As I See It: Benjamin Netanyahu, the Jew Among World Leaders : Melanie Phillips
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/As-I-See-It-Benjamin-Netanyahu-the-Jew-among-world-leaders-394522
“Shocked and appalled by their failure to finish him off politically –
only to see him reelected stronger than ever – the Left immediately
intensified its campaign of distortion and demonization.”
In the most educated and progressive circles, who is considered to be
the archfiend of the Middle East, the person who most imperils life
and freedom and the safety of the world?
Bashar Assad, perhaps, the butcher of Syria? Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,
leader of the psychotic Islamic State terrorist group? Iran’s Supreme
Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who threatens a second genocide against
the Jewish people? None of the above. Among progressives, the accolade
from hell is bestowed instead on the prime minister of the only
democracy in the Middle East, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Shocked and appalled by their failure to finish him off politically –
only to see him reelected stronger than ever – the Left immediately
intensified its campaign of distortion and demonization against him.
Its “aha” moment was that he was said to have reversed himself and
come out against a two-state solution.
The Obama administration pounced and started hurling threats. It let
it be known that, now that Netanyahu had opposed the creation of a
separate Palestinian state, it would need to “reevaluate” the best way
of bringing that about. It suggested the US might now fail to oppose
the Palestinian initiative to get the UN Security Council to declare
the establishment of such a state.
So much for America’s declared opposition to the Palestinians tearing
up the agreements they had signed and unilaterally foreclosing the
possibility of a negotiated settlement. What price international
agreements in the face of President Obama’s anger at a foreign country
daring to elect a leader he dislikes? But his administration distorted
what Netanyahu had said. For he did not, as had been implied, rule out
a Palestine state in principle for ever and all time. He said rather
that it would not be formed under his premiership, because current
circumstances ruled it out as simply too dangerous.
“Anyone who is going to establish a Palestinian state, anyone who is
going to evacuate territories today, is simply giving a base for
attacks to the radical Islam against Israel,” he said. “This is the
true reality that was created here in the last few years.”
In other words, as things stand a state of Palestine would inevitably
turn into another part of Islamic State’s “caliphate,” or Hamastan, or
yet another proxy of Iran.
Who could possibly doubt that this is exactly what would happen? For
years it has been obvious that, if the IDF left the West Bank, Mahmoud
Abbas would have been unable to hold out against Hamas. And now
there’s a queue of ever-more barbaric groups poised to take over a
state of Palestine.
Surely even the most blinkered leftie can see that the game in the
Arab and Muslim world has now changed? It is vital, for the security
not just of Israel but also of the West, to deny the Islamists any
more territory.
For the same reasons, it is essential to reverse Iran’s regional
hegemony and stop it from getting the bomb. The West’s obsession
instead with a Palestine state – which is wanted by the Arab and
Muslim world for one purpose alone, to exterminate Israel – has become
a self-destructive pathology.
Worse still, there are suspicions that the Obama administration may
have backed an outfit which jetted over from the US to manipulate
Israel’s election and defeat Netanyahu. Obama’s former campaign
director, Jeremy Bird, a veteran of the Chicago school of politics
which maximizes the vote by the resentful and angry in order to win
power, ran an outfit in Israel during the election campaign called
V15.
Its parent body, One Voice, says it aims to mobilize Palestinians to
“end the occupation and the conflict through nonviolent activism.”
That would seem to be inciting civil disorder among Palestinians. Yet
One Voice received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the US State
Department – which claimed disingenuously that this funding had ceased
shortly before Israel’s election was called.
Nevertheless, the US Senate is sufficiently alarmed to have appointed
a bipartisan panel to investigate this funding. Netanyahu complained
that V15 was busing Arabs to the ballot box in order to bring the left
to power. Without missing a beat, the Obama administration and
Israel’s enemies accused Netanyahu of racism and of wanting to deny
Arab Israelis their vote.
But once again, this distorted Netanyahu’s words. He said that Israeli
Arabs have every right to vote. What he was objecting to was the
supposed interference in Israel’s election by foreign money
manipulating that vote.
Whenever the US interfered in elections in the developing world, the
left would howl its outrage over such colonialist practices. Yet when
it comes to Israel, such claims are dismissed and its democratically
elected politicians are blamed for complaining.
This unprecedented campaign against Netanyahu rests on the supposed
belief that he alone is the obstacle to peace in the Middle East. This
is an eye-watering inversion of reality.
The Islamists aside, there is no interlocutor for peace on the
Palestinian side. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority extols and incites
terrorism, teaches its children to hate and murder Israelis, and
declares that no Jew will be allowed to live in the state of
Palestine. All those impatient for such a state are therefore backing
a racist, murderous project – and they are blaming Netanyahu for
standing in the way of such an obscenity.
In any event, the Palestinians have been offered a state alongside
Israel many times – which has produced only more mass murder as a
response. Which is hardly surprising, since if you reward aggression
and punish its victims you get more aggression. This, however, is the
bone-headed strategy employed by the US and the West. That is the real
reason there is no peace in the Middle East. It is not Netanyahu who
stands in its way. It is the Obama administration, the EU, and
Britain.
It is astounding that Netanyahu is demonized by those giving a free
pass to Abbas and Iran for their unmitigated and genocidal aggression.
You don’t have to be a Netanyahu fan to spot that something is very
amiss here. Double standards, blaming the victims, and accusing them
of cosmic malice are the hallmarks of classic Jew-hatred. If Israel is
accordingly the Jew among nations, Netanyahu is surely the Jew among
world leaders.
He won the election because the true middle Israel, the kind that may
dislike Netanyahu for myriad reasons but for whom the bottom line is
the country’s security, realized at the last minute they were heading
for a prime ministerial duumvirate that would roll over in front of
Obama, become the laughing stock of the Islamists and the despair of
the rest of the Arab world, and deliver Israel up to its enemies.
Now the distraction of Israel’s election is over, attention should
focus on stopping Iran from getting the genocide bomb. But instead of
knowing that the US has its back, Israel will need to spend the next
two years protecting it against Obama’s knives.
Melanie Phillips is a columnist for The Times (UK).
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