affront, an insult.”
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Israel's behavior “insulting.” Obama, the cool, calm, no drama president, was reportedly “seething” over
the move. Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States, said relations with Washington had plummeted to a thirty-five-year low and that relations between the two countries constituted a “crisis of historic proportions.”
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It was a crisis made by Obama's demand that Israel cease building homes for Jews in East Jerusalem; it was he, not the Palestinians, who made it a central condition for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations; the Palestinians merely jumped on his bandwagon.

Barack Obama, like most American presidents before him, supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But Obama's two-state solution always seems to involve Israel making grand concessions before negotiations even begin.

In May 2011, Obama delivered a speech at the State Department in which he endorsed the Palestinians' demand for their own state based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. He said:

Many commentators noted how Obama's speech undermined Israel's negotiating position. Such a scenario would divide Jerusalem and help Israel's enemies get one step closer to their ultimate goal of obliterating the Jewish state. Obama was demanding that Israel go into peace talks having already forfeited one of its only bargaining chips—its claim to the territory won in the 1967 war.

Reacting to Obama's speech, Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected a full withdrawal from the West Bank, calling the 1967 lines “indefensible.”
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Even if negotiations happen, it is unclear who would represent the Palestinians. One would assume it would be the Palestinian Authority, led by President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas is a member of the Fatah Party, the more “moderate” of the two main Palestinian political parties. But Fatah may no longer speak for most Palestinians.

Hamas, a terrorist organization funded by Iran, is the elected government of Gaza and holds a majority in the Palestinian parliament. Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has said that Hamas will never recognize the “usurper Zionist government” and will continue its “ jihad-like movement until the liberation of Jerusalem.”
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Haniyeh is someone who hailed Osama bin Laden as a “Muslim warrior” after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against America.
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Hamas has launched thousands of rockets into Israel over the last decade. Nearly one million Israeli citizens live within range of these rockets. As Gary Bauer has written, “Obama's [two-state] vision cannot be realized when one side is led by a terrorist group whose governing charter calls for the destruction of the other side.”
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Obama argues that under his leadership, the United States “has Israel's back.”
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But that's not true, especially when it comes to Israel's arch nemesis, Iran. In 2009, when millions of brave Iranian Democrats rose up to protest a stolen election at the hands of Iran's ruling theocracy, Obama was silent.

The sham elections prompted France's Nicolas Sarkozy to denounce the “extent of the fraud” and the “shocking” and “brutal” response by Iran's mullahs to public demonstrations in Tehran and elsewhere.
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Even after the murder of a young woman protestor provoked international outrage, Obama said that he didn't want the United States “to be
seen meddling” in Iranian affairs. Obama's meager response set the stage for his administration's appeasement of Iran, which has been reflected in the administration's long campaign of public pressure to stop Israel from attacking Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wrote in 2012, “So intense is this effort, and so determined is President Obama to succeed, that administration officials are now leaking highly sensitive information about Israel's intentions and capabilities into the news media.”
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Bolton believes Obama is more opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran than he is to Iran developing nuclear weapons, even though Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has promised to “wipe Israel off the map” and could easily sell nuclear weapons to terrorists or anti-American regimes around the world.

Obama might easily have his cake and eat it too in the 2012 election—winning Muslim votes for his appeasement of radical Islam and winning Jewish votes because of Jewish voters' traditional liberalism and adherence to the Democratic Party. But Obama manifestly does not have Israel's best interests at heart; and as Israel is our only reliable ally in the Middle East, Obama does not have America's best interests at heart either.

The Obama economy has been devastating for Hispanic Americans, whose unemployment rate rose to 11 percent in May 2012, almost three points higher than the national average of 8.2 percent.
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But instead of addressing these concerns, Obama has spent his term rhetorically attacking and demonizing opponents of amnesty for illegal immigrants.

A few months before winning the 2008 election, Obama gave a speech to the National Council of La Raza, in which he said that federal immigration agents “terrorized” communities during immigration raids.