Moral blindness in the face of evil is depravity. But in the upside-down moral universe of our world, moral blindness has become a badge of honor. If you refuse to call evil by its name, then you are a moderate. And if you stand up to evil, you are an extremist...supporters of Israel often act as if shouting down Israel advocates is wrong only because doing so is an assault on freedom of speech. It isn’t that Israel is in the right and the Palestinians are in the wrong. It isn’t that Israel is a just and moral society. It isn’t that the IDF fights justly and morally and only in self-defense. It isn’t that the Palestinians have taken all the lands Israel has given them and transformed them into terrorist enclaves or that they democratically elected Hamas – a genocidal terrorist organization – to lead them. It isn’t that there is not now and never was a Palestinian leadership willing to accept Israel’s right to exist...
The mendacity of the red-green alliance’s claims against Israel, the bigotry of its increasingly open calls for Israel’s destruction, its denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination or even our right to define ourselves as a people all go unopposed...Some argue that what happens on the campuses is not important. What really matters is what happens in the grown-up world. Unfortunately, we see that the depraved moral blindness of the classroom has brought about a situation where political leaders cannot recognize the moral depravity of the international community. And sophisticated grown-ups – particularly American Jewish grown-ups – cannot or will not make their leaders pay a price for their depraved support for evil...But none have attacked the administration for agreeing to the false moral equivalence between Iran’s nuclear program and Israel’s nuclear program. None have condemned Obama for discussing Israel’s purported nuclear program at a time when Iran, which has declared its intention to destroy Israel, is racing toward the nuclear finish line...Then too, the American Jewish community is silent as Obama strong-arms Israel into indirect, administration-mediated talks with the Palestinians. It is silent even as it is widely reported that Obama has threatened Israel that if it builds homes for Jews in Jerusalem or refuses to accept a Palestinian state by next year, he will impose his own “peace plan.” ...
The American Jewish community is all but mute as Obama does to Israel what Berkeley is doing to Israel.The fact of the matter is that defending Israel against its enemies isn’t a freedom of speech issue. It is an issue of right vs. wrong. Israel is the state of the Jewish people. It is a great ally of the US. Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem were legally allocated to the Jewish people by the League of Nations Mandate in 1922 and that allocation has never been cancelled or superseded. Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and neighborhoods in united Jerusalem are not illegal. The IDF did not commit war crimes in Gaza or anywhere else. Arabs are full citizens in Israel. When Israel fights, it fights to defend itself from aggression...
This is the truth. This is where the defense of Israel begins. And it is the absence of this truth and this defense from the lexicon of Jewish American students and community leaders in recent years that has brought about a situation where the only reason not to attack Israel is because it is “a waste of time.” ...
It is the absence of this truth and this defense that has enabled a situation where the president of the United States can maintain the support of the American Jewish community while allowing others to equate Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal with Iran’s nuclear program, and while treating Israel as if it were the root of all the pathologies of the Arab world.
And if the truth about Israel continues to be ignored by American Jews, not only will it be imperiled. The sustainability of their own community, which has embraced moral blindness in the name of moderation and sophistication, will be called into question.
-- Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post
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