Tag Archives: morality

Moral Equivalence Pollution

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As the Palestinian Authority’s rocket attacks on Israeli cities proceeds apace, the United States supported a unanimously passed UN Security Council “press statement” calling for an immediate cease fire on Saturday. Because Israel acting, militarily this time, to protect its people from this murderous assault is of a piece with the terrorism that is the assault.

Or so holds this administration. That’s the shame of the US, inflicted by the Obama administration: this pretense of moral equivalency between the terrorism of the Palestinian Authority—an entity that now has as its primary goal the destruction of Israel—in shooting rockets into Israel for the express purpose of killing civilians and children, as well as damaging the Israeli nuclear power facility in Dimona (an act even the UN used to regard as nuclear terror) on the one hand, and the Israeli response of defending itself against such terrorism by shooting back, seeking to destroy the terrorists’ equipment and infrastructure and to kill the terrorists, during which killing civilians and children are avoided at great cost, if imperfectly.

All the Palestinian Authority, this shiny, new unity government, needs to do to stop the “deteriorating situation in the Palestinian territories” is to stop its terrorist rain of rockets on Israel and to expel the terrorists from Palestinian territory. All of them from all of it.

Israel has no obligation to stop its active defense before that is complete.

Rockets on Israel

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The Executive Vice President of B’nai B’rith International, Daniel Mariaschin, is on the right track. In an op-ed written for Fox News, he very appropriately decried the European Union’s inability to identify, much less understand, who the enemy is in the current explosion of the confrontation between Israel and the terrorists bent on Israel’s destruction.

However, Mariaschin makes his own critical error:

Who exactly does the EU think is firing rockets at Israel?

One thing is for sure: the Hamas rockets have nothing to do with Israel’s settlement policy.

It’s true that those rockets and Israel’s settlement policy are unrelated. But they’re not Hamas rockets. When the Palestinian Authority merged with Hamas in a “reconciliation” government, those rockets became Palestinian Authority rockets.

Mariaschin, and too many others, still draw a distinction between Hamas and the rest of the PA; however, this belies the new reality. Hamas and the PA are one and the same. Hamas’ mission and goal have become the Palestinian Authority’s mission and goal.

Full stop.

It’s Not Me, It’s Them

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Regarding the current children’s crisis on our border with Mexico, and following a private meeting with Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) which President Barack Obama is masquerading as a suitable sub for him personally visiting that border area, President Obama had some comments.

I urged the Governor to talk to the Texas delegation, which is obviously at the heart of the Republican caucus both in the House and has great influence in the caucus in the Senate. …if the Texas delegation is prepared to move, this thing can get done next week.

And

[T]he only question at this point is why wouldn’t the Texas delegation or any of the other Republicans who are concerned about this not want to put this [Obama’s request for nearly $4 billion] on a fast track and get this on my desk…?

And

I suggested to the Governor he has, I suspect, some influence over the Texas delegation….

And

One of the suggestions I had for Governor Perry was that it would be useful for my Republican friends to rediscover the concept of negotiation and compromise.

And so on.

It’s never Obama’s fault. He’s just a helpless pawn of a pernicious House of Representatives and of Evil Republicans.

Obama and our Border

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Howard Kurtz has said,

Would a presidential visit solve anything? Not really.

Not by itself, no (and that’s the thrust of his piece—not by itself, but it would help).

However, it’s always important—overtly useful, even—for the guy in charge to go to the scene and see with his own eyes, hear with his own ears, smell with his own nose, touch with his own hands, the situation that’s of such grave concern, like the children’s humanitarian crisis currently expanding along our border with Mexico.

For President Barack Obama not merely to avoid this necessity here but actively to refuse it is to raise a question: of what is he so terrified that he might see, hear, smell, touch? The reality of the situation?

Obama says that members of his staff have been to the border many times, and they keep him closely informed. Recall, though, that this is the same staff that have been keeping him so closely informed that he usually doesn’t find out about this or that until he reads it in the newspapers.

Obama also says that he didn’t go because he didn’t want just another photo opportunity. He’s only projecting his own failing here, though; no one else who wanted him to go—not Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), not Congressman Henry Cuellar (D, TX)—were interested in that; they were interested only that Obama go see for himself, go speak with the personnel on scene for himself, go talk to the children himself.

Obama’s not interested, though.

Funding Israel’s Enemies

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Last week, Hamas terrorists butchered three Israeli teenagers—one of them holding dual citizenship: he was an American, too. Shortly after, a Palestinian was butchered in an act of claimed vengeance. The Israelis promptly tracked down and arrested six suspects in the Palestinian’s murder. Hamas celebrated the butchery of the three Israelis (and American) and have pressed their terrorism with a continuing barrage of rocket attacks into Israel, ostensibly to “punish” Israel for its impertinence in objecting to the murders and, more so, for Israel’s rudeness in existing.

The Obama administration has pushed both the Israelis and Palestinians to “show restraint,” as though President Barack Obama seriously believes there is a moral equivalence between the two acts and between the two societies. Indeed, Obama wrote in his op-ed for Haaretz

[I]n President Abbas, Israel has a counterpart committed to a two-state solution and security cooperation with Israel.

We’re seeing now the Hamas Palestinian Authority leader’s view of “security” cooperation with Israel.

Yet, the moral equivalence which Obama insists exists between a democratic Israel—a democracy that includes its Arab citizens—and the terrorist organization that the Palestinian Authority has become since its integration with Hamas acts to justify $400 million in annual aid, first to the PA, and now to Hamas.

Whether it’s the intent or not, the effect is that this continued aid funds a terrorist gang whose primary goal is the destruction of Israel. And Obama knows this.