US UN Amb. Susan E. Rice
B'nai Torah Synagogue
Boca Raton 5-10-12
Source: Reuters
Last Thursday, May 10th, US UN Ambassador Susan E. Rice spoke before an audience of 500 at B’nai Torah synagogue in Boca Raton. The event was sponsored by the ADL, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Community Relations Council of South Palm Beach County. Dr. Rice’s speech at Bnai Torah was disrupted by a few dozen Jewish activists who rose en masse waving Israeli flags and were escorted from the auditorium and ejected from the synagogue property. They were protesting the Obama Administration policies towards Israel, especially demands for Israel to rein in its settlement development program in Judea and Samaria. Dr. Rice resonated those demands in remarks at the UN in opposition to anti-Israel resolution at General Assembly and UN Security Council sessions at Turtle bay in Manhattan.
Dr. Rice, a member of the Obama cabinet was introduced by the Conservative Synagogue’s senior rabbi, David Steinhardt, an enthusiastic booster of President Obama and his policies towards Israel, as well as, outreach to Florida’s Muslim Brotherhood front groups.
Dr. Rice has been identified by Joshua Hersh in a Huffington Post article as the” pro-Israel courter in chief” of the American Jewish community for the Obama Administration given her appearances at the March 2012 AIPAC Washington policy conference and this recent South Florida event. Should President Obama be re-elected for a second term, Dr. Rice is rumored to be a candidate to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Rice, no relation to Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is an honors History graduate of Stanford University. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa who attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar where she earned an M.Phil and Doctorate in International Relations. She received a Commenwealth Prize for her dissertation on the transition from White- dominated Rhodesia to the Zimbabwe under long term dictator Mugabe. Dr. Rice served as Assistant Secretary for African Affairs during the Clinton Administration and was a witness to the genocide in Rwanda which made her a convert to “humanitarian intervention”.
Clinton, Rice and NSC staffer Samantha Powers have been tagged by Foreign Policy Magazine as “the three valkyries” of the Obama Administration for their aggressive stance on “humanitarian intervention”. That was a reference to the disastrous 2011 Libyan intervention strategy. A strategy during which initial US air support segued to NATO involvement resulting in the rise of an ungovernable Islamist regime in post-Gaddafi Libya. Rice’s National Security Council ally Samantha Powers was an advocate of possible multilateral intervention enforcing a possible Palestinian state on Israel while on the staff at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Givernment.
Dr. Rice while vetoing anti-US and unilateral Palestinian state declaration resolutions at the UN in 2011 made it abundantly clear that Israel’s settlement policies in the disputed territories and peace negotiations with the truculent Palestinian Authority have hobbled the failed peace process. This pales by comparison with the Obama Administration’s support of Muslim Brotherhood regimes in Egypt and other Arab Muslim countries roiled by the Arab Spring. Moreover, ‘humanitarian intervention” in bloody Syria has been fraught with problems preventing a repetition of the Libyan experience by the Obama Administration. Moreover, the Obama Administration has also been largely silent about the renewal of Jihad war by the Islamist regime of President Gen. al-Bashir in Northern Sudan against the disputed border areas of the Nuba hills and Heglig oil fields in the South Kordofan state adjacent to the Christian /Animist Republic of South Sudan.
Rabbi David Steinhardt of B’nai Torah synagogue is an ally of Abe Foxman and his coterie at the ADL including the ADL Florida director, Andrew Rosenkranz and the Southern Regional Counsel David Barkey. Steinhardt funded lobbying for the ADL complicit in supporting CAIR and United Voices for America and former Tampa CAIR director Ahmed Bedier in opposition to the American Law for American Courts anti-Shariah legislation in Tallahassee during the 2012 session. See NER April article: American Jews Who Support Shariah Imperil Us All.
South Florida NBC affiliate Channel Five WPTV reported on the event and Amb. Rice’s comments during Q+A that followed the ejection of the silent protesters:
During a question-and-answer session, Rabbi
David Steinhardt praised the "extraordinary and even unprecedented
level of United States-Israel strategic cooperation, not to mention the
administration's efforts on behalf of Israel at the UN."
But, Steinhardt added, "there are still
some and sometimes many in the American Jewish community who remain very
much at ill ease with the relationship."
Rice responded that "There can be no
mistake about (Obama's) personal commitment and the commitment of the
United States On security, never has there ever been a stronger security
relationship between the United States and Israel."
On Iran's nuclear ambitions, Rice said
Obama "has been very clear that he will take no option off the table,"
but prefers diplomacy.
Watch the WPTV report on the protest at B’nai Torah synagogue:
In contrast, BizPac Review reported on the contretemps that arose from the Jewish protesters ejection at the B’nai Torah event for Amb. Rice:
Rabbi David Steinhardt, head of the B'nai
Torah Congregation, had the highest of praise for the ambassador and
commended her and the president for the administration’s relationship
and cooperation with Israel. But not all the members of the Jewish
community agree.
The protesters came to quietly express
their opposition to Rice’s message and left the auditorium without
incident. But they were then asked to leave the entire congregation
premises on the grounds that it was private property and they were not
welcome.
While the removal of the demonstrators was
generally peaceful and uneventful, the situation became a little tense
when a police officer asked protester Dmitry Levin for his
identification. He was not inclined to provide it without an argument.
Levin, a Russian native, accused the Obama administration of having
communist and Marxist tendencies and said he sees the country going down
the path of Russia.
Missing from the group was the protest’s
organizer, Alan Bergstein, a strong pro-Israel, anti-Obama activist,
lecturer and writer. Bergstein said he arrived early and was greeted by
event organizers, who locked the door and would not allow him access.
Bergstein said he was told to leave and was then escorted out by law
enforcement officers.
“I was treated like a terrorist,” Bergstein
said. “When I got to the doors, I heard someone say, ’That’s him,’ and
another say, ‘Is that him?’”
Bergstein said he is concerned that he and
other Jewish activists who stand up to the administration will see more
censorship like Thursday’s removal if Obama stays in office. The former
New Yorker said is certain that he is on a watch list and is outraged at
how he was treated for conducting a peaceful protest
Watch the film, “Shame”:
According to BizPac Review Bergstein was scheduled to debate Palm Beach County Democratic Chairman Mark Alan Siegel on the status of America’s relationship with Israel under the Obama administration last night at L’Dor Va-Dor in Lake Worth. Was that to substitute for the treatment of Bergstein, Levin and the few dozen Jewish protesters at the Amb. Rice event at B’nai Torah synagogue in Boca Raton? Stay tuned for developments.
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