By Caroline B. Glick
Two
events happened on Wednesday which should send a shiver down the spine of
everyone concerned about the future of the American Jewish community. But to
understand their importance it is important to consider the context in which
they occurred.
On
January 13, The New York Times reported on a series of virulently anti-Jewish
comments Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi made in speeches given in 2010. Among
other things, Morsi said, "We must never forget, brothers, to nurse our
children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for
Jews."
He
said that Egyptian children "must feed on hatred; hatred must continue.
The hatred must go on for GOOD and as a form of worshiping him."
In
another speech, he called Jews "bloodsuckers," and "the
descendants of apes and pigs."
Two
weeks after the Times ran the story, the Obama administration sent four F-16
fighter jets to Egypt as part of the implementation of a military aid package
announced in December 2012 entailing the provision of twenty F-16s and 200
M1-A1 Abrams tanks to Egypt.
The
Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and other
prominent American Jewish groups did not oppose the weapons transfer.
With
the American Jewish leadership silent on the issue, Israel found its national
security championed by Senator Rand Paul. Paul attached an amendment to a
budget bill that would bar the US from transferring the advanced weapons
platforms to Egypt. Paul explained, "Egypt is currently governed by a
religious zealot… who said recently that Jews were bloodsuckers and descendants
of apes and pigs. This doesn't sound like the kind of stable personality we
[sh]ould be sending our most sophisticated weapons to." Paul's amendment
was overwhelmingly defeated, due in large part to the silence of the American
Jewish leadership.
The
Times noted that Morsi's castigation of Jews as "apes and pigs" was
"a slur for Jews that is familiar across the Muslim world."
Significantly the Times failed to note that the reason it is familiar is
because it comes from both the Koran and the hadith. The scripturally based
denigration of Jews as apes and pigs is legion among leading clerics of both
Sunni and Shiite Islam.
It
was not a coincidence that the Times failed to mention why Morsi's castigation
of Jews as apes and pigs was so familiar to Muslim audiences. The Islamic
sources of Muslim Brotherhood Jew hatred, and indeed, hatred of Jews by Islamic
leaders from both the Sunni and Shiite Muslim worlds is largely overlooked by
the liberal ideological camp. And the overwhelming majority of the American
Jewish leadership is associated with the liberal ideological camp.
If
the Times acknowledged that the Jew hatred espoused by Morsi and his colleagues
in the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as their Shiite colleagues in the Iranian
regime and Hezbollah is based on the Koran, they would have to acknowledge that
Islamic Jew hatred and other bigotry is not necessarily antithetical to
mainstream Islamic teaching. And that is something that the Times, like its
fellow liberal institutions is not capable of acknowledging.
They
are incapable of acknowledging this possibility because considering it would
implicitly require a critical study of jihadist doctrine. And a critical study
of jihadist doctrine would show that the doctrine of jihad, or Islamic holy war
subscribed to by the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates, as well as by the
Iranian regime and Hezbollah and their affiliates is widely supported, violent,
bigoted, evil and dangerous to the free world.
And
that isn't even the biggest problem with studying the doctrine of jihad. The
biggest problem is that a critical study of the doctrine of jihad would force
liberal institutions like the New York Times, and the institutional leadership
of the American Jewish community alike to abandon the reigning dogma of the
liberal ideological camp - moral relativism.
Moral
relativism is based on a refusal to call evil evil and a concomitant
willingness to denigrate truth if truth requires you to notice evil. Since
pointing out the reality of the danger the jihadist doctrines, propagated by the
likes of the Muslim Brotherhood, involves the implicit demand that people make
distinctions between good and evil, and side with good against evil, moral
relativists - that is most liberals -- cannot contend with jihad.
This
is why the American Jewish leadership refused to join Rand Paul and his
conservative Republican colleagues in the Senate and demand an immediate
cessation of US military aid to the Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egyptian
military even after the evidence of the Brotherhood's genocidal Jew hatred was
splashed across the front page of the New York Times.
It
is the dominance of moral relativism in liberal institutions like the New York
Times that make even the most apologetic expose of the Muslim Brotherhood a
major event. And it is the dominance of liberal orthodoxies in the mainstream
Jewish community that makes it all but impossible for Jewish leaders to speak up
against the Muslim Brotherhood, despite the manifest danger their genocidal
hatred of Jews poses not only for Israel, but for Jews everywhere.
It
is bad enough that liberal Jewish leaders won't speak out against the
Koranic-inspired evil that characterizes the ideology of the Muslim
Brotherhood. What is worse is what their own morally relative blindness causes
them to do. On Wednesday, we saw two distressing examples of the consequences
of this self-imposed embrace of ideological fantasies. First, on Wednesday,
Yeshiva University's Cardozo Law School's Journal of Conflict Resolution gave
its annual International Advocate of Peace Award to former president Jimmy
Carter. Carter's long record of anti-Israel, and indeed anti-Semitic actions
and behavior made the decision to bestow him with the honor an affront not only
to the cause of peace, but to the cause of Jewish legal rights. As an advocate
of Hamas and a man who castigates Israel as an illegal 'apartheid' state,
Carter has a long record of outspoken opposition to both Jewish human rights
and to viable peace between Israel and its neighbors.
For
outsiders, the Orthodox Jewish University's law school's law journal's decision
to honor Carter was shocking, but as it works out, Cardozo's Journal of
Conflict Resolution confers its prize almost exclusively on people active in
pressuring Israel to make concessions to Palestinian terrorists who reject
Israel's right to exist. Past winners include Dennis Ross, Bill Clinton,
Richard Holbrooke, George Mitchell, John Wallach and Seeds of Peace and,
perhaps most astoundingly, the outspoken Jew hater Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In
other words, Carter wasn't chosen for the honor despite his anti-Israel record.
He was selected because of his anti-Israel record.
In
a similar fashion, the 92nd Street Y invited virulent Israel hater Roger Waters
to perform a concert on April 30. Given Waters' outspoken opposition to Israel,
his call for total economic and cultural warfare against the Jewish state and
his leading role in the BDS movement, it is not possible that the 92nd Street Y
was unaware of his radical, anti-Semitic sentiments. And so, the only
reasonable explanation for his invitation to perform at the Jewish institution
is that the Y wanted to invite this openly anti-Semitic musician to perform. A
public outcry by pro-Israel activists forced the Y to cancel his performance.
The
day that Carter was embraced by the Orthodox Jewish establishment, Jewish
author and activist Pamela Geller was silenced. Geller is the nightmare of the
liberal Jewish establishment. She is a beautiful and articulate speaker and
writer who has risen to prominence in the US for her steadfast commitment to
exposing the deadly pathologies of Jew hatred, misogyny and other prejudices
inherent to jihadist ideology. Geller's website Atlas Shrugs is a clearinghouse
of information on Islamic persecution of women, Christians, and apostates and
hatred of Jews. She also showcases the documented ties between mainstream
American Islamic groups and the Muslim Brotherhood.
An
indefatigable defender of Israel, Geller recently ran a highly controversial,
and successful ad campaign in the New York and San Francisco public
transportation system in response to an anti-Israel ad campaign. Her billboards
read, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the
civilized man. Support Israel, Defeat Jihad."
Geller
was scheduled to speak on April 13 at the Great Neck Synagogue, in Great Neck,
New York. The topic of her talk was "The Imposition of Sharia in
America."
Last
month, after learning of her talk, a consortium of Islamic and leftist
activists in Nassau County, led by Habeed Ahmed from the Islamic Center of Long
Island, launched a pressure campaign to coerce the synagogue into cancelling her
speech. Members of the group telephoned the synagogue and castigated Geller as
a bigot, and likened her to the Nazis in the 1930s.
In
short order liberal rabbis Michael White and Jerome Davidson took over the
opposition to Geller and launched a media campaign attacking her as a bigot and
demanding that the Great Neck Synagogue cancel her speech. Rejecting the
distinction Geller makes between jihadists and their victims - Muslim and
non-Muslim alike, White and Davidson claimed that she opposes all Muslims and so
her speech must be cancelled. By hosting her they intoned, the Great Neck
Synagogue would be guilty of propagating hate speech. Liberal Christian and
Jewish activists and their Muslim associates threatened to protest the speech.
Wednesday
the synagogue caved to their massive pressure. Citing "security
concerns" the synagogue board released a statement saying that while
"these important issues must be discussed, the synagogue is unable to bear
the burden" of the pressure campaign surrounding Geller's planned speech.
Her event was cancelled.
Surveys
of the American Jewish community taken in recent years by the American Jewish
Committee demonstrate that the vast majority of American Jews are deeply
supportive of Israel, and their views tend towards the right side of the
political spectrum in issues related to Israel, the Palestinians, and the wider
Islamic conflict with the Jewish state. On the other hand, the AJC's surveys
show that for the vast majority of American Jews, Israel is not a voting issue.
This state of affairs was reflected by a comment that Yeshiva University
student Ben Winter made to the media regarding the absence of student protest
against Carter on Wednesday. In Winter's words, "While many students at YU
feel strongly about their Zionism, few have the courage to publicly express
their opinions."
The
danger exposed by the cancellation of Geller's speech and the conferral of
honors on the likes of Carter and Waters by mainstream Jewish institutions is
daunting. If moral relativism remains the dominant dogma of the American Jewish
establishment, the already weakly defended, but still strongly rooted, support
for Israel among the rank and file of the American Jewish community will
dissipate.
Guest Comment:
The
Islamic sources of Muslim Brotherhood [and most of Moslems] Jew hatred,
and indeed, hatred of Jews by Islamic leaders from both the Sunni and
Shiite Muslim worlds is largely overlooked by the liberal ideological
camp...and the overwhelming majority of the American Jewish leadership is associated with the liberal ideological camp....Since
pointing out the reality of the danger the jihadist doctrines,
propagated by the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood, involves the implicit
demand that people make distinctions between good and
evil, and side with good against evil, moral relativists - that is most
liberals -- cannot contend with jihad....The day that Carter was embraced by the Orthodox Jewish establishment, Jewish author and activist Pamela Geller was silenced. Geller is the nightmare of the liberal Jewish establishment. She
is a beautiful and articulate speaker and writer who has risen to
prominence in the US for her steadfast commitment to exposing the deadly
pathologies of Jew hatred, misogyny and other prejudices inherent to
jihadist ideology. Geller's website Atlas Shrugs is a clearinghouse of
information on Islamic persecution of women, Christians, and apostates
and hatred of Jews. She also showcases the documented ties between
mainstream American Islamic groups and the Muslim Brotherhood.
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