Muslim Rage and the Obama Retreat

“There are things which are within the scope and capacity of the human mind to grasp; there are things which the mind can in no way and by no means fathom—the gates of perception are closed against it.” [Maimonides].

The subject headline addresses a masterpiece by famed Fouad Ajami, dated September 20, 2012. From the start of his administration, Obama put forth his own biography as a bridge to those aggrieved nations. He would be a different,” President”, he said. Different to whom, perhaps to all except, Jimmy Carter.

He had opposed the Iraq war and had Muslim relatives. Apparently, with this in mind he descended on Cairo in June 2009, where he offered the Egyptians, and by extension other Arabs, the promise of a “new beginning”.

The embattled “liberals” in the region were awakened to the truth of Mr. Obama in that he was a man of the status quo, with a superficial knowledge of lands beyond. The “golden age “he sought to restore covered the Soviet covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the fall of Beirut to the forces of terror, deadly attacks on US embassies, the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and more. A trail of terror had shadowed the American presence.

Obama was a president who would end the given history, who would withdraw from both the “good war” in Afghanistan and the bad one in Iraq. A president who would target America’ real enemy –al Qaeda. In response to “Osama bin Laden is dead’, those attacking US embassies had a disturbing rebuttal; ‘Obama, we are Osama!”Until the deadly attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, it was the fashion of Obama and his lieutenants to proclaim that the tide of war was receding.

The grand expectations that Obama has for Afghanistan have largely been forgotten. The Turks had come to resent the American abdication and in contrast. The mullahs in Iran have read the landscape well and are determined to sustain their actions.

Obama succeeded in altering America’s foreign policy as never before, to fit one man’s electoral needs. Give him your warrant, the palace guard intoned, until the next election. “In tales of charismatic, chosen leaders, it is always, and only, about the man at the helm.”

Undoubtedly the Biden- Harris era has been infinitely worse. In less than a month, President Donald Trump has achieved wonders. And yet, he refused to bomb Iran, the sequel to Nazi Germany. Further, he does not seem to comprehend the origin of a troubled radical Islam, nor does he question the origin of the so-called, “Palestinian’ – Israel conflict.

Perhaps a recall of Sarah Honig’s “The rightful heirs of Palestine” would be helpful. She introduces the topic dating back to 1799 just before Napoleon Bonaparte failed to conquer Acre and penned a momentous letter “to the Jewish nation.”

Addressing Jews as the “rightful heirs of Palestine,” he announced he was fighting to avenge “the almost 2000-year-old ignominy imposed upon you; and, while time and circumstances would seem to be least favorable to a restatement of your claims or even to their expression – and indeed compellingly advocate that their complete abandonment – France offers you at this very time, and contrary to all expectations, Israel’s patrimony.

Sadly, by May 14, 2010, the French head of state spoke of rightful heirs of Palestine, he meant Arabs. Even in inherently different times and circumstances, Napoleon grasped the essence of Jewish self-preservation issues-to say nothing of Jewish rights in the Jewish homeland. He urged Jews to seize “the moment, which may not return for thousands of years, to claim the restoration of civic rights among the populations of the world, which had been shamefully withheld from Jews for thousands of years –their political existence as a nation among the nations.”

Another Op-Ed by Sarah Honig entitled, “The May Day massacre of 1921” in which she emphasizes,” There was no ‘occupation’ when thousands of Arabs massed in Jaffa, all brandishing weapons and hysterically chanting ‘itbach el- Yahud’.”

In a May 11, 1921 letter of protest to British High Commissioner Sir Herbert Samuel, Ben-Zvi charged that “the Arab policemen themselves led the onslaught on the Jewish Immigrants Hostel in Jaffa’s Ajami quarter. They shot Jews with weapons supplied them by the government.”—Ben Zvi continued “Rather than disperse the rioters, the police encouraged them and distributed firearms to the incited rabble.

They ignited the flame of murder, fanned by confidence that the government sides with them and that they can massacre Jews with impunity.”——“Fourteen Jewish lodgers were hideously butchered, and scores wounded. Honig concludes that Jew hatred was the motivating force behind the hostilities.”

Cynthia Ozick’s, “All the World Wants the Jews Dead” which appeared in Esquire of November, 1974 is still as powerful and urgent as on the day it appeared. It is hard to fathom the sheer hatefulness of the combined Arab attack in celebration of Ramadan on the holiest day of the Jewish year. Or is it?

Perhaps the Arab leaders were inspired by Hitler’s example. Ozick’s essay is less a report on what transpired in Israel before and during her visit than an agitated response to what this episode signified in the history of the Jews and in her own little corner of America. Her anger was directed not only against self-declared enemies past and present, but against those among us who ignored and have continued to ignore their evil.

Further, she remarks, how—if there were no more Jews—the world would be enraptured! The people that stood at Sinai to receive a desert vision of purity, the people of scholarly shepherds, humane prophetic geniuses, dreamers of justice and mercy. A lost civilization: barbarism closed over it and we have only these fragments, these bits of scriptural rags faintly traced with the strong black letters of their forgotten alphabet.

“How melancholy-sweet: the dear dead slain heroic Jews of long ago, that lost humanitarian people whose liberator Moses made it obligatory to free slaves, defend the widow and the orphan, carry on or ordinary affairs in decency and equity, hate idolatry of stone or spirit; and who put all that down into a treasured law in order to ensure a life of commandment and deed. Oh, the genius that was Israel!”

To ensure that her readers would confront all that was at stake in the Yom Kippur War, Ozick attempted a history lesson for the uninitiated. A few examples:

“How many Arab Israeli wars have there been?

Answer: 4 -1948, 1956, 1967, 1973—-

Fundamental Question: What has been the point of all these wars?
Definite Answer: To get the Jews out of the Middle East.

Ozick concludes with the question, “Where are the counterparts? Is there, at some café table in Cairo or kitchen in Damascus or university study in Beirut, a group of Arabs this moment making—in whatever muted, or grudging fashion—the Jewish case?”

A welcome surprising consequence! “Stranger than fiction” a book review by Daniel Gavron appeared on May 14, 2010 describing the extraordinary story of the Son of Hamas. The lead-in reads, “If not for the corroboration of the Shin Bet, one would doubt the authenticity of this tale of a Hamas founder’s son turned Israeli security agent.”

It is about Mosab, the eldest son of Hassan Yousef, a founder of Hamas, not only becoming a top agent of the Shin Bet, Israel’s famous security service, but converts to Christianity and publishes his story under a well-known American Christian imprint. Thus, the offspring of one of Israel’s most implacable enemies turns into a loyal servant of the Jewish state.

According to Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz’s Arab affairs correspondent, Yousef’s Shin Bet handler expressed genuine admiration for him. “So many people owe him their life and don’t even know it. People who did a lot less were awarded the Israel Security Prize. None of his actions were done for money. He wanted to save lives and did things he believed in.

On the other hand, apparently, the Shin Bet was pretty generous to Yousef, paying for his education, funding a successful business and offering to make him the West Bank‘s leading communications tycoon. However, he refused the last item, protesting that money didn’t interest him.

Mosab’s description of his arrest by IDF soldiers and the abuse he suffered at their hands does not make for pleasant reading, nor does his brutal treatment in an Israeli lockup and his subsequent imprisonment.

Yousef not only grows to like Israelis and even, in the Christian phrase to “love his enemies “. He buys into a lot of what might be termed the “official” Israeli version of events. Marwan Barghouti, whose arrest Yousef facilitated, is not only a political leader but a terrorist, personally responsible for the death of many innocent people.

The Palestinian Authority, which Yousef abhors, is corrupt; Hamas which he repudiates is violent and uncompromising. He rejects the Koran for what he sees, as its message of violence. The book is certainly one of the most unusual books to come out of the region in recent years.