When Barack Obama was president and feuding with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while apologizing to Arab potentates about America’s history in the region, a friend offered an observation.
To wit, that Obama was proving the truth of a deep suspicion among American conservatives that Democrats love Jews but secretly hate Israel.
Time and milestone events have passed since then, but the evidence that my friend was onto something important continues to grow by leaps and bounds.
Acceptable
So much so that the Dems’ hard turn against Israel is now dangerously close to a fundamental party doctrine.
And a reasonable explanation is that Obama made it acceptable and even a requirement for officials and candidates to condemn the Jewish state.
His animus ran deep when he was in the White House, but didn’t stop when he left office a decade ago.
Even now, the former president continues to stir the pot of hatred, as demonstrated by comments he made last week.
Accepting an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, Obama said, in reference to the creation of the state of Israel, that Jews “took land off people, and they were excessive. And those people understandably said, ‘This is injustice and I want my land back.’ ”
By ignoring the fact that Jews were indigenous throughout the Middle East for thousands of years before the state of Israel was created by the United Nations partition in 1947, Obama comes off as willfully ignorant.
All the more so when he insists that “the attitude of Israel is, now that we are the strongest, the most technologically advanced in the region, then our security will depend on us simply doing whatever we need and taking whatever we want, and not making any concessions to anyone.”
He twisted the knife by saying that Israel has conceded the “moral high ground.”
He’s one of those lefties who likes Israel when it’s a victim, but hates it when it hits back and wins.
He also avoids any mention of the historic Abraham Accords, because that would mean giving President Trump credit and admitting that not all Muslims and Arabs hate Israel.
Bam-Mam link
His biased distortions recall the hateful ignorance that Mayor Mamdani often spews about Israel being an occupier and running an apartheid state.
It’s not a coincidence that Obama has become a Mamdani pal and adviser.
Netanyahu responded to Obama by noting that the former president’s argument is contrary to long-established facts.
“Our land is not stolen land. This is our homeland; it’s called Judea. That’s where Jews come from. We’ve been attached to it for thousands of years,” the prime minister said.
A more thorough and devastating response to Obama came in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, where Elisha Wiesel asks and answers the critical questions the former president conveniently ignores.
“Was it excessive for the Jews of Hebron, a community that had prayed there for centuries, to be slaughtered by rioters in 1929, nearly 20 years before there was a Jewish state, an occupation or a West Bank settlement to blame?” Wiesel writes.
He goes on to ask, “Was it excessive for Jews to accept the United Nations’ 1947 partition plan while facing an impending invasion by five armies in 1948? To offer peace at Camp David in 2000, and again in 2008? To pull every soldier and settler out of Gaza in 2005?
“Is it excessive to want to live in peace?”
The writer’s authority on the subject is unassailable.
He is the son of the late Elie Wiesel, the survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his writing and teaching about the Holocaust and his work as an international activist for human rights.
In his op-ed, Elisha Wiesel, a businessman and chairman of his parents’ foundation, recalls the strong bond his father built with Obama. In 2009, they visited Buchenwald with then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
But a rift grew over Obama’s dangerously soft nuclear deal with Iran, with Elie Wiesel attending a 2015 Netanyahu speech to Congress denouncing the deal.
According to the son, his father never again heard from Obama.
Still, the auditorium in the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago is named after Wiesel.
As the son writes, “The Elie Wiesel Auditorium must also stand as a warning, my father’s life was a testimony to what words can do. History is replete with speeches, lectures, editorials and textbooks turning neighbors into intruders and murder into justice.”
He concludes with his hope that Obama “reconsiders his words” about Israel’s founding, saying “it would be an act worthy of his friendship with my father.”
Abdul endorsement
Unfortunately, that’s the longest of long shots, especially now that Obama is endorsing Michigan’s radical Senate candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, and planning to campaign with him this weekend, when Michigan statewide early voting begins.
Obama’s move comes as El-Sayed drops the pretense that he is anything other than a hater of Israel.
In an interview with ABC, he declared that Israel is “not actually our friend,” then parroted the false claims, first made in The New York Times, that Israel pushed a reluctant Donald Trump into attacking Iran.
“An ally that takes your money to push you into wars you shouldn’t be fighting is not an ally,” said El-Sayed.
In another interview, he insisted “the government of Israel has done nothing but use us” and “has done terrible things with our money.”
He also said “the Israeli military has done heinous things, full war crimes, genocide. So I think we got to just get serious about whether or not we as a country should be subsidizing that government.”
Now that the fig leaf has been lifted, there can be no doubts: He and Obama are two of a kind.
Gov. Hochul ad nauseam
Pandering in politics is routine, but Gov. Hochul is in a class of one.
Some of her statements should come with a barf bag, including this recent head-spinning press release.
“Governor Hochul signed legislation allowing Little Yemen to be designated a cultural district . . . by signing this bill, she recognizes the vibrant Yemeni culture in The Bronx and makes organizations with the district eligible for state funds.
“At a time when Islamophobia is rising, we need to make sure every one of Little Yemen’s entrepreneurs, civil servants, teachers, police officers and hardworking moms and dads know: You belong here. We see you. We are proud that you are with us, and we are here to support you.”
Nurse, please hurry with that bag!