Presbyterians Debate Anti-Israel Measures
July 8, 2010
Dear Friend of Israel,
The Presbyterian Church (USA) -- one of the “mainline” Protestant denominations that used to make up the religious establishment in this country -- is once again embroiled in controversy for its stance on Israel. In the past, the denomination was at the forefront of the anti-Israel divestment movement. At its biennial General Assembly the group has considered an array of resolutions and statements harshly critical of Israel.
As I write this, the PCUSA is again holding its General Assembly, and is again considering adopting controversial statements against Israel. On the agenda this year is a report titled “Breaking Down the Walls” by the church’s Middle East Study Committee (MESC). Critics have lambasted the report for legitimizing doubts about Israel’s right to exist, for endorsing a notorious document authored by virulently anti-Israel Palestinian leaders , and for calling on both Iran and Israel to “refrain from nuclear arms proliferation” -- as if peaceful, democratic Israel and bellicose, authoritarian, Israel-hating Iran pose a similar threat to the Middle East.
But the tide may be turning against the anti-Israel faction in the PCUSA. It is significant and heartening to note that more and more people, including Presbyterians, are speaking out against the MESC report. One pastoral letter signed by a number of prominent Presbyterians called the report “unbalanced, historically inaccurate, theologically flawed, and politically damaging.” Guastav Niebuhr, a prominent religion writer and great-nephew of Reinhold Niebuhr, perhaps the preeminent Protestant theologian of the 20th century, said in a blog post co-written with Katharine Henderson that the report “strays from this path to peace-building and instead deals in neatly-assigned roles Israel as oppressor, Palestinians as victims.”
Still, the fact that such resolutions are even considered for approval at all is a sign that the anti-Israel sentiment in mainline Protestant denominations like the PCUSA runs deep. Despite their lessening influence, the decisions made by these denominations do have an effect on public opinion, and can help influence policy. That is why we must continue to hope and pray that their influence diminishes and that the influence of the majority of Christians who love and support Israel continues to rise.
The PCUSA likely won’t make a decision on “Breaking Down the Walls” until their General Assembly ends later this week. But there is much you can do as this denominational debate continues. First, you can stay abreast of these developments on our Stand for Israel blog. If you are a member of a PCUSA congregation, ask your pastor to speak out against this anti-Israel document. Voice your support for Israel in the political realm. And, of course, pray that the world will come to a truer understanding of the dynamics in the Middle East and stand united in support of God’s chosen people.
With prayers for shalom, peace,
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein
President
Monday, July 12, 2010
what have Palestinians done for peace?
Over the past year, Netanyahu (1) formed a coalition government with parties to both his right and left, (2) proposed immediate negotiations with no preconditions, (3) formally endorsed a two-state solution (as long as one of them is Jewish and the other is demilitarized), (4) removed scores of West Bank roadblocks and checkpoints, (5) implemented an unprecedented settlement moratorium, and (6) plans even more gestures to the perpetually confidence-impaired Palestinians to encourage them to join negotiations to give them a state.
During the same period, the Palestinians have been unwilling to commence direct negotiations unless Israel first conceded the principal issues to be negotiated, and Obama has acted as if he were the Palestinians’ attorney – not bound by U.S. commitments to Israel (the 2004 Bush letter), ignoring longstanding understandings on the meaning of a settlement freeze, manufacturing a crisis about future Jewish housing in the Jewish area of the capital of the Jewish state, voting for a UN resolution singling out Israel on its most sensitive defense issue, etc.
During the same period, the Palestinians have been unwilling to commence direct negotiations unless Israel first conceded the principal issues to be negotiated, and Obama has acted as if he were the Palestinians’ attorney – not bound by U.S. commitments to Israel (the 2004 Bush letter), ignoring longstanding understandings on the meaning of a settlement freeze, manufacturing a crisis about future Jewish housing in the Jewish area of the capital of the Jewish state, voting for a UN resolution singling out Israel on its most sensitive defense issue, etc.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
why isn't Obama's anti-semitism czar condemning this?
Remember Obama attended Farrakhan’s Million Man March
OBAMA SHOULD CONDEMN FARRAKHAN’S NEW ANTI-SEMITIC LETTER/THREATS TO ZOA, AIPAC, ADL & OTHERS
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has urged President Barack Obama to condemn veteran Jew-hater, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, for his latest outburst and threats against Jews in letters he sent to 14 American Jewish organizational leaders, including ZOA’s Morton Klein, ADL’s Abe Foxman, Conference of Presidents’ Alan Solow, AIPAC’s Lee Rosenberg, Jewish Federation’s Jerry Silverman, American Jewish Congress’ Richard Gordon and Hillel’s Wayne Firestone. The letter came enclosed with two volumes of hateful new works published by the Nation of Islam, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, volume two; and Jews Selling Blacks: Slave Trade by American Jews. Farrakhan has also said that he has sent copies of the volumes to various media outlets and members of the Obama Administration.
In his letter to American Jewish leaders, Farrakhan accused Jewish leaders of using accusations of anti-Semitism as a means to hide the truth and to silence criticism “of what I and many others feel is Jewish behavior that has ill-affected Black people and others.”
Farrakhan’s letter claimed “… an undeniable record of Jewish anti-Black behavior, starting with the horror of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, Jim Crow, sharecropping, the labor movement of the North and South, the unions and the misuse of our people that continues to this very moment … Armed with this knowledge from the pens of Jewish scholars, Rabbis and historians, we could now charge you with the most vehement anti-Black behavior in the annals of our history in America and the world. We could charge you with being the most deceitful so-called friend, while your history with us shows you have been our worst enemy.”
Farrakhan’s letter ended with a threat: “should you choose to make our struggle to civilize our people more difficult, then I respectfully warn you … that the more you fight and oppose me rather than help me lift my people from their degraded state, Allah (G-d) and his Messiah will bring you and your people to disgrace and ruin and destroy your power and influence here and in the world.”
Also, in a speech some weeks ago entitled ‘Who are the Real Children of Israel?,’ in which he said that he would be sending copies of the books to Jewish leaders, Farrakhan accused Jews of exploiting the talent and artistry of blacks. He said, “Today the Jewish people have developed a new strategy … They have always tied themselves to Black people. They attach themselves to our talent. They are the managers, the agents and they are the accountants and that’s why our black artists loved fame and got fame but died poor because somebody else got their money. No black man or woman becomes a multimillionaire without friendship in the Jewish community.”
President Obama’s former church in Chicago, Trinity United, which he, his wife and daughters attended for 20 years and whose former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, he called a “friend” and “mentor,” in 2007 awarded Farrakhan a Lifetime Achievement Award. Wright said of Farrakhan in the church’s magazine, Trumpet: “His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye-opening … He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest” (Quoted in Ronald Kessler, ‘Obama and the Minister,’ Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008). When this award came to the fore during the 2008 presidential campaign, the-Senator Obama falsely claimed that this award was given to Farrakhan for his work with black prisoners. President Obama helped organize and attended Farrakhan’s Million Man March. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Obama denounced Farrakhan and, under public pressure from Hillary Clinton in a live TV interview, rejected statements Farrakhan made supporting his White House bid.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “Louis Farrakhan’s letter is not only vicious anti-Semitic nonsense but deliberately threatening. Basically, he is saying that unless American Jews cooperate with whatever scheme of ‘helping’ his movement that he may have in mind, Jews everywhere will be endangered. This is a veiled call for violence against Jews. As such, it deserves to be repudiated and condemned. Who better than to do that than a black president who has spoken about healing racial divides, including that between Jews and African-Americans, and reducing the anti-Semitism that comes from some sectors of the African-American community? As noted historian Paul Johnson wrote in A History of the Jews, ‘One of the principal lessons of Jewish history has been that repeated verbal slanders are sooner or later followed by violent physical deeds. Time and again over the centuries, anti-Semitic writings created their own fearful momentum which climaxed in an effusion of Jewish blood.’
and then
Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Jews Control Flow of Info
Wednesday, 30 Jun 2010 12:38 PM
Article Font Size
By: Ronald Kessler
As might be expected, the mainstream media have ignored the latest rant from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., President Obama’s minister, friend, sounding board, and mentor for 20 years.
As reported recently by the New York Post, Wright told a seminar he taught at the University of Chicago that Jews control the flow of worldwide information and oppress blacks in Israel and in the United States.
“White folk done took this country,” Wright said. “You’re in their home, and they’re gonna let you know it.” Addressing blacks in his class, Wright said, “You are not now, nor have you ever been, nor will you ever be, a brother to white folk. And if you do not realize that, you are in serious trouble.”
Wright said the educational system in America is designed by whites to mis-educate blacks “not by benign neglect but by malignant intent.”
The civil-rights movement was never about racial equality, Wright said. Instead, “It was always about becoming white . . . to master what [they] do.” He added, “We probably have more African-Americans who’ve been brainwashed than we have South Africans who’ve been brainwashed.”
Finally, Wright stood up for Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan, who has made serial anti-Semitic and anti-white comments, documented on the Anti-Defamation League’s website. Wright criticized black leaders for “cuttin’ and duckin’” at the mention of Farrakhan’s name.
During the 20 years Obama sat in his pews, hate speech was Wright’s specialty. In sermons, he claimed America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks. His church’s website and newsletters were replete with screeds against Israel.
Yet Obama, in his speech disavowing Wright in Philadelphia, said of his self-described longtime friend and adviser, “Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.”
That is as believable as a friend and mentor of Adolf Hitler saying he never heard him disparage Jews.
OBAMA SHOULD CONDEMN FARRAKHAN’S NEW ANTI-SEMITIC LETTER/THREATS TO ZOA, AIPAC, ADL & OTHERS
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has urged President Barack Obama to condemn veteran Jew-hater, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, for his latest outburst and threats against Jews in letters he sent to 14 American Jewish organizational leaders, including ZOA’s Morton Klein, ADL’s Abe Foxman, Conference of Presidents’ Alan Solow, AIPAC’s Lee Rosenberg, Jewish Federation’s Jerry Silverman, American Jewish Congress’ Richard Gordon and Hillel’s Wayne Firestone. The letter came enclosed with two volumes of hateful new works published by the Nation of Islam, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, volume two; and Jews Selling Blacks: Slave Trade by American Jews. Farrakhan has also said that he has sent copies of the volumes to various media outlets and members of the Obama Administration.
In his letter to American Jewish leaders, Farrakhan accused Jewish leaders of using accusations of anti-Semitism as a means to hide the truth and to silence criticism “of what I and many others feel is Jewish behavior that has ill-affected Black people and others.”
Farrakhan’s letter claimed “… an undeniable record of Jewish anti-Black behavior, starting with the horror of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, Jim Crow, sharecropping, the labor movement of the North and South, the unions and the misuse of our people that continues to this very moment … Armed with this knowledge from the pens of Jewish scholars, Rabbis and historians, we could now charge you with the most vehement anti-Black behavior in the annals of our history in America and the world. We could charge you with being the most deceitful so-called friend, while your history with us shows you have been our worst enemy.”
Farrakhan’s letter ended with a threat: “should you choose to make our struggle to civilize our people more difficult, then I respectfully warn you … that the more you fight and oppose me rather than help me lift my people from their degraded state, Allah (G-d) and his Messiah will bring you and your people to disgrace and ruin and destroy your power and influence here and in the world.”
Also, in a speech some weeks ago entitled ‘Who are the Real Children of Israel?,’ in which he said that he would be sending copies of the books to Jewish leaders, Farrakhan accused Jews of exploiting the talent and artistry of blacks. He said, “Today the Jewish people have developed a new strategy … They have always tied themselves to Black people. They attach themselves to our talent. They are the managers, the agents and they are the accountants and that’s why our black artists loved fame and got fame but died poor because somebody else got their money. No black man or woman becomes a multimillionaire without friendship in the Jewish community.”
President Obama’s former church in Chicago, Trinity United, which he, his wife and daughters attended for 20 years and whose former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, he called a “friend” and “mentor,” in 2007 awarded Farrakhan a Lifetime Achievement Award. Wright said of Farrakhan in the church’s magazine, Trumpet: “His depth on analysis [sic] when it comes to the racial ills of this nation is astounding and eye-opening … He brings a perspective that is helpful and honest” (Quoted in Ronald Kessler, ‘Obama and the Minister,’ Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2008). When this award came to the fore during the 2008 presidential campaign, the-Senator Obama falsely claimed that this award was given to Farrakhan for his work with black prisoners. President Obama helped organize and attended Farrakhan’s Million Man March. During the 2008 presidential election campaign, Obama denounced Farrakhan and, under public pressure from Hillary Clinton in a live TV interview, rejected statements Farrakhan made supporting his White House bid.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “Louis Farrakhan’s letter is not only vicious anti-Semitic nonsense but deliberately threatening. Basically, he is saying that unless American Jews cooperate with whatever scheme of ‘helping’ his movement that he may have in mind, Jews everywhere will be endangered. This is a veiled call for violence against Jews. As such, it deserves to be repudiated and condemned. Who better than to do that than a black president who has spoken about healing racial divides, including that between Jews and African-Americans, and reducing the anti-Semitism that comes from some sectors of the African-American community? As noted historian Paul Johnson wrote in A History of the Jews, ‘One of the principal lessons of Jewish history has been that repeated verbal slanders are sooner or later followed by violent physical deeds. Time and again over the centuries, anti-Semitic writings created their own fearful momentum which climaxed in an effusion of Jewish blood.’
and then
Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Jews Control Flow of Info
Wednesday, 30 Jun 2010 12:38 PM
Article Font Size
By: Ronald Kessler
As might be expected, the mainstream media have ignored the latest rant from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., President Obama’s minister, friend, sounding board, and mentor for 20 years.
As reported recently by the New York Post, Wright told a seminar he taught at the University of Chicago that Jews control the flow of worldwide information and oppress blacks in Israel and in the United States.
“White folk done took this country,” Wright said. “You’re in their home, and they’re gonna let you know it.” Addressing blacks in his class, Wright said, “You are not now, nor have you ever been, nor will you ever be, a brother to white folk. And if you do not realize that, you are in serious trouble.”
Wright said the educational system in America is designed by whites to mis-educate blacks “not by benign neglect but by malignant intent.”
The civil-rights movement was never about racial equality, Wright said. Instead, “It was always about becoming white . . . to master what [they] do.” He added, “We probably have more African-Americans who’ve been brainwashed than we have South Africans who’ve been brainwashed.”
Finally, Wright stood up for Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan, who has made serial anti-Semitic and anti-white comments, documented on the Anti-Defamation League’s website. Wright criticized black leaders for “cuttin’ and duckin’” at the mention of Farrakhan’s name.
During the 20 years Obama sat in his pews, hate speech was Wright’s specialty. In sermons, he claimed America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks. His church’s website and newsletters were replete with screeds against Israel.
Yet Obama, in his speech disavowing Wright in Philadelphia, said of his self-described longtime friend and adviser, “Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.”
That is as believable as a friend and mentor of Adolf Hitler saying he never heard him disparage Jews.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
apologize Tom Friedman
Thursday, July 1, 2010
apologize Tom Friedman
Op-Ed: Tom Friedman must apologize for slandering Israel
By Shmuley Boteach · June 30, 2010
NEW YORK (JTA) -- I don’t often read Tom Friedman in The New York Times. True, he is one of the most lucid writers in America, and his crystal-clear prose helps in understanding some of the world’s most intractable conflicts. He can also be repetitive, tiresome and a little too in love with his own ideas.
As a triple winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Friedman is a man of considerable influence. But he is always lecturing Israel. If only the Jewish state would listen to his recurring advice, manna again would rain from the heavens, the dead would be resurrected and the Arabs would welcome Israel with daises and lilies.
Friedman certainly is entitled to his view. But he is not entitled to slander Israel, and last Sunday he did so with relish.
In words that blur the line between commentary and defamation, Friedman wrote of the “brutality of Israel’s retaliations” against Hezbollah and Hamas, and how Israel “chose to go after them without being deterred by the prospect of civilian casualties.” He then crossed a line of common decency when he irresponsibly accused Israel of using “Hama rules” in its war against the twin terror groups.
“Hama Rules,” he explained, “are named after the Syrian town of Hama, where, in 1982, then-President Hafez el-Assad of Syria put down a Muslim fundamentalist uprising by shelling and then bulldozing their neighborhoods, killing more than 10,000 of his own people.”
This is a straightforward blood libel. To accuse Israel of indiscriminately murdering thousands of civilians the way the butcher Assad did in Hama is to equate a democratic state whose actions are open to international media and scrutiny and constant judicial review with a bloodthirsty dictator and tyrant who held on to power without any restraint of law.
In his book "From Beirut to Jerusalem," Friedman himself writes that he had heard through friends that Assad’s brother, Rifaat al-Assad, had boasted that the Syrian government had killed 38,000 people in Hama. Is he seriously suggesting that Israel has ever been guilty of anything remotely approaching such wholesale slaughter?
In accusing Israel of the murderous immorality of Syria, Friedman has severely compromised his credibility and objectivity as an honest and fair-minded journalist. He is being dishonest and he knows it.
Israel is at the forefront of world militaries in trying always to diminish the civilian casualties of war. When it came to Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel endured years of provocation as both terrorist groups fired thousands of rockets at hospitals, schools and homes before Israel decided that no nation could long endure with its civilian population living amid such staggering death and fear. Only then did Israel invade.
Even then, while Hezbollah and Hamas launched their rockets from nurseries and infirmaries, Israel behaved with unparalleled restraint, doing everything in its power to warn civilians of coming offensives and then using state-of-the-art munitions with laser-like precision to reduce, as much as humanly possibly, collateral civilian casualties.How does Friedman propose Israel fight Hezbollah and Hamas, two of the world’s most bloodthirsty terrorist groups, who pride themselves on dismembering innocent civilians?
The United States rains hellfire missiles on Taliban and al-Qaida leaders in Afghanistan on a regular basis, blowing them to smithereens along with their wives and children. On May 21, U.S. airstrikes killed Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the No. 3 leader of al-Qaida. His wife and three children were killed with him. Friedman never condemned the attack.
Perhaps it is because he sensibly understood that terrorists purposely travel with civilians and have contempt for the lives of even their own children. Yazid knew he was a marked man; he could have left his children in safety. But he banked on the belief that the United States would not touch him as long as his kids were around. President Obama rightly understood, however, that in this case it was a choice between his children and American children, that if this terrorist continued to live, Americans would continue to die.
I believe that you will never see Friedman pen a column suggesting that America is an immoral power because it attacks terrorists undeterred by considerations of civilian deaths because he knows that there would be hell to pay, even for the New York Times readership. But like so many Jewish apologists who are ashamed of what the tiny Jewish democracy must do in order to simply survive, he judges Israel by impossibly high, and usually double, standards.
Want to talk about brutal? In Operation Gomorrah of July 1943, the U.S. Air Force and Britain's Royal Air Force carpet-bombed Hamburg, killing some 50,000 civilians and practically destroying the entire city. The bombing created a whirling updraft of super-heated air, bringing about a 1,500-foot-high tornado of fire that incinerated thousands of civilian noncombatants.
In February 1945, when Hitler and Germany were headed to certain defeat, the U.S. Air Force and the RAF sent 1,300 heavy bombers over Dresden, dropping 3,900 tons of high explosives that destroyed nearly the entire city center and killed approximately 250,000 civilians. Six months later, on Aug. 6 and 9, President Truman ordered the atomic destruction of two Japanese cities, killing 90,000 to 166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 in Nagasaki.
Where is Friedman’s column condemning Roosevelt, Truman and Churchill as monsters who ordered attacks on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan “without being deterred by the prospect of civilian casualties”? If Friedman ever writes the column I’ll eat my yarmulke. That triumvirate today are regarded as three of the greatest statesmen of the 20th century.
Why would highly moral men have ordered the indiscriminate destruction of so many innocent lives?
It was because they were fighting an evil that had no precedent, and they had to make a terrible choice between the lives of their own countrymen and those of the civilians of enemies sworn to the destruction of Western democracy. They put their own countries and the freedom of the West first.
Israel, possessed of nuclear weapons and one of the most powerful air forces in the world, has never even contemplated carpet bombing any Arab city, irrespective of the horrendous civilian losses it has endured from 60 years of nonstop Arab aggression. It continues to bury a steady steam of civilians and soldiers when, if it truly wished to employ Hama rules, the war in the Middle East would have ended long ago.Friedman can do better than this, and he owes Israel an apology. He should be man enough to write it.
(Rabbi Shmuley Boteach hosts "The Shmuley Show" on WABC-770 AM in New York City. His most recent book is “Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.”)
Posted by Rabbi yonatan at 1:38 PM 0 comments
apologize Tom Friedman
Op-Ed: Tom Friedman must apologize for slandering Israel
By Shmuley Boteach · June 30, 2010
NEW YORK (JTA) -- I don’t often read Tom Friedman in The New York Times. True, he is one of the most lucid writers in America, and his crystal-clear prose helps in understanding some of the world’s most intractable conflicts. He can also be repetitive, tiresome and a little too in love with his own ideas.
As a triple winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Friedman is a man of considerable influence. But he is always lecturing Israel. If only the Jewish state would listen to his recurring advice, manna again would rain from the heavens, the dead would be resurrected and the Arabs would welcome Israel with daises and lilies.
Friedman certainly is entitled to his view. But he is not entitled to slander Israel, and last Sunday he did so with relish.
In words that blur the line between commentary and defamation, Friedman wrote of the “brutality of Israel’s retaliations” against Hezbollah and Hamas, and how Israel “chose to go after them without being deterred by the prospect of civilian casualties.” He then crossed a line of common decency when he irresponsibly accused Israel of using “Hama rules” in its war against the twin terror groups.
“Hama Rules,” he explained, “are named after the Syrian town of Hama, where, in 1982, then-President Hafez el-Assad of Syria put down a Muslim fundamentalist uprising by shelling and then bulldozing their neighborhoods, killing more than 10,000 of his own people.”
This is a straightforward blood libel. To accuse Israel of indiscriminately murdering thousands of civilians the way the butcher Assad did in Hama is to equate a democratic state whose actions are open to international media and scrutiny and constant judicial review with a bloodthirsty dictator and tyrant who held on to power without any restraint of law.
In his book "From Beirut to Jerusalem," Friedman himself writes that he had heard through friends that Assad’s brother, Rifaat al-Assad, had boasted that the Syrian government had killed 38,000 people in Hama. Is he seriously suggesting that Israel has ever been guilty of anything remotely approaching such wholesale slaughter?
In accusing Israel of the murderous immorality of Syria, Friedman has severely compromised his credibility and objectivity as an honest and fair-minded journalist. He is being dishonest and he knows it.
Israel is at the forefront of world militaries in trying always to diminish the civilian casualties of war. When it came to Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel endured years of provocation as both terrorist groups fired thousands of rockets at hospitals, schools and homes before Israel decided that no nation could long endure with its civilian population living amid such staggering death and fear. Only then did Israel invade.
Even then, while Hezbollah and Hamas launched their rockets from nurseries and infirmaries, Israel behaved with unparalleled restraint, doing everything in its power to warn civilians of coming offensives and then using state-of-the-art munitions with laser-like precision to reduce, as much as humanly possibly, collateral civilian casualties.How does Friedman propose Israel fight Hezbollah and Hamas, two of the world’s most bloodthirsty terrorist groups, who pride themselves on dismembering innocent civilians?
The United States rains hellfire missiles on Taliban and al-Qaida leaders in Afghanistan on a regular basis, blowing them to smithereens along with their wives and children. On May 21, U.S. airstrikes killed Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the No. 3 leader of al-Qaida. His wife and three children were killed with him. Friedman never condemned the attack.
Perhaps it is because he sensibly understood that terrorists purposely travel with civilians and have contempt for the lives of even their own children. Yazid knew he was a marked man; he could have left his children in safety. But he banked on the belief that the United States would not touch him as long as his kids were around. President Obama rightly understood, however, that in this case it was a choice between his children and American children, that if this terrorist continued to live, Americans would continue to die.
I believe that you will never see Friedman pen a column suggesting that America is an immoral power because it attacks terrorists undeterred by considerations of civilian deaths because he knows that there would be hell to pay, even for the New York Times readership. But like so many Jewish apologists who are ashamed of what the tiny Jewish democracy must do in order to simply survive, he judges Israel by impossibly high, and usually double, standards.
Want to talk about brutal? In Operation Gomorrah of July 1943, the U.S. Air Force and Britain's Royal Air Force carpet-bombed Hamburg, killing some 50,000 civilians and practically destroying the entire city. The bombing created a whirling updraft of super-heated air, bringing about a 1,500-foot-high tornado of fire that incinerated thousands of civilian noncombatants.
In February 1945, when Hitler and Germany were headed to certain defeat, the U.S. Air Force and the RAF sent 1,300 heavy bombers over Dresden, dropping 3,900 tons of high explosives that destroyed nearly the entire city center and killed approximately 250,000 civilians. Six months later, on Aug. 6 and 9, President Truman ordered the atomic destruction of two Japanese cities, killing 90,000 to 166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 in Nagasaki.
Where is Friedman’s column condemning Roosevelt, Truman and Churchill as monsters who ordered attacks on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan “without being deterred by the prospect of civilian casualties”? If Friedman ever writes the column I’ll eat my yarmulke. That triumvirate today are regarded as three of the greatest statesmen of the 20th century.
Why would highly moral men have ordered the indiscriminate destruction of so many innocent lives?
It was because they were fighting an evil that had no precedent, and they had to make a terrible choice between the lives of their own countrymen and those of the civilians of enemies sworn to the destruction of Western democracy. They put their own countries and the freedom of the West first.
Israel, possessed of nuclear weapons and one of the most powerful air forces in the world, has never even contemplated carpet bombing any Arab city, irrespective of the horrendous civilian losses it has endured from 60 years of nonstop Arab aggression. It continues to bury a steady steam of civilians and soldiers when, if it truly wished to employ Hama rules, the war in the Middle East would have ended long ago.Friedman can do better than this, and he owes Israel an apology. He should be man enough to write it.
(Rabbi Shmuley Boteach hosts "The Shmuley Show" on WABC-770 AM in New York City. His most recent book is “Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.”)
Posted by Rabbi yonatan at 1:38 PM 0 comments
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