Obama’s Cynical Synagogue Speech

 

by David Gerstman

President Obama’s speech a week and a half ago at Washington D.C. synagogue Adas Israel was alternatively promoted as both an opportunity to address the scourge of anti-semitism, and a chance to reach out to American Jews. The speech did nothing to advance either goal and was tone-deaf to any Jews, or Americans for that matter, who don’t buy into the president’s foreign policy.
As far as his reaching out, the president simply rehashed all of his administration’s arguments about closing off Iran’s paths to a nuclear weapon. He offered nothing new. Of course, he said that the deal he’s trying to make with Iran will make Israel safer. He made a point of saying that he shares the goal with Israel of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; but he said it with no real conviction. He was just repeating a talking point. Repeating all of his talking points isn’t going to convince someone who doesn’t already agree with him.

Notably, he repeated his 2012 line about having Israel’s back. But with Israel’s political establishment – Isaac Herzog is no less skeptical of the emerging deal than Benjamin Netanyahu is – doubting the efficacy of the ongoing diplomacy, that claim hardly seems credible. He says that he welcomes debate, but the night before Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress, Obama gave an interview to Reuters attempting to undercut Netanyahu’s arguments.


Instead of addressing reservations with the deal, Obama simply repeated his own arguments. Again that’s not how you convince doubters.

The same dynamic was at work when he discussed the peace process.

And it is precisely because I care so deeply about the state of Israel — it’s precisely because, yes, I have high expectations for Israel the same way I have high expectations for the United States of America — that I feel a responsibility to speak out honestly about what I think will lead to long-term security and to the preservation of a true democracy in the Jewish homeland. (Applause.) And I believe that’s two states for two peoples, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. (Applause.) Just as Israelis built a state in their homeland, Palestinians have a right to be a free people on their land, as well. (Applause.)

Now, I want to emphasize — that’s not easy. The Palestinians are not the easiest of partners. (Laughter.) The neighborhood is dangerous. And we cannot expect Israel to take existential risks with their security so that any deal that takes place has to take into account the genuine dangers of terrorism and hostility.

But what’s been noticeable about President Obama’s approach to the peace process since he’s been president is that because he has such “high expectations” of Israel, he only expects efforts from Israel. He’s asked nothing of the Palestinians. (This conceit prompted Eli Lake to ask why Obama couldn’t care a little bit less about Israel.)

Last year Israel’s former peace negotiator Tzipi Livni told an interviewer that last year’s American-sponsored peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians were torpedoed by Mahmoud Abbas, who refused to accept an American-sponsored framework that Netanyahu reluctantly accepted. When that happened there were no administration leaks about how Abbas was missing a historic opportunity or questions about his commitment to peace. And there was certainly no public haranguing of the Palestinian leader. Is there any reason to expect that when President Obama decides its time to start a new peace process he won’t demand some upfront concessions by Netanyahu to convince the Palestinians to negotiate?

In other words, whether addressing Iran or the Israeli-Palestinian issue, Obama offered no reason for a skeptic to change his mind. So his purpose was clearly not outreach.

And what about anti-semitism? Obama’s mentions of anti-semitism were general. He spoke of it as a “scourge,” but didn’t address a single specific instance of official anti-semitism. Why not? In an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg earlier in the week Goldberg asked him about the official anti-semitism of Iran, so it isn’t like Obama could claim ignorance of the issue. Robert Wistrich, perhaps the world’s top authority on anti-semitism, passed away a few days before Obama spoke, but Obama didn’t mention his name.

Neither of the purported reasons for Obama’s talk were addressed (seriously) by the president. As Michael Doran noted, in A Letter to My  Liberal Jewish Friends, published last week in Mosaic Magazine, Obama was speaking specifically to the “liberal Jewish community.” You could say he was preaching to the choir, making sure that one of his most loyal constituencies doesn’t stray. The pre-speech PR was misdirection, to make the president appear conciliatory and magnanimous. The speech itself was motivated by cynical self-interest.

Doran goes through the various reasons the president chose to speak as he did at the synagogue, but in the end he comes down to what was Obama’s likely calculation.

The president’s sophistry demonstrates a simple but profound truth: his commitment to the progressive values of tikkun olam is governed by its own “red lines,” and is entirely utilitarian. Which again raises the question: what was his purpose in stressing this shared progressive commitment in his address to you, and what was his purpose in subtly reminding you of the costs of failing to abide by its terms?

The answer, I hope, is obvious. On June 30, Obama will likely conclude a nuclear deal with Iran. This will spark a faceoff with Congress, which has already declared its opposition to the deal. Congress will inevitably pass a vote of disapproval, which Obama will inevitably veto. In order to defend that veto from a congressional override, however, he must line up 34 Senators—all Democrats. This calls in turn for a preemptive ideological campaign to foster liberal solidarity—for which your support is key. If the president can convince the liberal Jewish community, on the basis of “shared values,” to shun any suspicion of alignment with congressional Republicans or Benjamin Netanyahu, he will have an easier time batting down Congress’s opposition to the deal with Iran.

I think Doran is correct. Obama knows that a deal with Iran is not popular. He also knows that despite the limits that Corker-Menendez puts on him, it still means that a future nuclear deal with Iran will stand if the Senate cannot override his veto, even if Congress is not convinced that he made a good deal and initially votes the deal down.

As more news stories like Tuesday’s that Iran has increased its enriched uranium by 20% since the Joint Plan of Action was agreed even as Obama and his administration insist that Iran has abided by its terms, skepticism of the deal will only increase.

So as Doran pointed out, President Obama was asking his hardest core supporters to stand by him and ensure that minority who will support his bad deal with Iran will be a big enough minority to ensure that the deal stands.

crossposted at Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

J Street Fails In Attempt To to Prevent Anti-BDS Legislation

 


In late April, the Senate Finance Committee adopted new amendments to the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which would require US trade negotiators to make rejection of the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott Divestment and Sanction) Movement a requirement in any Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations with the European Union, which are now ongoing.

The bill requires signers of the TTIP “to discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, or sanction Israel and seek the elimination of politically motivated non-tariff barriers on Israeli goods, services, or other commerce imposed on the State of Israel.”

This was aimed not only at EU threats of sanctions against Israel but at EU financial support of anti-Israel BDS groups.

As you might expect, the usual suspects among Jewish anti-semites er, 'anti-Zionists' went into full tantrum mode over this one, lobbying feverishly against it.

The rabidly pro-BDS, anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace has been one of the leading voices opposing the legislation, along with Americans For Peace Now,and of course, "pro-Israel, pro-peace" J-Street.

They were especially enraged that the wording of the bill - which refers to all "Israeli-controlled territories" - would also make it illegal to boycott Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.


But despite the pressure from these far-left anti-Israel groups the amendments have near unanimous, bipartisan support:

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) strongly praises Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rob Portman (R-OH) for sponsoring the bipartisan United States-Israel Trade Enhancement Act of 2015 (S.619) and Congressman Peter Roskam (R-IL) and Juan Vargas (D-Cal) for sponsoring the United States-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act of 2015 (HR.825). In addition, ZOA strongly praises HR.825’s thirty-seven co-sponsors listed below. ZOA also praises Senators Cardin and Portman for annexing this anti-boycott legislation as an amendment to a bill currently in the Senate Finance Committee. [...]

The praiseworthy bipartisan co-sponsors of HR.825 (in addition to sponsors Congressmen Roskam and Vargas) include:

Steve Stivers (R-OH), Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Paul Cook (R-Cal), Blake Farenthold (R-TX), Randy Weber, Sr. (R-TX), David Schweikert (R-AZ), Mark Meadows (R-NC), Bob Gibbs (R-OH), Brian Babin (R-TX), Patrick Murphy (D-Fla), Jackie Walorski (R-IN), Trent Frants (R-AZ), Austin Scott (R-GA), Stevan Pearce (R-NM), Rodney Davis (R-IL), Martha McSally (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Chris Collins (R-NY), David McKinley (R-WV), Tim Walberg (R-MI), Kevin Yoder (R-KS), Peter King (R-NY), Ron DeSantis (R-Fla), Luke Messer (R-IN), Tom Emmer (R-MN), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Bradley Byrne (R-AL), Bill Johnson (R-OH), Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla), Earl “Buddy” Carter (R-GA), Daniel Lipinski (D-IL), Nita Lowey (D-NY), Leonard Lance (R-NJ), Susan Brooks (R-IN), Candice Miller (R-MI) and Daniel Webster (R-Fla).

And those are just the co-sponsors.

Congressman Peter Roskam (R-IL), who co-sponsored the legislation, told The Washington Free Beacon that the whole issue "is a non-story: a bunch of anti-Israel groups criticizing a pro-Israel amendment."

"While a broad bipartisan, bicameral group of Members of Congress are focused on strengthening the mutually beneficial US-Israel economic relationship, this small handful of outside organizations are more interested in defending destructive efforts to delegitimize Israel," he said.

He's got something there. Sanctions are essentially a trade A-bomb, and once the EU uses it, there's zero incentive for Israel to negotiate anything. Unlike Russia and Iran, Israel has more than one product the world wants, and lots of buyers, so even some EU countries will wink at any sanctions, especially with some convenient re-labeling and resales involved. That's exactly how the EU avoided the Arab boycott against Israel in the 1960's and the 1970's.

Not only that, but these days Israel has lucrative and established trade relations with China, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Burma, India, Russia and many other non-EU countries..not to mention Canada and Australia.

President Obama might of course veto this, but doing so would pretty much signal exactly how much he really despises Israel to even the most clueless, not to mention that this legislation merely reiterates existing U.S. law. Even his fellow Dems might participate in a veto overide to preserve their own political hides. And I have a feeling he too realizes that vetoing this would pretty much end what little leverage he has left to get the Israelis to negotiate anything vis a vis 'Palestine'. He has other things more important to deal with, and other plans for Israel, as I'll reveal shortly.

Chickensh*t

 

That quaint kid's playground epithet is the money quote from an article entitled "The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here," posted by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic.

It's what Goldberg reports that an anonymous senior Obama administration official called Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu in a conversation Goldberg had with him. And in the article, Goldberg also mentions that President Obama "in interviews with me, has alluded to Netanyahu’s lack of political courage."

Now, for all that Jeffrey Goldberg has consistently been a fairly servile apologist for the president and the Obama Administration when it comes to Israel, he's not entirely wrong that Netanyahu has been guilty of a lack of courage in some instances. But that lack of courage is from an entirely different direction than Goldberg supposes.

Contrary to the tile of Jeffrey Goldberg's piece, the crisis in US-Israel relations started from the moment Barack Hussein Obama was elected president. Where Netanyahu and certain other Israeli leaders have exhibited a lack of courage is in trying desperately to deny and fend it off, and make believe it wasn't happening.

Barack Obama started his presidency by stating openly (once he was safely elected) that he wanted to create daylight between the U.S. and Israel, and he has been doing so ever since.

Is Jeffrey Goldberg suffering from amnesia? Do we really need to revisit the climate that's been created between the US and Israel since Barack Obama took over as president?  His repudiation of the agreements made with Israel by President Bush  that convinced Israeli PM Ariel Sharon to go ahead with the Gaza disengagement, claiming they never existed? His call for Israel to re-divide Jerusalem and retreat to indefensible borders? His telling Iran that Israel was on its own in the event of any hostilities? His insisting that Israel has no right to Jewish religious sites? His repeated statements that the Palestinians need not recognize Israel as a Jewish State and his continued funding of the Palestinian Authority in spite of their continued support and incitement for terrorism against Israeli civilians? His instituting what amounted to a de facto arms embargo for six months during the early part of his first term? His approval and funding of the new Hamas/Fatah entity which includes a genocidal terrorist group? The list could go on for quite some time.

Would any other sovereign nation put up with constant temper tantrums from a foreign government over building homes in its own capital? With pressure to release convicted murderers from its jails as a 'gesture for peace?' With mysterious holdups for bureaucratic 'review' of badly needed military supplies in the middle of a war? With deliberately insulting treatment of its elected leader by the president of what was supposed to be a closely allied government?

While Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have sometimes made statements that have revealed a lack of discretion,it's been in reaction to a long climate of outright hostility from the White House that makes even former President Carter's tenure look benign by comparison. Jeffrey Goldberg might wish to forget it, but it was the overt actions and attitude from this president and his administration towards Israel and Netanyahu that came first and poisoned the well.

The Israelis never figured on a president getting elected in America who had an animus towards Israel, and their futile attempts to muddle through and somehow make the relationship work only made President Obama more insistent, unreasonable and demanding.

And speaking of political courage, let's take a good look at what gave Barack Obama the license to act out this way towards Israel. It was America's Jews on the Left - like Jeffrey Goldberg.
Remember this,from back in 2008? (courtesy of Omri Ceren):

So, all you rumor-mongering, fever-headed Jewish conspiracists: Support McCain, if you want, and there are credible reasons for doing so, but stop smearing Obama in the face of overwhelming evidence that the man is a great friend of Jews and of Israel. After a point, it becomes obvious that what you fear is not Israel's destruction, but the presence of an African-American in the White House. And that's disgusting.

Obama's background and his feelings about Israel were obvious to anyone whom bothered to look at him honestly. President Barack Obama has had close associations with Israel haters and in some cases open anti-semites his entire life. Frank Marshall Davis, Edward Said, Rashid al-Khalidi, Khalid al-Mansour, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Al Sharpton and others like them all figure or have figured prominently in his background.

So how did this all slip by?

What happened is that many on the Left and those in media simply didn't want to know, especially Jews. They made a clear decision that voting Democrat and embracing their Leftist politics meant more to them than supporting their brothers and sisters in Israel. It was this hideous betrayal that enabled President Obama to act out and make support for Israel as an ally a partisan issue once he was elected. A significant number of American Jews voted Democrat in 2008 and found solace in candidate Obama telling them what they wanted to hear, in political groups the George Soros financed J-Street,and the NJDC, and in the bogus mantra of 'the two state solution'. It enabled President Obama to neuter AIPAC, as well as other Jewish groups. With a few honorable exceptions, they all fell in line with the New Order. And even after they had ample evidence of President Obama's attitude towards Israel during his first term, most of them voted for him again.

And this backing of Obama and his agenda led,in case no one's noticed, not only to the increased intransigence of Abbas and Fatah but to the increased hostility towards Jews and Israel in places like the EU and and a rising climate of Jew hatred in places like university campuses, again with some rare exceptions. The backing of the majority of America's Jews for Obama and their tolerance for his policies was and is the protective cover and the impetus for all of it.

And it's ironic that Goldberg himself, whom I'm sure knows this as well as I do is still drinking the same Kool-Ade. Read this from his article today:


Unlike the U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry, I don’t have any hope for the immediate creation of a Palestinian state (it could be dangerous, at this chaotic moment in Middle East history, when the Arab-state system is in partial collapse, to create an Arab state on the West Bank that could easily succumb to extremism), but I would also like to see Israel foster conditions on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem that would allow for the eventual birth of such a state. This is what the Obama administration wants (and also what Europe wants, and also, by the way, what many Israelis and American Jews want), and this issue sits at the core of the disagreement between Washington and Jerusalem.

I'm sure that in the rarefied bubble Jeffrey Goldberg lives in, there are plenty of Jews who have no problem with creating Jewish refugees, redividing Jerusalem again and making it Jew-free 'for peace'. But hardly any Israelis do, now that they've seen up close what that means. Fully 76% of them,more than three out of four would oppose any kind of Palestinian state that would redivide Jerusalem and put half of it under the control of Hamas/Fatah.

What 'conditions' does Jeffrey Goldberg expect Israel to foster? Stop building in Jerusalem while the Arabs continue to build illegally and make East Jerusalem into their de facto capital? Stop Jews from living there because they're Jews? Ignore the current terrorist attacks and the intifada in Jerusalem incited and ordered by Abbas and Hamas, something that was planned by them a year ago and was just awaiting the proper excuse to be launched? Ignore Abbas's alliance with a genocidal terrorist group?

Actually, what the Jeffrey Goldbergs want is a lot simpler. They want Israel to bend over, do whatever President Obama and John Kerry tell Israel to do and stop embarrassing them.

And they think Bibi Netanyahu 'lacks political courage?'

It is highly possible President Obama will have the U.S. abstain from Mahmoud Abbas's attempt to push through a UN Security Council resolution gifting Hamas/Fatah all of Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem to create 'Palestine' on the pre '67 lines. If that happens and it passes, or if the president seeks to impose his own, similar diktat on Israel, Israel will simply refuse to comply, since they can't without committing national suicide. The response from the usual suspects is easy to predict. How dare Israel defy the UN diktat to create half a million Jewish refugees, redivide Jerusalem and to give Abbas and Hamas the ability to turn Judea, Samaria and East Jerusalem into attack platforms like Gaza! How dare they defy President Obama! What an ungrateful ally!

At that point, unless congress intervenes in some fashion, U.S. military sales to Israel could very likely be cut off or 'suspended' by executive order and favorable trade treaties revoked.

If that's how it goes down, President Obama will then have achieved his goal of distancing America from Israel. And those of America's Jews who have been so eager to support Barack Obama's hostile agenda on Israel or simply keep quiet about it may just find out what a really bad idea that was, both for America and for them personally.

That story has already been played out before elsewhere. Just ask the Jews of England, France and elsewhere in Western Europe whether it was Israeli institutions being targeted or Jewish ones when Israel was recently defending its citizens from Hamas and see what they tell you.

The Book of Esther, a bit of scripture some Jews may be familiar with is another example.

As Mordecai reminded her when Esther was tempted to go with the flow and look the other way where her fellow Jews were concerned..If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s  family will perish.

There's a reason the Book of Esther is read every Purim for all Jews to hear and remember. The Goldbergs of the world ought to do some serious thinking about that.

Jews Barred From African Union Summit Learn A Needed Lesson

 

A group of prominent American Jews were invited to attend the 23rd African Union Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea this week, with the idea of working on logistical and financial support for educational,humanitarian and development projects in Africa from mainstream Jewish groups like the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.On the agenda and scheduled to open the conference was a simple statement, a declaration of support for the three kidnapped Israeli teens.

The Jews  were not allowed to attend, and the story points out something valuable to remember:

"I have never seen such racism, such anti-Semitism. We were humiliated," said several of the Jews in attendance, who had left Equatorial Guinea in a fury after changing their flights.

"It all began when one of the Arab delegates, from Egypt, approached us at dinner the night before the opening and asked what we were doing here, pointing at the men wearing kippahs," said Israeli businesswoman Yardena Ovadia, who had organized the invitation of the Jewish delegation to the summit.

Ovadia, who has close ties with Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang, said that she explained to the delegate that her and her friends were Jews from the US, not Israelis.

The following day representatives of the Arab League refused to enter the hall until all the Jews left, or as they called them, the "Israeli delegation."

"We were already seated in the conference hall," said Ovadia. "The heads of the Arab League announced a boycott of the conference until the 'Israeli delegation' left. We officially declared that we were Americans, not Israelis, but it didn't help."

"There was a representative of the US congress with us. She was shocked and said that there will be an official government statement," Ovadia added.

Notice that the first default position of these American Jews and this Israeli-American businesswoman was to try to distance themselves and declare that they were Americans, not those 'evil' Israelis.

 


To the Arab League delegates, that made absolutely no difference. It also apparently didn't make any difference to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Egyptian President al-Sisi, the prime minister of Spain, four Iranian ministers, and other foreign dignitaries in the hall.

 

None of them said a word as the 14 Jewish delegates were forced to leave the hall and the proceedings started an hour late. Nor did any of them say anything or walk out either when the Palestinian Authority's unelected dictator Mahmoud Abbas' deputy made a speech accusing Israel of perpetrating a 'Holocaust' on the Palestinian people. And that declaration of support for the three kidnapped Israeli teens? If these people couldn't even abide being in the same room with Jews, do you think that ever happened? Of course it didn't. It never even made it to the floor and was cancelled from the agenda.

And some of these people  are the same one who accuse Israel of 'apartheid'!  Yes, it's the old story again, 'Jews Unwelcome.' And the usual suspects still keep their mouths shut.







The supreme irony here is that the Israelis have given billions in badly needed aid to African nations, unlike the Arab countries with their billions of petro-dollars. That likely has a lot to do with why the president of Equatorial Guinea called Yardena Ovadia personally to apologize and invite the Conference of Presidents' delegation to a special dinner. But at that point, they had already rescheduled their flight and had left the country.

Believe or not this is a positive development. These American Jews, who thought themselves apart from their Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel may have learned, perhaps, that 'anti-Zionist' is just a code word for anti-Semite. To these people all Jews are 'Israelis', no matter how politically correct they are, how critical they are of Israel's policies or how much 'interfaith outreach' they do with Islamists.

It's high time this lesson was learned.

America's Jews Can't Trust Hillary Clinton - Listen To Words From Her Own Mouth To Islamists

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is making the rounds in the run up to her presidential race in 2016, and one of her stops today involved trawling for Jewish votes and Jewish money at the always reliably Left leaning and Obama friendly American Jewish Committee.

Today, she spoke at their annual Global Forum, doing some chest beating about what a tough Secretary of State she was on Iran:

Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state and likely Democratic presidential candidate, talked tough on Iran Wednesday morning, declaring that “no deal is better than a bad deal” and voicing skepticism regarding the chances of current negotiations to bear fruit.

Clinton, in a plenary address at the American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum, took credit for setting up a tough sanctions regime on Tehran and laying the groundwork for the current negotiations over a comprehensive nuclear agreement.

“When I left, we were in a position to really explore if we had set the table well enough,” Clinton said, recounting the work done between 2008 and 2012 in strengthening the sanctions regime, “revitalizing” the partnership with the other P5+1 powers — Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany — and “establishing bilateral connections.” [...]

Should talks fail, she warned, “the onus is on the Iranians” and “there will be room to restore the crippling sanctions in the future.” But even if a deal will be achieved, she said, “Iran’s support for terrorism and its aggressive behavior in the region remains a threat for ourselves and our allies.”

Clinton also spoke to her previous involvement in Washington’s attempts to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, beginning with the efforts of her husband, president Bill Clinton, which brought about the Oslo Accord and Israel’s peace treaty with Jordan.

A key part of the American role, she said, was “to help leaders carve out the political space to negotiate” and to “make a persuasive case that the status quo is unmaintainable for both sides.” The latter point has been a major source of contention, with Secretary of State John Kerry facing fierce Israeli protests over his warning that in the absence of a two-state solution, Israel would become an apartheid state.

Describing the recent Hamas-Fatah reconciliation as “troubling,” Clinton said that the Islamist rulers of the Gaza Strip “must reject violence, honor previous agreements and accept Israel’s right to exist.”

“If not,” she warned, “they will remain a pariah.”


There was also, of course, the usual verbiage on how important Israel's security was to her.

We can always expect a certain flexibility when it comes to what most of us would regard a truth from Mrs. Clinton.

The truth of the matter is that she was hardly involved in any major matters of state at all during her tenure in the Obama Cabinet. The president appointed special envoys for most if not all of the important issues who reported directly to him, and even our UN Ambassador, for the first time in U.S. history, became a cabinet post reporting directly to the president rather than being under the State Department. Mrs. Clinton functioned essentially as a messenger girl, and not a particularly effective or respected one either.

As we also know now, the Iran sanctions were neither particularly tough or 'crippling', and she had little or no voice in dealing with Iran anyway. That was Valerie Jarrett's department.

While a significant portion of the membership of the AJC is not particularly concerned with Israel, once again, Mrs. Clinton's remarks to those that are ought to set off warning bells. While it's possible that Mrs. Cinton as First Lady might have had something to do with Yasser Arafat's coming to the Clinton White House more than any other foreign leader,his subsequent empowerment and the bloody fiasco that was Oslo, I'm not certain it's a good idea for her to brag about it as an accomplishment in the same speech where she talks terrorists being a 'pariah'. For that matter, in the past, back when the Obama Administration was facilitating Islamist Mohammed Morsi's control of Egypt, she's on record as having been just fine with the Obama Administration supporting Hamas and with Egypt breaking the Israel-Egypt peace treaty.

And those of us who follow such matters might remember that Mrs. Clinton's as Secretary of State when it came to Israel consisted of lying about previous American commitments to Israel in front of the press as well as a number of other instances and screaming at Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu for 45 minutes over the phone about some houses being built in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem.

But thoughtfully, Mrs Clinton had the courtesy to give Jews and anyone else who thinks America's alliance with Israel is important a warning not to believe a single word that comes out of her mouth.
Here's the proof of her real feelings about the matter and America's Jews, from a video of her speaking to Tunisian Islamists taken when she was a bit more off guard:



Nice of her to do that. But with her record, it's disturbing that the AJC would even give her a platform. Partisan politics has to end somewhere.

Shoah Foundation And Leftist Jews To Honor President Who Funds Holocaust Denier

 

A line from an old movie I'm fond of - "If you live long enough, everything weird will happen to you."

That's definitely the case here.

Twenty years ago, would I have ever thought that a president who was anti-Israel and who funds a Holocaust denier who rewards people financially for murdering Jews would be honored by the filmmaker who has 'Schindler's List' among his credits? Or that Jews would be lining up to give this president money and support?

President Barack Obama is coming to Los Angeles today to do some serious fundraising, and to accept an award from Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, a Holocaust museum located at the University of Southern California founded by Spielberg after he made 'Schindler’s List'.

Obama will receive the institute’s highest honor, the Ambassador for Humanity Award, for his “global efforts to protect human rights, his commitment to education and expanding educational technology, and his work advancing opportunities for all people.”

“President Obama’s commitment to democracy and human rights has long been felt,” Spielberg said.

The president will speak to “common values and shared responsibilities” at the event, which will be attended by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.).

Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, two members of congress renowned for gorging at the public trough and enriching themselves? So much for 'shared responsibility.'

But that's not the worst of it.

I wonder..have Steven Spielberg and his friends actually sat down for a moment to look at whom they're honoring? And in the name of a foundation dedicated to memorializing the millions of Jews who died in the Holocaust?



Mahmoud Abbas received his doctorate from Moscow University with a dissertation denying the Holocaust occurred and later published most of it in a book, al-Wajh al-Akhar: al-'Alaqat as-Sirriya bayna an-Naziya wa's-Sihyuniya. That book is still a required text in the 'Palestinian' school curriculum, regardless of what Abbas tells gullible Jews in English. This kind of Holocaust denial would be illegal in many EU countries and socially unacceptable in the U.S., yet Europe and the United States cheerfully fund Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.

Even worse, the PA uses those funds to financially reward Arab terrorists convicted in Israeli courts of murdering Jews, with the higher salaries for both Hamas and Fatah killers reserved for those who commit the most heinous murders and thus get longer jail terms. Among those killers now receiving a salary courtesy of President Obama and the U.S. taxpayers are the two Fatah thugs who murdered the Fogel family in Itamar, Israel - including a 3-month-old baby.

When these murderers are released thanks to pressure from the president Spielberg and his friends are honoring, they receive a hero's welcome by Abbas as well as a cash bonus.

Not only that, but this same president has directly funded Hamas, an organization that is openly genocidal and makes its members swear an oath to pursue a second Holocaust...and who are now part of a unity government with Abbas and the PA.

That's who Steven Spielberg and his friends are honoring.

If their voices weren't forever muted, I would give a great deal to hear what the victims of the Holocaust would have to say to them about this kind of disgrace to their memory.

Using that memory in this fashion to honor this president is the final indignity.

Oh, and the poster at the top of the page? It appears that some local artists have placed parody movie ads in the upscale parts of Los Angeles (including across from the Century Plaza Hotel, where Obama will receive his award) to protest this. Using the template of ads for another Spielberg movie, 'Saving Private Ryan', the ads read 'Saving Barack Obama' and say that this is “A Steven Spielberg Ploy,” with a tagline that reads, “The mission is a fraud.”

The president will also be doing some A-list fundraising at a $64,000 per couple gala hosted by Alan Horn, the chairman of the Walt Disney Studios. Ride on, O warrior for the middle class!

Obama's New Push To Delegitimize Israel Starts Up

 

If you thought that the implosion of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks was going to mean the end of the Obama team's team's efforts to attack, demonize and dismantle Israel, you're sadly mistaken. They've merely changed tactics.

Borrowing a page from President Clinton's success in shoving Oslo through, the new gambit is to slander and alienate the current Israeli government both within Israel and abroad, destroy the current coalition, and push Israel into new elections. Then, the Obama team will provide logistical and financial support to the Israeli Left to get a more 'flexible' government(most likely headed by Labor's Isaac Herzog) into power to 'negotiate' Israel's surrender.

The effort started with Secretary of State John Kerry's infamous 'apartheid' remarks on Israel, using language never before used by a sitting American government figure. Kerry, of course, tried to spin it, but what he said was exactly what he meant; the onus for the failed peace talks is all Israel's.

At about the same time, there was an interview by by two 'unnamed American officials' with Nahum Barnea in Yediot, one of Israel's most well known columnists. A couple of inquiries enabled me to find out that the two 'unnamed officials' were none other than Kerry's deputy Martin Indyk and his gofer David Makovsky, who created the maps that were referenced in the interview.

In the interview, Indyk and Makovsky placed the blame for the failure of the talks totally on Israel and Netanyahu, not on Abbas' alliance with Hamas. And they essentially gave the go ahead to another intifada war on Israel's civilians.

Barnea described the interview as “the closest thing to an official American version of what happened” in the talks.

According to Indyk and Makovsky, they had prepared maps of what were supposed to be the new borders based on the Clinton plan, which Arafat had already turned down and which Abbas had already said numerous times he wasn't interested in. The proposed maps also divided Jerusalem, "Jewish neighborhoods to Israel, Arab neighborhoods to the Palestinians.”

And the Jewish population? All the Israelis were required to do under this so-called plan was to uproot and ethnically cleanse 20% of them, a mere 100,000 people.

This version by Indyk and Makovsky, of course, totally contradicts what Abbas has always said,that he wouldn't settle for anything less than all of East Jerusalem. And what the Israelis have always said, that they're not going to divide Jerusalem and that putting the Jewish holy sites under Arab control will never happen again.

The Israelis, according to them simply never countered the map they presented, and it's all Israel's fault that Abbas went to the UN and to Hamas.

Even more bizarrely, the two amigos blamed the collapse of the talks on - wait for it - the Israeli OK on the construction of 700 housing units in Gilo, a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem that according to the story these two were peddling was supposed to be under Jewish sovereignty anyway on the maps they themselves created!

That's what they claim drove poor, peace loving Mahmoud Abbas to Hamas and the UN..building homes in one of those Jewish neighborhoods these two clowns claim Abbas had already agreed to cede to Israel.

Indyk and Makovsky claim that Abbas agreed to a demilitarized 'Palestine', agreed to those American border outlines that would have created a mere 100,000 Jewish refugees, and agreed that Israel could keep security control of areas in the Jordan Valley for five years.

"He also agreed that the Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty, and agreed that the return of Palestinians to Israel would depend on Israeli willingness. 'Israel won't be flooded with refugees,' he promised.

In his public pronouncements, Abbas has said no to every one of those conditions time and again. Obviously, the bit about Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem is a fairy tale if building houses in Gilo was what blew the talks up.The idea that he was willing to abrogate the so-called 'right of return' is almost certainly another tall tale.

You see, in the interview,Indyk and Makovsky, who are supposedly knowledgeable about these things professed being puzzled by Abbas' refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Which of course, also seems to makes their account of Abbas being willing to give up a Palestinian right of return another cock and bull story, since that's one of the chief reasons Netanyahu has consistently insisted on it!

And the Jordan Valley? The Israelis understand full well that Abbas is on the way out and that Hamas will be taking over. The idea that they would agree to put a time limit on control of the Jordan Valley and leave it in the hands of 'Palestine' or anyone else but the IDF so that Iran and Syria could create another Hamasistan there and ship in heavy weapons would be a folly of massive proportions. They've already gone through this with Gaza, where Israel was given security guarantees by the EU and the Bush Administration before the Disengagement that it would never be a security problem. And in Lebanon, where the main condition of Israel agreeing to a ceasefire was UN SC 1701,which called for Hezbollah to be disarmed and stay that way and the deployment of UNFIL, which was supposed to see that Hezbollah neither re-armed not returned to its bases in South Lebanon.The reality, of course was something very different in both cases.

In the end, the message Indyk and Makovsky were pushing all came down to "It's Israel's fault".

“At this point, it’s very hard to see how the negotiations could be renewed, let alone lead to an agreement,” the two Americans said. “Towards the end, Abbas demanded a three-month freeze on settlement construction. His working assumption was that if an accord is reached, Israel could build along the new border as it pleases. But the Israelis said no.”

At that point, according to the dynamic duo, Abbas “lost interest. He turned to the reconciliation talks with Hamas and to the question of who would inherit his mantle.”

Never mind that Abbas had already signed a unity agreement with Hamas months before!

"I guess we need another intifada to create the circumstances that would allow progress" one of them reportedly told Barnea.

When Barnea challenged them on that they backed off and said that a third intifada, of course, “would be a tragedy. The Jewish people are supposed to be smart; it is true that they’re also considered a stubborn nation. You’re supposed to know how to read the map: In the 21st century, the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation. The occupation threatens Israel’s status in the world and threatens Israel as a Jewish state.”

“As of now, nothing is stopping the Palestinians from turning to the international community. The Palestinians are tired of the status quo. They will get their state in the end — whether through violence or by turning to international organizations.”

Nothing except a U.S. veto, that is. Which probably was never going to be forthcoming anyway.

And notice those last two paragraphs. Abbas gets no grief for getting in bed with a genocidal terrorist organization or fro violating the Road Map and the Oslo Accords. Israel is the culprit for building in an area that they're going to retain in any conceivable peace agreement anyway, for not observing a 'building freeze' applying to Israel and Israel only that Israel never agreed to in the first place.

And need I say that these two Obama functionaries praised the ever flexible Tzipi Livni as a 'heroine' while demonizing every Likud politician even remotely involved?

But wait, there's more. Fast forward to today and what's in the headlines?

The Obama-friendly Newsweek runs a lovely story about those dastardly Israeli spies targeting American defense and industrial secrets, written, of course, by a reporter with the last name of Stein who is likely Jewish for cover purposes. This bit of 'news' states in it's headline about how Israel spies on the US more than any other ally, and quotes a few unnamed 'congressional staffers' and one former CIA operative who talked about how the 'Zionists' have always spied on America even before Israel was a state:

“They’ve found creative and inventive ways,” Pillar said, to get what they want.

“If we give them free rein to send people over here, how are we going to stop that?” the former congressional aide asked. “They’re incredibly aggressive. They’re aggressive in all aspects of their relationship with the United States. Why would their intelligence relationship with us be any different?”

And to top it off, the always reliable Labor Party stalwart Shimon Peres,Israel's 90-year-old ceremonial president. His contribution to the cause today? To blame Israeli PM Netanyahu for the failure of the peace process, because Netanyahu rejected a deal Peres supposedly concocted with his good friend Mahmoud Abbas three years ago, in an interview on Israel's Channel 2. Peres, of course, isn;t oo definite of th e actual details, but he throws this one out there:

“He was supposed to agree [to recognize] a Jewish state and we were supposed to agree to recognize [a future] Palestinian state,” said Peres.

"I’ve known Abu Mazen [as Abbas is known] for 30 years…and the truth is he has fought terror with the resources that he has,” Peres said during the interview.

“He talks about peace and makes courageous remarks” he added.

Oh, of course he does. And Abbas would never pay murderers a salary for killing Jews,or call them holy martyrs, or give them a hero's welcome when they're released, would he? Or allow PA State TV to lionize them?

You know, if I had been conducting that interview, I might have asked Shimon Peres whether his view of Abbas was tempered just a bit by the fact that they're business partners. In Paltel, among other things, which has a monopoly as the sole cell company in the Arab Occupied parts of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Then there was the "Peace Technology Fund", a project of the Peres Peace Center to the tune of $62 million,back when Arafat was running things. Yes, Peres had a lot of good things to say about Yasser Arafat too,back in the day. The "Peace Technology Fund" back then had large investments in Paltel and in the Palestinian Mortgage Housing Corporation, 'Palestine's' corrupt equivalent of Fannie Mae. Peres' partner back then? None other than Muhammad Rashid, then Arafat's economic adviser and a major stockholder in PalTel.



There's a lot more that would make some must see TV, much of it concerned with the Peres Center for Peace and the substantial percentage of donations that comes in as donations from the EU and elsewhere and goes out as salary and expenses to none other than Shimon Peres and a few select insiders.

I point this out merely to show that President Peres' perceptions on things are rather easily influenced and flexible, and they always have been on these matters.

Expect to see a lot more remarks from figures on the Israeli left, in the Obama regime and in the Obama Media echoing Peres, Indyk and Malkov in demonizing the current government.

President Barack Hussein Obama was quite clear as far back as 2009 about his agenda towards Israel. He's not ending that obsession by any means.

Obama's New Anti-Israel Ally - AIPAC

 

In the wake of the Palestinian Authority's integration with terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Senator Rand Paul put together a common sense bill in the U.S. Senate. It called for the conditioning of American aid to the Palestinians on its recognition of Israel. Thia is particularly apropos since U.S. law forbids aid to recognized terrorist groups (something the Obama Administration has ignored anyway) and the lip service from our own State Department is that the U>S. would supposedly not provide aid to any part of the new Palestinian government that failed to commit to opposition to terrorism, recognition of Israel and abiding by past agreements:

The legislation, titled the “Stand with Israel Act of 2014,” failed to gather unanimous consent in the Senate on Thursday and Paul’s request to pass it was blocked. After the bill failed to pass, the senator said he was “deeply disappointed and disturbed by the Senate’s inability to stand with me in defense of Israel today.”

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest pro-Israel group in the U.S., declined to support the bill. In an interview with Steve Malzberg on Newsmax on Thursday, Paul said he was “getting pushback from the establishment up here” on the legislation.

When asked by Malzberg who he meant, Paul said: “Ironically, the group AIPAC is pushing back this bill and this is to me very troubling.”

“I think the American people, if they knew that, would be very, very upset and think, you know what, those people are no longer lobbying in favor of America and Israel if they’re not willing to put restrictions on aid to Palestine,” Paul continued.

Yes...AIPAC.

Here's what happened. AIPAC caved to a combination of pressure from the Obama Administration and pressure from their pro-Obama Democrat donors.

I know Senator Paul to be a friend of Israel, based on sources who kept me posted about his comments and actions during his trip to Israel last year. For AIPAC to come out against this legislation and risk alienating someone who supports Israel and might even conceivably end up as our next president is not only abysmally stupid, but it's treachery against the very cause the organization is supposed to be supporting. AIPAC's phony rationale? The supposed 'security cooperation' between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. I defy them to show me one person who's ever been arrested by those 'cooperative security forces' for murdering a Jew. And I guess AIPAC has forgotten all about how those trained Palestinian 'security forces' happily turned their guns on Jewish civilians during Arafat's terrorist war on Israel.

Does AIPAC really think that this sort of behavior is somehow pro-Israel? In any sense? Do these people think that if Israel is attacked and assailed, they're somehow going to be immune because they dance to the Obama regime's tune?

AIPAC is a toothless tiger, and they won't be getting another dime from me. And believe me, that's a word I plan to spread around.

An Honor Killing On Campus

 

Regular members of Joshua's Army may recall the name Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

She was raised as a Muslima in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, survived female genital mutilation, beatings, abuse and various aspects of Somalia's internecine clan warfare and became a devout member of the Muslim Brotherhood, after which her questions about Islam and the life she was leading led her to escape being 'given' in marriage to a distant male relative she had never met.and flee to Holland. There, she was granted Dutch citizenship and eventually became a member of the Dutch parliament where she became a voice alerting the people of her adopted country to the menace of radical Islam, and against the abuse of Muslim women and children in the Netherland's Islamic ghettos.

She later collaborated with the late filmmaker Theo Van Gogh on a film called 'Submission', which chronicled the plight of many Muslim women victimized as she was by the traditional tribal culture.The film caused a firestorm of protest among Muslims. Van Gogh was murdered in broad daylight by a fanatic Muslim while cycling to work one morning in 2004 and then had his corpse ritually mutilated. A note was pinned to Van Gogh's corpse promising Ayaan Hirsi Ali that she was the next target, with explicit Qu'rannic details of her `crimes against Islam' as an 'apostate', a death sentence in Islam. Other death threats followed, and Ayaan has lived under 24 hour security protection ever since.

She went through the experience of being forced to move out of her apartment because her Dutch neighbors were annoyed that the security protection 'inconvenienced them' and because they were afraid that the violence directed towards Ayaan Hirshi Ali might involve them. And the Dutch government, which was obligated to pay for her security as a member of Parliament also disliked the cost, the inconvenience and the political stigma of protecting an 'enemy of Islam' in a country that's over 25% Muslim, so they found a trumped up reason to take away her citizenship and force her to step down from her seat in parliament. Whereupon, she came here to America and became a noted author and speaker. You can read her story in her books 'Infidel', 'Nomad',and 'The Caged Virgin'

Since she came to America, she's been a tireless advocate for freedom and for women's rights,at the risk of her life and safety. Among other things, she helped form the AHA Foundation, which works to protect and defend the rights of women in the West from oppression justified by religion and culture.

So Brandeis decided to honor Ayaan Hirshi Ali. She was to be their commencement speaker and receive an honorary degree.

But when the local chapters of Muslim Brotherhood fronts like CAIR and the Muslim Student's Association heard about this, they went absolutely ballistic and were able to rope in enough guilty and frightened non-Muslim Lefties to go along with the mob to get Ayaan's honorary degree 'rescinded' and her invitation to speak revoked.

"This is a real slap in the face to Muslim students," said senior Sarah Fahmy, a member of the Muslim Student Association who created the petition said before the university withdrew the honor.

"But it's not just the Muslim community that is upset but students and faculty of all religious beliefs," she said. "A university that prides itself on social justice and equality should not hold up someone who is an outright Islamophobic."

Thomas Doherty, chairman of American studies, refused to sign the faculty letter. He said it would have been great for the university to honor "such a courageous fighter for human freedom and women's rights, who has put her life at risk for those values."

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim advocacy group, said, "It is unconscionable that such a prestigious university would honor someone with such openly hateful views."

The organization sent a letter to university President Frederick Lawrence on Tuesday requesting that it drop plans to honor Ali.

"This makes Muslim students feel very uneasy," Joseph Lumbard, an American convert to Islam and the chairman of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, said in an interview. "They feel unwelcome here."

The university said that the decision had been made after a discussion between Ali and university President Frederick Lawrence.According to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, that 'discussion' consisted of a phone call made simply to inform her after the decision had already be made.

A key part of the decision was said to be a statement by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in a 2007 Reason interview in which she said about Islam, "Once it's defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It's very difficult to even talk about peace now. They're not interested in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there's no middle ground in wars."

"She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women's rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world," said the university's statement. "That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University's core values."

What are those core values?

Not too long ago, Brandei, which is a Jewish sponsored but secular university awarded an honorary degree to writer Tony Kushner at the 2006 commencement, one of the most bigoted and self-hating anti-Zionists on the planet.

Kushner has a number of inflammatory statements on record, like, “The biggest supporters of Israel are the most repulsive members of the Jewish community,”  and saying on another occasion that Israel’s founding a “mistake,” and that it “it would have been better if Israel never happened.”

 Brandeis (at least then) had a number of pro-Israel students and faculty, but when they raised questions about the propriety of a Jewish sponsored university,especially one named after one of the leaders of the Zionist movement in America honoring the likes of Tony Kushner, here's what the university president told them.

Brandeis bestows honorary degrees as a means of acknowledging the outstanding accomplishments or contributions of individual men and women in any of a number of fields of human endeavor. Just as Brandeis does not inquire into the political opinions and beliefs of faculty or staff before appointing them, or students before offering admission, so too the University does not select honorary degree recipients on the basis of their political beliefs or opinions.

Of course, Kushner, aside from his 'anti-Zionist' credentials is outspokenly gay and a member of New York's Leftist intelligentsia. Ayaan Hirshi Ali? Well yeah, she's black, but she's a conservative who's very much off the reservation. And let's repeat the mantra, everyone...thou.shalt.not.criticize.Islam.ever.

Another interesting recipient of an honorary degree from Brandeis is Israeli author Amos Oz. Oz is a rigorously secular denizen of the Far Left who ran unsuccessfully in 1973 for the Knesset as part of the Moked (New Left/Communist Front) Party. He is sharply critical of Zionism as well as Judaism in general almost to the point of hatred, describing religious Jews as "Hezbollah in a skullcap."

Speaking in 1989 to his pals in the peace at all cost crowd in Tel Aviv, Oz described the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria as “A small sect, a messianic sect, obtuse and cruel, emerged a few years ago from a dark corner of Judaism, and it is threatening to destroy all that is dear and sacred to us, to impose on us a wild and insane blood ritual ... They are guilty of crimes against humanity, their Jewishness is of the Hezbollah kind, their Zionism is like Abu Nidal’s."

Then there was this, in one of his essays: “Why didn’t Israel develop as the most egalitarian and creative social democratic society in the world? I would say that one of the major factors was the mass immigration of Holocaust survivors, Middle Eastern Jews and non-socialist and even anti-socialist Zionists.”

“Then there were the masses of Orthodox Jews… to whom socialism meant blasphemy and atheism.”

“As for the North African Jews,” Oz writes, they were “conservative, puritan, observant and family oriented and to some extent, chauvinistic, militaristic and xenophobic.”

Oz has even maintained a friendship with Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti, who's currently serving five life terms in Israeli custody for the multiple murders of Amos Oz's fellow Israelis.

In short, Oz, in spite of his talent as a writer is a great example of a Jewish anti-semite. But Brandeis had no problem awarding him an honorary degree, in 1998.

I guarantee you there were no Muslims protesting about Brandeis honoring these two on the grounds of disrespect for Judaism or the feelings of religious Jewish students..

So I suppose these are the 'core values' of Brandeis. You have to be a celebrity of the Left...conservatives and classic liberals not allowed. You can criticize Judaism and Christianity all you want, but you must appease Islam in your public life,always, no exceptions allowed. Or someone could get hurt. And if you're a self-hating Leftist secular Jew who despises Israel, you're practically a slam dunk to receive an honorary degree and get an opportunity to speak and indoctrinate the students at Brandeis.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali had a few things to say about this, talking to FOX's Megyn Kelly last night:



Yesterday, Ayaan Hirsi Ali issued a statement expanding on her remarks to Megyn Kelly:

Yesterday Brandeis University decided to withdraw an honorary degree they were to confer upon me next month during their Commencement exercises. I wish to dissociate myself from the university’s statement, which implies that I was in any way consulted about this decision. On the contrary, I was completely shocked when President Frederick Lawrence called me — just a few hours before issuing a public statement — to say that such a decision had been made.

When Brandeis approached me with the offer of an honorary degree, I accepted partly because of the institution’s distinguished history; it was founded in 1948, in the wake of World War II and the Holocaust, as a co-educational, nonsectarian university at a time when many American universities still imposed rigid admission quotas on Jewish students. I assumed that Brandeis intended to honor me for my work as a defender of the rights of women against abuses that are often religious in origin. For over a decade, I have spoken out against such practices as female genital mutilation, so-called “honor killings,” and applications of Sharia Law that justify such forms of domestic abuse as wife beating or child beating. Part of my work has been to question the role of Islam in legitimizing such abhorrent practices. So I was not surprised when my usual critics, notably the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), protested against my being honored in this way.

What did surprise me was the behavior of Brandeis. Having spent many months planning for me to speak to its students at Commencement, the university yesterday announced that it could not “overlook certain of my past statements,” which it had not previously been aware of. Yet my critics have long specialized in selective quotation — lines from interviews taken out of context — designed to misrepresent me and my work. It is scarcely credible that Brandeis did not know this when they initially offered me the degree.

What was initially intended as an honor has now devolved into a moment of shaming. Yet the slur on my reputation is not the worst aspect of this episode. More deplorable is that an institution set up on the basis of religious freedom should today so deeply betray its own founding principles. The “spirit of free expression” referred to in the Brandeis statement has been stifled here, as my critics have achieved their objective of preventing me from addressing the graduating Class of 2014. Neither Brandeis nor my critics knew or even inquired as to what I might say. They simply wanted me to be silenced. I regret that very much.

Not content with a public disavowal, Brandeis has invited me “to join us on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue about these important issues.” Sadly, in words and deeds, the university has already spoken its piece. I have no wish to “engage” in such one-sided dialogue. I can only wish the Class of 2014 the best of luck — and hope that they will go forth to be better advocates for free expression and free thought than their alma mater.

I take this opportunity to thank all those who have supported me and my work on behalf of oppressed woman and girls everywhere.

In a way, what Ayaan Hirsi Ali had to say about feeling sorry for Brandeis students hits the nail on the head. The confused, frightened dhimmis and Leftists who got in line with CAIR and the MSA to silence her participated in the equivalent of an intellectual honor killing. They have no idea of how Islamists regard them. They are simply Lenin's 'useful idiots' personified. And many of them will remain clueless - until the knife is at their throat.