Ronald Kessler
http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/Barack_Obama_Israel_Iran/2009/06/22/227763.html
President Barack Obama’s refusal to take a stand on protests in Iran stands in sharp contrast to demands he has made on Israel, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, says in a Newsmax interview.
“I think he should take a strong stand to support the protesters in Iran who want to transform that society into one that promotes democracy and human rights,” Klein says. ”But while meddling in Israel’s affairs and making specific demands, he explicitly states he refuses to meddle in Iran’s policies and has said almost nothing.” Klein says leaders of Jewish organizations are rethinking their support of Obama in light of his attitude toward Israel.
“There are many leaders in the organized Jewish world who have privately discussed this issue with me, and say they are deeply concerned about Obama’s actions and policies toward Israel, and now they’re rethinking their support for Obama during the campaign and the election,” says Klein, whose organization of 30,000 members is the oldest pro-Israel group in the country.
Based on the president’s speech in Cairo on June 4 and many of his foreign policy appointments, Klein thinks Obama “may become the most hostile president to Israel ever.”
Obama’s speech was “inimical to Israel and supportive of the stream of false Palestinian Arab claims concerning Israel,” Klein says. “He is relentlessly pressuring Israel while applying virtually almost no pressure on the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its written obligations.”
As a child of survivors of the Holocaust, Klein says he was particularly offended by Obama’s comparison of the suffering of Palestinians with the Nazis’ murder of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust.
“I found this to be an abominable, odious, and ridiculously false analogy,” he says.
While Klein’s parents’ survived, his father lost his eight brothers and sisters and all his aunts and uncles in Nazi concentration camps. Klein’s mother lost half her family.
In his speech, Klein says, Obama said that “the treatment of Palestinian Arabs by Israel is equivalent to the treatment of South African blacks during apartheid and of enslaved blacks before the Civil War, more than implying that Israel is an oppressor. He falsely claimed that Palestinian Arabs were displaced by Israel in 1948, when in fact, if six Arab nations hadn’t invaded Israel to destroy it, there wouldn’t be a single Palestinian Arab who left that area.”
Klein disputes Obama’s reference to Palestinian Arabs trying to establish a state for 60 years.
“They could have had a state in 1937,” he says. “They turned it down. They could have had a state in 1948. From 1948 to 1967, when they controlled all of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, they never attempted to establish a state. In 2000, they were offered a state on almost all the disputed territories. They turned it down. So this is a completely false claim that they’ve been trying to establish a state for 60 years.”
By claiming that America has 7 million Muslims, Obama showed a willingness to use phony figures to support a tilt toward Muslims, Klein says.
“Every major survey shows there’s between 1.5 million and 2.5 million Muslims in America,” Klein says. “Where does he get the number 7 million? This is the number that the Arab propagandists promote. There’s no legitimate survey that shows a number of that nature.”
Klein says it is premature to focus on the establishment of a Palestinian state as long as Palestinians promote violence and hatred against Israel.
“To promote a Palestinian state at a time when Hamas, the terrorist group, controls Gaza, and Fatah, which also promotes terror, controls the West Bank, is absurd,” Klein observes. The Palestinians “continue to promote hatred and violence against Jews and Americans in their schools, media and speeches,” Klein notes. “They refuse to arrest a single anti-Israel terrorist, zero. They refuse to outlaw terrorist groups, which is required under the agreements they’ve signed. They continue to name schools, streets, and sports teams after terrorists, glorifying murder.”
Moreover, Klein says, “control of the Palestinian territories is split between Hamas and Fatah, so there is no one regime to negotiate with.”
If the Palestinians “fulfilled all their written obligations for a significant period of time, clearly an overwhelming majority of Israelis, Americans, and the world would support a Palestinian state,” Klein says.
As Klein sees it, while Obama is “ignoring the anti-peace, pro-terror actions of the Hamas-Fatah regime,” he is “rushing headlong into establishing yet another terrorist state in the Middle East, as opposed to working to ensure that we end the existence of terrorist states in general,” Klein says.
Some of the views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., Obama’s minister, friend, and mentor, are apparent in Obama’s remarks, Klein says.
“If you look at Rev. Wright’s speeches and sermons as I have, many of the themes, like comparing the Palestinian Arabs to the South Africans and the illegality of the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, show up in Obama’s talks and actions,” he says.
During the 2008 election campaign, “I would give speeches and write articles expressing concern about his close friendship with Rev. Wright,” Klein says. “I was repeatedly told that’s not fair; those are Wright’s views, not necessarily his, and that it’s guilt by association.”
In response, Klein would say, “If a Jew was a member of a synagogue where the rabbi preached hatred of blacks, it would be clear that that Jew would be comfortable with anti-black racism. I couldn’t remain for a week at a synagogue where a rabbi made a hateful speech toward blacks. I’d quit immediately.”
Yet, he says, Jews “didn’t apply that normal, appropriate standard to Barack Obama,” Klein says. “Obama gave $27,500 in 2005 and 2006 to Rev. Wright’s church. He called Rev. Wright a great man and his mentor. You can’t be so close to someone you call a great man and a mentor if you don’t agree with what he has to say.”
[Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com.
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