The NRO's Jay Nordlinger has an interesting and quite pertinent piece analyzing the conflict between Barack Obama and Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu in terms of their life experiences:
You may remember that President Obama had some advice for Israelis last summer. He said they needed to “engage in serious self-reflection.” Well, I had a serious cow when he said that. May I quote from the relevant Impromptus?
Of all the things Obama has said in his half-year in office, I think the most offensive was his assertion that Israel must “engage in serious self-reflection.” The Israelis are experts in “serious self-reflection.” The Jewish people is expert in “serious self-reflection.” They have been seriously self-reflecting for several thousand years — they practically invented the practice. Israelis, since the founding — refounding — of that state, have had to do some urgent self-reflecting, and other reflecting. They live in a tinderbox; their existence and survival are threatened all the time.
Barack Obama knows nothing about serious self-reflection compared with the average Israeli — compared even with a relatively unreflective Israeli. It’s their lives that are on the line, not Obama’s. It is they who have gone through war after war, not Obama. And those were wars of attempted annihilation: the annihilation of you-know-who.
People always speak condescendingly, ignorantly, and offensively about and to the Israelis. It’s kind of a world specialty. But I think our new American president may have taken the cake. . . .
At about the same time, I was reading, and reviewing, The Israel Test, by George Gilder. For my review of that book, in the August 24, 2009, National Review go here. When I read a particular passage, I thought hard — hard and unhappily — about Obama and “serious self-reflection.” The passage concerns Benjamin Netanyahu:
In May 1969, he nearly lost his life in an action against Egyptian forces that had been laying traps for the Israelis near the Suez Canal. The team succeeded in destroying an Egyptian truck loaded with weapons, but two days later Egyptian troops opened fire on Netanyahu’s inflated rubber boat operating in the canal. Laden with ammunition for his machine gun, Bibi discovered that he could neither swim nor disengage himself from his sling full of ammo. He had virtually drowned by the time he was rescued by a naval commando named Israel Assaf, who happened to notice bubbles of foam on the surface, felt for a head under the water, and extracted Bibi by his hair under intense Egyptian fire.Think of Obama’s life experiences; think of Netanyahu’s. It is Netanyahu who should undergo serious self-reflection?
In his book, Gilder writes that Netanyahu “is the obverse of Obama in nearly every way.” He elaborates,
While the youthful Obama was a community-action organizer and lawyer, Netanyahu was an anti-terrorist warrior. While Obama imagines that taxes in general are too low and inadequately progressive, Netanyahu is a sophisticated supply-side economist who believes that lower rates bring higher revenues and who opened his administration by advocating tax cuts. While in the past the United States has long offered a haven for frustrated Israeli entrepreneurs and other Jewish capitalists, Israel under Netanyahu will beckon as a land of hope and hospitality to frustrated American venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. While Obama believes that foreign aid is the answer to Palestinian poverty, Netanyahu knows that new opportunities opened up by Israeli enterprise are the only solution to the regional crisis.
While Obama believes that the United States has overreacted to the threat of terrorism, Netanyahu for nearly thirty years has championed and explained the war on terror in both the United States and Israel, in books, international meetings, and through the Jonathan Institute (named for his late older brother who died in the stunning Entebbe hostage rescue in Uganda). Netanyahu sees jihad as the single greatest threat to the West, and no other politician is so learned or so determined in combating it. While Obama thinks Churchill is a man whose time has passed, Netanyahu has read and pondered all of Churchill’s works and admires the British titan “above all other gentiles.” The time for Churchillian leadership, according to Netanyahu, is now.
Given that Obama has decided to declare the Israeli prime minister his bête noire in the world, I thought these words were pertinent.
Read the rest here
2 comments:
This is very interesting information about Mr. Netanayahu!! Thank you very much for sharing it.
It is actually Mr. Obama who needs to engage in some serious self reflection. What I'm about to write is dangerous to think let alone to write or type. Mr. Obama is an African-American who is the product of an affirmative action culture. In other words he had all of the advantages one who is trying to succeed could have possibly hoped for.
I do not begrudge him for this. If the deck were stacked in my favor, I would take advantage of this situation as well. If Mr. Obama engaged in serious self reflection he would realize this and he would be deeply humble ant thankful. Also, he should ask himself the following question: "I followed the worst President in American history, the Republicans ran the worst possible candidate they could have, their candidate ran the most inept campaign possible, the money spent on my campaign was unprecedented, and the media support I had was unprecedented in American history. Given these facts, I should have gotten 90% of the vote or more. How did I only manage to get about 52% of the vote?"
To ask a question like this requires self reflection and humility of which Mr. Obama has neither.
Americans need to engage in some serious self reflection as well. For example, 1.)"what would we do if we faced the existential threats Israel faces on a daily basis combined with almost daily attacks?", and 2.)America exists partially on land that was once owned by Mexico and before that the American Indian. Both groups want these lands back. Yet, in spite of that, we continue to build settlements on this land. In light of this situation, what gives us the right to try and dictate terms to Israel on where they can build settlements?"
Finally serious self reflection on the part of members of the media might lead to the following question. "If the American government attempted the heavy handed approach that is being taken with regards to Israel against any other country on earth, we would howl with rage against the American government and its imperialist actions. Yet when this is done to Israel we fully support these actions. Why should Israel be any different? Specifically, if other conflicts are "none of America's business" why is the Israeli/Arab conflict America's business?
Such questions might lead to some very uncomfortable answers for some people. This may be why they aren't asked. You see its much easier to tell someone else to engage in self reflection than to do it ourselves. For Mr. Obama to tell anyone to engage in self reflection is arguably the most vile thing this man has done to date.
I think the Christian scripture, I'm paraphrasing here, applies. "Before you try to remove a speck from your brother's eye first remove the log from your own eye. Then you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Of course I'm beginning to think that Mr. Obama thinks he is God. If this is so, this probably thinks this makes him immune to needing to engage in self reflection himself.
I read the rest of the article. He goes on to discuss Koch's mea culpa. Woopeedoo. Koch is a moron and so is every Jew that voted for that anti-semite. They can congratulate themselves for their liberal atitutdes when Jews are either killed by an Iranian bomb or are killed trying to stop that Islamo-fascist from getting an atomic bomb. Never have a people so betrayed themselves and congratulated themselves on helping in their own destruction. The Jewish American community is an embarrassment to their forefathers and absolute proof that the antisemites are worng, the majority fo Jews are not intelligent. They may have book learning, but devoid of common sense, which they are, only makes them stupid.
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