No Holds Barred: Will Iran deal expose Jewish political impotence?

While Obama’s actions demonstrate the political powerlessness of America’s Jewish community, we can still appeal to the sense of righteousness, justice that should motivate all our elected leaders.

By SHMULEY BOTEACH
A group of Orthodox Jewish protesters who support the Iran deal gathered in New York to protest against another group of anti-Iran deal protesters (photo credit: REUTERS)
A group of Orthodox Jewish protesters who support the Iran deal gathered in New York to protest against another group of anti-Iran deal protesters
(photo credit: REUTERS)
There is near unanimity among Jewish organizations in the United States and Israel’s Jewish citizens that the Obama deal with Iran is a catastrophe that must be stopped. With the predictable exception of J Street, which never saw a deal against Israel that it did not support, almost no Jewish organizations have come out in support of the deal. Israeli opposition to the deal runs across the entire political spectrum with the exception of the Arab parties.
But whatever transpires with the Iran deal, and we can only hope Congress will kill it and demand something much tougher, it has laid rest the persistent myth of Jewish control.
Here is an American president who received nearly 80 percent of the Jewish vote in his first presidential election and 70% in his second. He received oodles of Jewish financial support and the backing of tons of Jews in the media. But that did not add up to a hill of beans when it came to negotiating with a government that swears it will kill six million Jews in Israel, not to say anything of its promises of “Death to America.”
No, my friends, the Jews control absolutely nothing.
The Iran deal has exposed global Jewish impotence.
We can’t even get Senator Chuck Schumer, the Jewish senator from New York who has enjoyed tremendous Jewish backing, to come out against the deal. We can’t persuade democratic Senators from states teeming with Jewish constituents, like New Jersey, California and Connecticut, to fight the deal, the exception being the courageous and outstanding Senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez.
Faced with an existential threat against the only Jewish state on earth, and the first in 2,000 years, the Jews can only go begging to their elected representatives to curb President Barack Obama’s desire for détente with Iran, which repeatedly commits itself to a second Holocaust.
Ah, that old over-roasted chestnut of Jews having global dominion. If only even a smidgeon of it were true. As anyone can see, precisely the opposite is true.
The Jews remain the only group in the world that UN member states can threaten to exterminate and be rewarded with the unfreezing of billions of their assets for doing so. The Jewish state remains the only country in the world which the global media can malign with impunity. And Israel is the only country against whom boycotts are demanded on university campuses even as it remains the Middle East’s only democracy.
When it comes to Israel you can recite any lie and get away with it.
You can claim Israel doesn’t want peace and omit the fact that the land ceded by Israel to the Palestinians in peace deals has been transformed every time into terrorist enclaves. You can portray Israel as indiscriminately bombing Gaza and omit the fact that Hamas is a genocidal organization committed in its charter to Israel’s destruction and the murder of Jews worldwide, firing thousands of rockets to achieve that goal.
You can portray Israel as having a partner for peace in the Palestinian Authority and omit the fact that it’s a dictatorship run by Mahmoud Abbas, who has not gone to elections in more than a decade.
You can praise Abbas as a man dedicated to the Palestinian people and omit the fact that he runs a kleptocracy that has given him $100 million and his sons Tarik and Yasser illegal control of the construction and cigarette trade, among other lucrative industries.
Like Jimmy Carter, you can call Israel an apartheid state and omit the fact that Nelson Mandela was a true apostle of peace who languished in jail for 27 years, while Yasser Arafat is the father of international terrorism and made his name by blowing up Jewish children.
You can label Israel racist yet omit the fact that Arab citizens of Israel enjoy more rights than Arabs anywhere in the Middle East.
You can portray Israel as bigoted against its Arab citizens and omit the fact that Arabs serve at the highest levels of Israeli officialdom, including the Supreme Court, something unthinkable in an apartheid regime. You can omit the fact that Israeli hospitals treated Abbas’ wife and the daughter of the current Hamas leader.
You can lie and blame Israel for the wars in the Middle East while omitting the fact that the single greatest threat to world civilization today is not the Jews and the puny State of Israel but radical Islamic terrorism which is producing monsters like Islamic State, Hamas, Al Shabab and Boko Haram.
You can continually compare Israel to pre-1994 South Africa even as it offends the brave black population of that beautiful country, who are models of reconciliation and forgiveness.
You can portray the Jews as having a right to Israel only by virtue of being displaced in Europe after the Holocaust while ignoring the fact that the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. It is not I that says so but the Christian Bible. Read the New Testament and try and find mention of a single Arab resident of ancient Israel. The Jews were the land’s inhabitants and they were displaced by a European colonial occupier: Rome. They were forcibly removed from their land and displaced for 2,000 years, while a small remnant always remained. The Jews prayed thrice daily to return to their land. And when finally granted the political opportunity, they came and drained the swamps, irrigated the sands and made the land so much more inhabitable for their Arab brethren that had migrated there in the interim.
The Jews were happy to share the land but it was a sentiment sadly rejected by the Arabs. They rejected the 1936 Peel Commission Partition. The rejected the 1947 UN partition plan. They rejected Israel’s offers to return all conquered 1967 lands with their famous three “No’s” in Khartoum: No peace, No recognition, No negotiation. And they turned the Oslo peace accords – which granted Arafat political autonomy over 95% of the Palestinian population – into a murder-fest by launching a never-ending terror war against Israel’s buses, schools and cafes.
Rather than President Obama demanding from the Iranians to stop the never-ending incitement against the Jews and the promises to annihilate them, rather than objecting to the rampant assassination of Iranian gay men by the mullahs, rather than demand that Iran stop murdering democratic protesters in the street, our resident rushes to conclude a nuclear deal with Iran without so much as consulting Israel.
But while President Obama’s actions demonstrate the political powerlessness of America’s Jewish community, we can still appeal to the sense of righteousness and justice that should motivate all our elected leaders, especially in Congress.
Congress can kill this deal. Not because Jews are flexing political muscle, but because the Iranian regime are monsters while Israel, which is directly threatened by these brutes, represent the light of freedom which has, after so many millennia, only shone in the Middle East since 1948.
The author, “America’s rabbi,” is the international best-selling author of 30 books, winner of The London Times Preacher of the Year Competition, and recipient of the American Jewish Press Association’s Highest Award for Excellence in Commentary. He will shortly publish The Israel Warrior’s Handbook. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.