When Ambassador John Bolton wrote in the WSJ the other day about the sad state of affairs at the U.N. and the Obama Administration’s choices now, several thoughts hit me. A leftist Jewish judge was duped by his own naiveté and President Obama’s Middle East strategy and relationship to Israel makes very little sense to even an expert onlooker.
While I agree with Bolton on what the President’s strategy should be, Obama won’t back away from the United Nation’s farce of a Human Rights Council because he doesn’t truly view its positions on Israel as a negative. His politics and policies indicate that there is sympathy for the general U.N. bias against Israel; if sympathy is the wrong word, try political expedience for the support base to which Obama campaigned and is indebted to. I believe a combination of the two is a better explanation.
The enigma here is that he surrounded himself with key staffers whom are undoubtedly in Israel’s corner. His Chief of Staff stands out on the top of that list; Rahm Emanuel is a son of Sabras, and a father who served the Irgun While more left leaning that I consider myself on Israel, he is a supporter. There are others, and they have Obama’s confidence, which makes one wonder what we are all missing, or if the President’s mass appeal that turns people to mush and sends thrill up reporters’ extremities, blinds the best of us.
As to Justice Richard Goldstone, the former judge of the Constitutional Court
of South Africa, he may be a well meaning judge, and I expect he is no fool. Yet, he fooled himself. In preparing and endorsing the report which bears his name, he should have known from consistent historical occurrences that even when a leftist Jew trying hard to see it from the “other side,” feeling a need to placate and play devil’s advocate in the public eye – as he attempted to do with his report – the attempt often fails and gets used as further “proof” that Israel is wrong.
One need not look further that the 1967 war that was thrust on Israel. Three Arab forces tried to eliminate Israel, but Israel beat them back; yet it has since been made to look like an aggressor that baselessly stole property and destroyed the lives of the Palestinians. In 1973, a surprise war on Yom Kippur further forced Israel’s hand and further made Israel into the bad guys. Two falsehoods that have prevailed through today.
I am more shocked that Justice Goldstone seemed shocked at the rhetoric of the U.N. H.R.C than I am at the the H.R.C itself. In fact, I am not shocked at the United Nations members at all. I knew it would happen, and I’m just a U.N. outside observer, like most of us out there. if not this report, it would have been something else.
Now we have our President Obama weighing in. He is very possibly in way over his head if he thinks the world is going to change just because he – the rockstar – is president now. All he is doing is offering the anti-democracy, despotic and terrorist regimes time to plan more while he contemplates just how he will actually earn his Nobel .
The Goldstone Report is a foolish endeavor, as it criticized “both sides” but does not really help anyone find the path to peace; for it ignores the basic underlying truth in the Middle East: This is not about land, not about economy, trade, agriculture or human rights at all, it is about ideology, pride and an unrelenting belief by too many under the Muslim faith, that Jews (Christians too), Israel, human rights and Democracy all fly in the face of a God they revere, worship and insist wants to see the world turned upside down in his honor.
There is no negotiating with God, no deals to be made and certainly few to no accommodations made that would preclude the ultimate goal of Shariah law and total buy-in to their beliefs and way of life. To anyone claiming that this is just s small radicalized minority within Islam, why not then ask the silent majority take some more responsibility for their errant brethren, and let them begin to vocally- and physically if needed – set this awful condition right and pave the road to peace once and for all without blood and lopsided compromises.
Juda Engelmayer is President and Partner with the NY PR agency, HeraldPR
Juda Engelmayer's Blog 