Western Anti-Semitism Front and Center

June 2, 2010 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - As noted by Frank Gaffney [president, Center for Security Policy] in How Wars Begin, the actions taken by team Obama over the last year-and-a-half have instead of producing a breakthrough in relations with the Middle East, had the opposite effect, creating a set of conditions which have in the past immediately preceded major conflicts.

Less than halfway through his term in office, the president - on foreign policy matters - has consistently shown weakness, indecision and an unwillingness to confront the nature of the threat coming from the Muslim world, compartmentalizing it in a neat little box and labeling it al-Qaeda.

A more expansive - and correct - understanding would define the challenge to this culture as existential, emanating from a widely adhered to and politicized version of the Muslim faith - Islamism.

The modern iteration of Islamism is comprised of violent as well as stealth components, dual pathways to the same goal of establishing the supremacy of Shari'a throughout the non-Muslim world. Violent jihad is an ever-present specter [one rapidly increasing in this country] in the form of jihadist attacks such as that perpetrated by Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan at Ft. Hood last year.

The stealth jihad is the iron fist in the velvet glove and unfortunately is not widely understood. It can however, be seen in such things as the attempt by imam Rauf - and his covert funders - to build a multi-million dollar mosque on the site of radical Islam's most significant victory against the United States. Such efforts are proof positive of Islamist triumphalism, in this case the ability to survey, from the fifteenth floor of a mosque the devastation that Rauf's co-religionists wrought on September 11.

Unbelievably, this and similar schemes are offered and accepted by opinion makers - straight faced - as examples of tolerance.

Because the administration's foreign policy is based on a set of intentional misrepresentations it finds itself as a major cause of the current ME crisis. It has painted itself into a corner sending by every possible method the wrong signal to the radical Muslim world, which is now taking advantage of Obama's purposeful tipping away from Israel and towards advocacy on behalf of the radical Palestinians.

Thus Obama's foreign policy is seen either as weakness or as tacit agreement by the jihadists and both of these interpretations tie our hands in attempting to defuse the current crisis.

Two points of special concern regarding the Gaza flotilla.

1. The presence of so many women and children among the 700 occupants on the Hamas supply ships is elemental in further understanding our opponent, because it shows the depravity which the Islamist mentality will gladly plumb even to the extent of using women and children as human shields - as a defense weapon when civilized societies refuse to harm innocents and - as in this case - an offensive weapon when in the course of these things those who are not culpable are injured.

Emboldened by previous successes along these lines, the Islamists know that this will be seized upon by Israel bashers as further demonstration of the nation's alleged barbarity.

This tactic was last offered for public consumption during Israel's 2008-09 operation "Cast Lead" - a move to stop Hamas' constant rocket attacks - launched from Gaza - against Israeli cities.[for an excellent bullet-point synopsis of the developments in Gaza since Israel's pullout, see Gaza Timeline]

2. Perhaps most significantly, the almost wholesale condemnation of the Jewish state in the West and the United Nations is instructive, for it couldn't exist in the absence of anti-Semitism. It seems that many among us learned nothing from World War II and the Shoah [Holocaust]. This is a bitter turn of events, one that defies both rational understanding as well as a critical reading of history.

One of the key elements in this lingering ethno-racism lies in the post-modernist rejection of rationalism. Through it, leftist intellectuals have been allowed to couch Jew hatred in friendlier more reasonable sounding terms, primarily through the assertion by the left that its anti-Zionist stance does not conflate to anti-Semitism - despite Zionism being an elemental and traditional bedrock component of the Jewish faith. The left's argument breaks down when placed in context, realizing that it is akin to professing love and respect for Catholics, but a hatred towards Papists.

That this sleight of hand isn't more immediately apparent bespeaks the tenacity with which anti-Semitism is still held in the West.

Where one would expect at least the United States to refuse to bow to such malignant thinking there is at best silence...and at worst a sickening acquiescence.

In the same spirit with which president Kennedy stood with Berliners in the face of the Soviet aggression, this controversy demands a similar commitment. We must stand with the besieged Jewish people - their cause is both just and on the right side of history.

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