MOSHE HILL OPINION COLUMNS NOVEMBER 08 2023
The enemies of Israel are out in full force, pressuring Western countries into bullying the Jewish state to forget about the atrocities committed on October 7. It’s simple to recognize the ones who march on the streets and scream for Jewish blood, spray-paint genocidal slogans, don themselves in terrorist clothes, and shoot explosives at police officers. Everyone can see that those are the bad guys. What’s more insidious are those who sit on stages in suits, being interviewed by intellectuals, and say the exact same thing in a more politically correct way.
Barack Obama has been the thought-leader of the “moral equivalency,” “everyone is the same” mindset that has let the world down the primrose path to decimation that we are currently seeing. Two videos featuring Obama circulated social media this weekend. The first was the 15th anniversary of him being elected for the first time. The second was him making the “both sides” argument regarding the war on Hamas.
The 15th anniversary video is only relevant because it was a disturbing moment of clarity. Obama came into office vowing that he would be “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” He succeeded in that. America is unrecognizable from where it was merely 15 years ago. The conflicts between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Fatah, and a variety of other Palestinian-related terrorist groups have been happening for over 75 years, and there has never been a reaction to this scale in the West. That is largely attributable to the mentality Barack Obama has, the same mentality that has infected our media, academia, and government bureaucracy.
That mentality was outlined in the second viral video of Obama this week. Appearing on a Pod Save America panel, Obama said that to understand the conflict and move on, “If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively, to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas. These contradictory ideas are, ‘That what Hamas did was horrific and there’s no justification for it. And what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.’”
Right there is the problem. If you missed it, it’s not your fault, because it’s designed to be subtle. “What is happening to Palestinians is unbearable.” He’s not referring to the current bombing on Gaza; he’s referring to being a Palestinian in Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem and Gaza and everywhere else. That is the unbearable thing. Why is it unbearable? one would ask Obama or anyone else making this pseudo-intellectual argument. Because of the fences, walls, checkpoints, and security that Israel put up that hampers life for the poor, innocent Palestinian civilian who just wants to live in peace and harmony like anyone in America, just like you.
The unfortunate fact is that too many of the people who live in these areas have no interest in peace and harmony and living a Westernized life with blue jeans and Starbucks on every corner. They want the Jews gone, and the Jews won’t leave, so they commit acts of terror. Again and again and again for decades. So Israel, like every other rational government in the world, decided that its citizens needed to be protected from terrorist and foreign invaders. That’s why there are fences and walls and checkpoints. Not because Israel wants to have them, but because Israel needs to have them. It is not morally equivalent to compare those defensive measures at protecting your population with the offensive measures taken by terrorists to kill civilians.
Yet, this idiocy pervades every level. Jamaal Bowman, when he’s not pulling fire alarms to get through doors, is pushing this as well. “As horrific as Oct 7 was,” Bowman wrote in a statement, “those events also did not occur in vacuum. Palestinians have for decades suffered under a brutal stifling military occupation in the West Bank that have deprived Palestinians of civil rights and under policies that have allowed for the systematic annexation of Palestinian land. The blockade of Gaza has ensured a life of massive unemployment and poverty for Gazans for decades. It is these conditions that have allowed Hamas to maintain its authoritarian grip on Gazans and ultimately commit the heinous crimes of Oct 7.” Don’t you see? It’s all Israel’s fault. Never mind that the reason is because when left to themselves, Hamas and Fatah and other terrorist groups will use all the time, money, and resources available to them to kill Israelis, and Israel is trying to prevent that. No, it’s just because Israel is evil is why they do this.
The State Department pushes this as well. They put out a graphic on social media on their official account saying, “A two-state solution is the only way to end this cycle of violence once and for all.” It’s a cycle of violence, according to the United States State Department. Sometimes Hamas attacks, sometimes Israel attacks. Let’s not pay attention to the fact that Israel has never, not once, in its 75-year history, been the aggressor in any conflict that it had. Israel has always been on the receiving end of attacks or aggression.
Then there is the Hamas spokesperson in Congress, Rashida Tlaib, who literally chants genocidal slogans and tries to justify them. “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate,” she posted on X. “My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.” She literally wants to replace all the land of Israel with a land called Palestine, which as a founding principle calls for the expulsion or murder of every single Jew living within its boundaries, and the slogan for that aspiration is merely a call for “peaceful coexistence.” There is literally no evidence – none – that there is a desire for peace from that group.
“If you want to solve the problem, you have to take in the whole truth,” said Obama in that speech. Well, here’s the whole truth. It’s been chanted on the streets of major cities and world capitals for a month: “We don’t want no two-state, we want ‘48.” The issue is not complex; it’s a simple calculation. Palestinians want the land of Israel. Israel doesn’t want to give it up. That’s it. Anything more complex than that is just semantics. Those that excuse terrorism because of the complexities of the situation are making the exact same argument that those who advocate for the very same terrorism, only a cleaner version of it.
