Sadness, horror, gloom, outrage, fear, resolve are among the emotions being expressed by Americans today, but of course some see a political angle in the massacre in the Orlando, FL, gay nightclub. Donald Trump tweeted this morning that he deserved credit for making an issue of radical Islam– when in fact the motivation of the shooter is not known at this time. “Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance,” Trump said.
Now here is former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, offering himself as an Islamophobic adviser to Trump, and saying that Trump can reap an opportunity from this crime:
Michael Oren, ex Israel ambassador to US:"If I were Trump I'd emphasize the Muslim name, Omar Saddiqui Mateen. This changes race" @channel10
— Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) June 12, 2016
Tarnopolsky was challenged as to veracity, and then tweeted this transcript:
Oren (who imagined there were pogroms in West Orange, N.J., when he was a boy, when it was actually violence related to extremist Meir Kahane) is surely of a mind that a civilizational war is good for Israel. Just as Oren’s former boss, Israeli PM Netanyahu, is said to have stated that the 9/11 attacks were good for Israel. They put the U.S. in Israel’s boat. Now you see what we’re up against.
On that note, here is Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine saying that the U.S. is closer to Israel than ever.
At what point do we say we need to become like Israel and post armed guards and metal detectors at almost every public building?
— Gabriel Sherman (@gabrielsherman) June 12, 2016
Brace yourself, there’s going to be a lot of this.
More propaganda. Oren Segal, the director of the Anti-Defamation League’s center on extremism, says Israel is telling Americans to take heart. “City Hall building in Tel Aviv lights up in solidarity w/ the people of #Orlando & #LGBT community.”
But guess what, it’s not even dark yet in Tel Aviv! Segal later said that the picture was from an earlier occasion, but no doubt the message he reflected was accurate.
Thanks to Adam Horowitz and James North.
Posted this OT in the Lerner thread:
I’m watching CBS coverage (@1245) of the LAX response to the Orlando horror and somebody’s waving an Israeli flag behind the podium.
I can only guess that the flag-waver is trying to send the message that this shooting is good for Israel by bolstering support because the murderer has a Muslim last name. What other purpose?
Disgusting.
For 50 dead. When are we going to express that level of compassion and empathy and sorrow for the hundreds of thousands we slaughtered overseas, needlessly, over the last 15 years? Needlessly. Creating the same hole in the heart of families who lost their sons this morning.
Our moral relativism makes me sick.
And we have the gall to sit around with our thumbs in our bum and our brains in neutral wondering why all this is happening to us? The LGBT issue wouldn’t even be an issue if we, as a nation, had an ounce of moral character and fortitude. It would be woven into who we are. Equal rights. Period. End of story. But right now we’re a bunch of brazen lyin’ pussies who wail worse than the Israelis at attacks we think unfair, who lie to ourselves worse than the Israelis lie to us about why some killing event is so horrendous but our own actions had nothing to do with it, and who, like the Israelis, bullshit their superiority when it doesn’t exist. We’re both morally vacant, and opportunistically so.
So it seems Israel is once again interfering in our Presidential elections. Maybe Drumpfs son in law has secretly recruited this shameful man to advice Disgusting Drumpf.
I basically think Michael Oren is correct here.
When leaving out the fact that the US media shows it’s racism by hyping the loss of US blood while it takes muslim blood in the middle east for cheap, I think the basic assumption of Michael Oren is right. It was a bad day for Israel and Israel favorite horse Hillary.
What’s diffrent today from 9/11 is that 9/11 made the US public feel solidarity with Israel because of “islamic terrorism” and therefore 9/11 made it possible to start US wars against islamic countries like Iraq, what Israel wanted for long. However, this time it’s different.
Israeli ambassador Michael Oren is on the record saying Israel supports Sunni Islamic terrorists like Al Qaeda because it wants secular arab strongman Assad down. DIA chief Michael Flynn is on the record saying the Obama-Clinton administration made a “willful decision” to allow the creation of the ISIS monster to weaken Assad, and his assertation is backed up by a FOIA document.
So what’s different this time from 9/11 is that this time much of the US public may not feel solidarity with Israel due to this terrorism, but blame Israel, the Israel lobby, their Saudi buddies and Israel’s presidential horse Hillary Clinton for willfully supporting this kind of terrorism.
I think that’s a big differrence from 9/11 to now.
I don’t believe that Oren was necessarily condoning this sentiment. I believe that he was acting as an analyst of US politics. He also said that had the attack been strictly homophobic, rather than related to radical Islamic terrorist, Clinton would have benefited from it.
Wondering if Mondoweiss will be including this tweet, retweeted by Tarnopolsky: https://twitter.com/faisalalmutar/status/742059724351365121