President Obama Awards Medal of Freedom To Prominent 'Anti-Zionists'

President Barack Obama has announced his first list of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients for 2009, America’s highest civilian honor.

While some of the names belong to people who might obviously be deserving and some are there for simple political bean counting, two names jumped out at me...Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights.

Bishop Desmond Tutu is a well known Israel basher and anti-Semite.

Like most of the rest of the ANC, the good Bishop was noted for his friendliness with Palestinians and Yasir Arafat (the Palestinians supplied the ANC with weaponry and terrorist training) and his frequent comparison of Israel with apartheid South Africa.

During the first UN Human Rights Commission meeting in Durban in 2001 (known as Durban I) Tutu led the charge on what became an anti-Semitic orgy inside and out that stank so badly that even the Americans and European delegations left.

Here's a few choice Tutuisms uttered at a conference in Boston back in 2002:

"Israel is like Hitler and apartheid."

"The Jewish lobby is very powerful..People are scared in this country [the U.S.], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful—very powerful."

There's lots more ,if anyone's interested.

While Bishop Tutu was the head of the Investigative Commission for the notorious UN Human Rights Commission, it never found time to investigate a single other state for `human rights violations' but Israel.Not even a word on Darfur, for instance.

Mary Robinson is another interesting choice.The former Leftist president of Ireland, she's always been an outspoken, 'anti-Zionist'.

While she was president and especially while Ireland held the presidency of the EU she happily provided Arafat and the PLO with millions in aid much of which went to fund Arafat's War Against the Jews.

She went on to become United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,where she was the architect of the infamous Durban Conference and oversaw its anti-Israel platform,while not saying or doing anything about the blatant anti-Semitic demonstrations and propaganda inside and outside the conference. She was instrumental in seeing to it that homicide bombing and terrorist attacks against Israel was not condemned as a violation of human rights.In fact, Robinson’s UN commission actually voted to condone homicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood.

She also was instrumental in pressing for UN investigation of the non-massacre in Jenin and in appointing known anti-Semite Bishop Tutu as head of the UNHRC's investigative commission.Which of course, never investigated anything but Israel.

After her stint as a UN Judeophobe, she went on to become a professor at Columbia, where she fit right in with anti-Semites like Obama's old friend Rashid Khalidi.

These awards are diligently screened, so as not to embarrass the president.Tutu and Robinson didn't just slip through by chance.

You can tell a lot about someone from seeing whom his heroes are and what kind of behavior he honors.

part of being president is sending messages. By honoring Tutu and Robinson, Obama is making an obvious gesture to Israel and the Jews. The one normally made using the middle finger.

UPDATE: Gabriel over at Ace's place reminds me about another of Obama's wonderful Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient,the Rev Joseph Lowery. You remember him....he was the cretin who made the following 'benediction' at the Inaugural:

Black will not be asked to get in back;
When Brown can stick around;
When Yellow will be mellow;
When the Red Man can get ahead, man;
And when White will embrace what is right.

He's also the same moron who attacked President Bush and the First Lady when they attended the Coretta Scott King funeral.

UPDATE 2: As other people notice that Mary Robinson is slated to receive America's highest civilian award, there's been some criticism, and she's apparently not taking it well, whining about how 'certain members of the Jewish community are bullying me'. That would include AIPAC, the ADL, the Republican Jewish coalition, the ZOA, UN Watch, Claudia Rosett, Melanie Phillips ...the list is a pretty long one, and a lot of them aren't even Jewish.

Ed Lasky over at American Thinker speculates that this is probably the doing of another 'anti-Zonist' in Obama's employ, Samantha Powers.

It's a funny thing about 'anti-Zionists'. Dig a little and they almost invariably turn out to be Jew haters, and usually you don't have to dig very deep at all.