Writing in Israel National News last week, Tova Dvorin tell us:
It's hard to imagine that at this late date I am still capable of being disgusted by the Obama administration. Yet there it is. Just when I think that they can't sink even lower into the muck, we get stories like the one above.The Obama administration has asked a judge Monday to “carefully consider” the size of the bond demanded from the Palestinian Authority (PA) for its role orchestrating years of terror attacks against Israelis and Jews - directly interfering in a US court case.
In February, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) - the terror group behind the PA - was found liable to pay $218.5 million to victims of terror, a figure that was set to be tripled to $655.5 million according to the anti-terrorism laws under which the case was brought...
In a document entitled “Statement of Interest of the United States of America," the Obama administration expressed concerns over the payments hurting the PA's basic government services.
Forcing the PLO to pay “a significant portion of its revenues would likely severely compromise the P.A.’s ability to operate as a governmental authority,” deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken wrote.
So, the Obama administration is literally siding with the PA and the PLO over their American victims, despite an American court-ruling not in Palestinian-Arab favor. The word "shocking" comes to mind, although I am certain that many of you will not be shocked.
And the reason for this interference in the ruling of the court is because Obama is concerned that the PA will not be able to pay its bills? Well, he has a point. Supporting terrorism does not necessarily come cheaply. But if the PA cannot afford to pay its bills, whose fault is that?
{Oh, Israel's. Naturally. I forgot for a moment.}
We are to believe that the PA-PLO should be shielded by the President of the United States from having to suffer the predictable consequences of their own behavior? A behavior that includes the murder of American citizens? Or does Barack Obama honestly think that it is perpetually Jew hunting season in the Middle East? If the PA can't afford to post bond to the court perhaps they should rethink their rather counterproductive Jew Killing Policy.
But, in truth, would it really be an unfortunate thing if the PA collapsed? The EU and the US are bankrolling a gang of cutthroats who cry out for the genocide of the Jews, who despise the United States, and who name schools after murderers. We should not be in the business of promoting these people, we should be in the business of actively opposing them.
The PA is not quite as heinous as Hamas, but it is close enough, and neither are democratic organizations. Perhaps I am just old fashioned, and maybe my views on such matters are not nearly as sophisticated as our Genius in Chief's, but when I was growing up most people had the notion that one supports one's friends and opposes one's enemies. On a personal level we supported those who supported our well-being and values and opposed those who opposed them.
From a practical foreign policy standpoint what this means is that we should support the secular democracies and not support the non-democratic governments. Above all, we should not be giving financial aid to Islamist organizations, like the Muslim Brotherhood, because the Brotherhood oppresses women, oppresses gay people, and oppresses the Christian Copts. They would oppress Jews there, but there are no Jews there, having been ethnically-cleansed from almost the entire region by the hostile majority population in the middle of the last century.
The truth of the matter, of course, is that having chased the Jews out of land that we lived on for millennia, they now wish to chase Jews out our historical homeland entirely. There are many people out there - all evidence to the contrary - who honestly believe that the Palestinian National Movement is fundamentally grounded in social justice for the "indigenous Arab population," with two states for two peoples. This is a lie on numerous levels.
The first lie is that the Palestinian-Arabs are the indigenous people of Israel. They are not. As it reads on the right side of Israel Thrives, courtesy of the Elder, "Jews are from Judah, Arabs are from Arabia." The broad strokes of Jewish and Arab history in the Land of Israel are not in serious contention among western historians with professional credentials. They all acknowledge that Jews have lived in Judea and Samaria for at least three thousand years, but the Jewish presence predates written history and thereby floats back into the mists of time. Muhammad's armies conquered Jerusalem in 637 CE from the Byzantines, thus the Muslims are rather late to the game by thousands of years.
The Jews are the only living people who can make claims of indigeneity to Eretz Israel. Unless some Jebusites pop out of the ground, only the Jews can make that case.
The second lie is that the Palestinian-Arabs want a state for themselves in peace next to Israel. This is false. What the the Palestinian National Movement wants is the elimination of the Jewish National Movement. Palestinian-Arab national consciousness emerged as a significant social construct toward the end of the twentieth-century. It did so for the express purpose of undermining Jewish well-being on historically Jewish land. If they wanted a state for themselves they have a funny way of showing it, given that they have refused every single offer going back all the way to 1937, with the Peel Commission.
The third lie is that the Palestinian National Movement has any interest whatsoever in liberal notions of social justice. If by "social justice" one means random acts of senseless violence combined with a campaign to spread hatred toward Jews all around the world, then the PA is interested in social justice.
And, sadly, one must wonder if President Barack Obama shares that sense of "social justice"?
Given that he is willing to prop up both the PA and the PLO at the direct expense of their American victims, so it would seem.
Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.