As you know, President Obama gave a speech about the Holocaust at the Israeli Embassy in Washington on Wednesday night, the first time a president has made a speech in that venue. The president gave his speech in the very place where Israeli officials plotted against him and his most important foreign policy achievement, the Iran deal, just a few months ago.
Last night in New York, Chemi Shalev, US editor of Haaretz, who attended the event, said that Obama’s speech had “the most philosemitic, pro-Jewish” character as well as being supportive of Israel, and that the president brought down the house. Shalev spoke at a New Israel Fund event:
When he came in, there were about 300 people there… the response was quite tepid. Ambassador Dermer, for instance, got much warmer applause than Obama did. But when Obama left, after he made this speech, these same people who had barely gotten up to clap– it’s a scene I’ve never seen before. They were all in suits and they were shouting out, Thank you, thank you, thank you. It was really heartfelt, it was an outpouring of noise toward him, which I don’t think is going to change much in the perception that a lot of Israelis and Jews unfortunately have of Obama but for anybody who was there this whole claim that he somehow is working against Israeli interests or that he doesn’t have warm feelings for Jews, it just sounded so ridiculous. If you were there, you would know how ridiculous and how malicious it is. And how probably politically motivated.
Here is the president’s speech on CSPAN. You can see something of the joyful response at 1:22:00.
The speech’s key moment was when the president saluted the late American army sergeant Roddie Edmonds, who was in a Nazi prison camp at the end of the war in 1945 when he answered a Nazi’s challenge to tell him who the Jewish American soldiers were by saying, “We are all Jews.” Obama addressed Edmonds’s son:
Your father was right — we are all Jews. Because anti-Semitism is a distillation, an expression of an evil that runs through so much of human history, and if we do not answer that, we do not answer any other form of evil. When any Jew anywhere is targeted just for being Jewish, we all have to respond as Roddie Edmonds did — “We are all Jews.”
The president then went on to affirm his support for “the Jewish State of Israel… forever.”
when voices around the world veer from criticism of a particular Israeli policy to an unjust denial of Israel’s right to exist, when Israel faces terrorism, we stand up forcefully and proudly in defense of our ally, in defense of our friend, in defense of the Jewish State of Israel. America’s commitment to Israel’s security remains, now and forever, unshakeable.
He closed his speech, “God bless the state of Israel.”
Again to emphasize the powers that Obama acknowledged in his speech, note that the CSPAN tape begins with Nina Totenberg, judicial correspondent for National Public Radio, utterly aligning herself with the Israeli embassy on behalf of the Jewish people.
It’s a great honor for me to be here this evening with all of you… When Yad Vashem was established, the Jewish people did not forget the non-Jews who stood by their side in the darkest period of history… The state of Israel made a point of remembering the rescuers. Thus the law establishing Yad Vashem added yet another mission to pay tribute to the non-Jews who risked their lives… Since 1963 a public commission headed by an Israeli Supreme Court justice… has been responsible for making the decision as to who will be recognized as righteous among the Nations. This title is the highest honor that the state of Israel bestows on non-Jews in the name of the Jewish people. Our ceremony here today is unprecedented… I’m honored to invite to the stage our host his excellency Ron Dermer…
Then Dermer, who lobbied against the president’s Iran deal, including by intriguing with Republican members of Congress to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address both houses of Congress last March in opposition to the president, takes the podium and welcomes Obama.
At the end of the speech, Totenberg says, “We invite you to join us in the tent for the buffet afterwards.”
Thanks to Scott Roth.
Netanyahu/Israel/Dermer and other zionists insulted and disrespected Obama, had his effort to make a successful nuclear deal with Iran sabotaged by the zionists, had to face a Nutty/Dermer manipulated congress welcome the warmonger to attack those efforts, and it seems the zionists even spied on those negotiations with Iran, now he goes to the Israeli embassy to kiss up to those zionists and show undying love for their nation? How disappointing.
I am ashamed that our President has no pride, and is allowing the master puppeteers to make him look such a fool. I doubt he would have gone to any other embassy and showed such shameless devotion like that.
Obama’s right.
Of course, his sentence implies a larger untold truth: When any Muslim anywhere is targeted just for being Muslim, we are all Muslims, when any Atheist anywhere is targeted just for being Atheist, we are all Atheists, when any LGBT anywhere is targeted just for being something else than conventionally straight, we are all Gays and Queers, When any Brown or Black Person anywhere is targeted just for not being White, we are all Negros, Ragheads and Mongrels… because if we’re not, we become nothing more than the abject bullies’ lackeys.
Obama certainly made every effort to calm the fears of the Jewish community. But it seems to me the deepest part of his speech, the predominating ideas, begin at 1:12:45
“All nations that prize diversity and tolerance and pluralism must speak out whenever and wherever Jews and other religious minorities are attacked. In recent years, we’ve seen leaders in France, Germany, and Great Britain stand strongly against anti-Semitism. In Israel, President Rivlin has spoken eloquently about the need for tolerance and acceptance among all Israelis — Jewish and Arab. …
“But the task before us does not fall on government alone. Every faith community has a responsibility. Just as all religions speak out against those who try to twist their faith to justify terrorism and violence, just as all faiths need to speak out when interpretations of their religion veer in an ugly direction, so, too, must they speak out against those who use their faith to justify bias against Jews, or people of any faith.
“We know that there were Muslims — from Albanians to Arabs — who protected Jews from Nazis. In Morocco, leaders from Muslim-majority countries around the world just held a summit on protecting religious minorities, including Jews and Christians. His Holiness Pope Francis has spoken forcefully against anti-Semitism, saying, “Every human being, as a creature of God, is our brother, regardless of his origins or religious beliefs.” These are the voices we must heed. And anyone who claims to be a religious leader must project that vision, that truth. …
“And so we’re called to live in a way that shows that we’ve actually learned from our past. And that means rejecting indifference. It means cultivating a habit of empathy, and recognizing ourselves in one another; to make common cause with the outsider, the minority, whether that minority is Christian or Jew, whether it is Hindu or Muslim, or a nonbeliever; whether that minority is native born or immigrant; whether they’re Israeli or Palestinian.
“It means taking a stand against bigotry in all its forms, and rejecting our darkest impulses and guarding against tribalism as the only value in our communities and in our politics. It means heeding the lesson repeated so often in the Torah: To welcome the stranger, for we were once strangers, too. That’s how we never forget — not simply by keeping the lessons of the Shoah in our memories, but by living them in our actions. As the book of Deuteronomy teaches us, “Tzedek, Tzedek tirdof” — “Justice, Justice you shall pursue.” ”
These are the deepest American values, the deepest Universal values, and these are the values that will ultimately guide America’s foreign policy. Israel needs to get on board with these values.
The entire transcript is available at –
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/27/remarks-president-righteous-among-nations-award-ceremony
I’m sick of hearing of Jews supposedly being targeted “just for being Jewish.”
Why do supporters/enablers of ethnic cleansing and state-sponsored terrorism imagine that they are entitled to a pass from criticism and anger because they are “Jewish”? If criticism and justifiable anger bother these people, they should complain to Israel, who has made a science of conflating “Israel/Zionist” with “Jewish.”
This is 2016, and the people who are actually being targeted “just for being” are Muslim or black or brown. The Holocaust ended in 1945. Today in 2016, Jews have huge economic and media power, which translates into huge political power. That is why Obama is doing this obnoxious pandering, in which he speaks movingly of moral and ethical teachings, but at the same time prepares to give Israel even more money to destroy Palestinian lives.
O/T, if the U.S. can hack Israeli drone feeds, it can presumably do the same to Israeli attempts to send instructions to their nuclear weapons.
Great news, if true!
NYT: U.S. and Britain Spied on Israeli Drone Flights, Documents Show:
Israeli air force missions over Iran?