We do love Haley for standing up to the anti-Israel UN and as a result, we make her videos viral on Facebook. There’s this one where she let the UN Security Council have it for having a condemnation agenda that is stuck on one channel that is all Israel, all the time.
And there’s the new AIPAC interview in which she said, “There’s a new sheriff in town.”
That proclamation made for a great sound bite. Most of the Jewish media used the quote as the lede for their articles on Haley’s interview at AIPAC 2017. The sense of that phrase, of course, is that things are finally going to change at the UN. No longer will the US simply abstain from condemning Israel. No longer will the US turn a blind eye to the continuous bashing of its “friend” Israel by the UN Assembly.
It’s almost too delicious to contemplate.
Therein lies the rub. Why do we Jews, as a collective, feel orgasmic delight when things go as they should? Why should we sit by and just let the sucky stuff happen? Why do we yawn when they bash us and simply accept the status quo as SNAFU*? Why hasn’t America stood by us at the UN since approximately 1975, when Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously denounced the Zionism is Racism resolution?
All of it is disgusting. It was disgusting the way we Jews clapped and clapped for Nikki Haley, as if it is Haley that matters, and not the truth. The truth being that Israel is a beacon of light unto the nations and that the UN should be celebrating the existence of the Jewish State and lambasting the Arabs for their ingratitude, terror incitement, and terror.
It is very nice to applaud when good guys make headway, but it’s not nice when we forget that good is how things should be, rather than so unusual as to be remarkable.
It is not Nikki Haley that’s remarkable and I mean that as no insult to Haley. It’s remarkable that all this time, America allowed Israel to be roasted on the spit of public and world opinion and failed to have Israel’s back.
Furthermore, it’s disgusting that Israel has stayed in the UN all this time, hoping against hope that someone would finally be our friend. It’s an abusive relationship. It’s not the way a sovereign nation should act.
That is why, to my mind, the part about Nikki Haley being the new sheriff in town in her AIPAC interview was much less important than the part right at the end where she said, “I appreciate all the support and kindness and everything that you've given to me, but all I did was tell the truth.”
Look at her face. She looks a bit puzzled. She’s thinking: Why do they make such a big deal over me for telling the truth? Isn’t honesty a basic standard of human behavior? I’m just being normal.
And she’s right: since when should humans of any stripe expend all that energy in response to normal or act like normal is amazing and somehow deserving of accolades?
It’s sick, is what it is. You can see that Nikki Haley, alone in that hall, perhaps, is the only one who sees just how sick that is: that normal now deserves our applause.
And that’s the real reason I like her. And conversely, the reason I worry that my people don’t have what it takes to make it in the long run. They shouldn’t be looking at Nikki Haley to raise them up.
They should be rising up on their own. They should be speaking the truth out loud and proud to anyone and everyone.
They/we need to stop being sheeple. We need to stop pretending that Arabs have any rights to our land. We need to stop listening to the media’s lies—stop accepting them without question. We need to stop listening to the lies of intersectionality and study the truth, the facts of our indigenous rights.
We need to know there’s a Higher Power and that it is neither Nikki Haley nor Donald Trump.
Israel needs to stop acting like it is a vassal state for the U.S. Israel needs to stop looking to people like Nikki Haley to save its butt. Israel needs to save its own butt and stop worrying about what the world will say.
I like Nikki Haley. I love her for telling the truth. But we need to stop the fawning and get real. We need to be dignified and stop getting excited whenever someone speaks up for us the least little bit.
It’s enough to acknowledge that we’re on the same side. It’s enough to acknowledge that Haley is speaking the truth. Putting her on a pedestal makes us look weak and sycophantic, in need of rescue, a damsel in distress.
We’re better than that. Stronger than that. Prouder than that.
Where is that acclaimed stiff neck?
Now is the time to show it to the world. Beginning now. That’s the beginning of the end to all these lie—all these lies about Israel, all the time.
*Clean version: situation normal, all fouled up.