Barack Obama’s Visceral Dislike of Israel, the Jewish State, Revealed in his Latest Book By Rabbi Aryeh Spero
Though we have not over the years accused Barack Obama of anti-Semitism, we did feel even prior to his election in 2008 that Obama was uncomfortable with the idea of Jewish sovereignty, as well as Jewish rights in and of themselves, disconnected from intersectionality.
In his recent book, Promised Land, it is crystal clear that Obama is uncomfortable, perhaps even hostile to a specific Jewish state in the Land of Israel and used his tenure as president to undermine the proud and glorious history of Zionism. He spent excessive zeal and capital to reshape American and world policy so as to establish the Palestinian Arab narrative as the only legitimate political outlook and forum.
Had his book been written by someone else, many would have easily characterized the author’s anti-Zionism and non-regard for the right of the Jewish people to possess and control their land as bordering on anti-Semitism. As with many in the anti-Zionist movement, Obama grants credibility to all salutary comments for the Palestinian Arabs, portraying them as innocent victims in a Martin Luther King-like struggle, while caricaturing Israel and her Jewish inhabitants as oppressors.
Obama never seems shaken by the reality of Israelis bombarded in their kindergartens and homes by Palestinian Arab missiles. He refuses to acknowledge the restraint undertaken by Israelis against her attackers. He fails to recognize the enormous concessions that Israeli prime ministers offered, almost foolishly, to Palestinian Arab representatives in Israel’s quest to find peace. He is unmoved by the massive return of beleaguered Jews in pogrom-filled Europe that rebirthed the Land of Israel; a revived and resurrected land that provided opportunity for Muslims from other enclaves to find work, health, and civil rights absent in their own countries. He is guilty of revisionist history and indifferent to the Jews’ ancient and historical linkage to this land. To him, it seems, the region only came into being with the advent of the newly formed P.L.O.
Barack Obama does not hate Jews per se; however, he is of the genre that sees the Jewish people as a conduit to achieve human rights for others; to continually sacrifice their own self-interest on the altar of leftwing goals and aspirations he deems more important than Jewish peoplehood. There are those who define anti-Semitism as judging Jews by a different standard and not allotting to them their self-determination or national aspiration, as is done for other peoples.
To be fair, part of Obama’s outlook that Jewishness means sublimating Jewish interests in behalf of those of other minorities as a higher priority was taught to him by a Reform rabbi. Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf’s temple in Chicago’s swanky Hyde Park was located right across the street from Obama’s mansion. I saw it when visiting the nearby University of Chicago. There was virtually no evil done by the Palestinians that Arnold Jacob Wolf did not excuse and there was hardly any Israeli act of self-defense and territorial sovereignty that Wolf would justify or countenance. He saw the world in terms of oppressor vs. oppressed, with Israel being the oppressor and Arabs being the oppressed. Moreover, to Wolf, Judaism was only about universalism; and Judaism and thus Jews found their almost singular religious purpose in sacrificing on behalf of other minorities. The sacrifice usually involved Israel, which the Reform movement historically did not anyway exalt as a serious religious endeavor. Curiously, they do not seem to have sacrificed their opulent temples and clubs and donated them for more important, universalist, minority causes.
Obama, as seen in the book, still admires the anti-Jewish and anti-American Reverend Wright. Whatever is done for the “liberation” causes in which Obama identifies is a noble undertaking, and those he sees helping that cause are, for him, heroes even if laced with Jew hatred and a quest to destroy Israel, such as Rashid Khalidi.
In the final weeks of the Obama-Biden administration, no longer worried about AIPAC and Jewish campaign contributions, he revealed the full Obama: he orchestrated a worldwide diplomatic stealth attack against Israel via the United Nations, casting illegitimacy on Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the Jewish people’s birthright. In fact, he identifies the Har Ha’Bayit (Temple Mount) as a holy site specific to Islam. Even now, in his book, he characterizes Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to Judaism’s most holy site as a trespass, a type of momentary occupation.
We would be remiss if we did not comment regarding the highly disturbing views and outlook expressed by Obama in his most recent book. We are alarmed by Obama’s unprecedented post-presidential activism and his on-going attempt to influence the cultural and political landscape so as to transform America and undermine Israel. It is apparent throughout his book that he sees no terrorist aspect to those Palestinian Arab and Iranian groups hell-bent on destroying Israel in toto and those who quest in mocking and afflicting the United States. It is not America that needs transformation, rather Barack Obama himself.
Rabbi Aryeh Spero is spokesman for Conference of Jewish Affairs, author of Push Back, and nightly radio host of the Rabbi Spero Show on CRN Talk.
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