Bullies
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A relatively harmless study. About rams. Being gay.
Not according to the left. “Information has been brought to light about ridiculous ‘gay sheep’ experiments that are being conducted at the school,” said People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The university received twenty thousand letters astroturfed from the leftist community. Martina Navratilova, a lesbian woman apparently frightened that she would magically transform into a lesbian sheep and thus be subject to experimentation, issued a statement: “[F]or the many gays and lesbians who stand to be deeply offended by the social implications of these tests, I ask that you please end these studies at once.” One of the PETA associates said that the problem was the oft-cited slippery slope: “[O]nce you’ve figured out what makes gay sheep gay, it’s an obvious implication that you can then turn off or change the hormone that can make them straight. [The researcher is] not taking responsibility for that.”
The university backed down. They said that the purpose of the study was no longer to cure gay rams, but to understand “important relationships between physiology and behavior.” Because it would be homophobic to cure gay rams so they can create little rams. You never know when you might be curing the ram version of Leonardo da Vinci—and God knows, according to the secular left, Leonardo would never have been a great thinker had he not liked men.28
The liberal war on science isn’t restricted to abortion and homosexuality. When it comes to teenagers, the left doesn’t want to hear that teen brains are not fully developed and are therefore incapable of making fully rational decisions. They don’t care that the prefrontal cortex, which inhibits risky behavior, is underdeveloped. All they care about is that they be allowed to hand out condoms in school and tell kids how much fun sex is.
The same holds true for the feminist crowd, which seeks to obliterate any distinction between men and women. Sure, men and women are different according to science—“In mammalian species numerous sex differences in brain structure and function have now been documented,” writes Judy L. Cameron of the University of Pittsburgh Departments of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Cell Biology & Physiology. “Behaviors showing documented sex difference include behaviors associated with reproduction (mating and maternal behaviors), aggression, activity, and various cognitive functions including spatial cognition, verbal skills, and various aspects of learning and memory.” But when any scientist dares to suggest fundamental and legitimate differences between men and women, the feminists try to undermine the studies and destroy those who promoted them. Just ask Larry Summers.
The secularist bullies’ implication that the religious are a bunch of witch-burning fanatics seeking to smash all test tubes and replace them with Bibles isn’t just wrong—it’s a reversal of the facts. The right cares deeply about whether scientific methods are moral. The left couldn’t care less about the methodology, so long as the result meets their fancy. If it doesn’t, there’s hell to pay.
ANTI-SEMITIC BULLIES
The secular bullies aren’t content with focusing on the Christian half of Judeo-Christian values. They hate Judaism just as much—in some ways, even more—than Christianity, since Judaism forms the root of the Judeo-Christian tree. That hatred manifests itself in vast hatred of the state of Israel, the Jewish state. To the secular bullies, the concept of a Jewish state violates secular notions, despite Israel’s own largely secular values; it smacks of intolerance for other religions. More than that, it doesn’t acknowledge the supremacy of areligious nonjudgmentalism—Israel’s very claim to existence is biblically and historically based. Thus Israel’s claims are illegitimate. And Israel must be destroyed.
That’s why the secular bullies don’t seem to care that Israel is significantly more pro–gay rights than any other nation in the region; instead, they accuse Israel of “pinkwashing” when Israel points that out. (Max Blumenthal, son of Clinton hit man Sidney Blumenthal, and self-hating Jew, leads the anti-Israel crew on this score.29 Blumenthal is such an Israel-hater that he suggested in an interview with Al Jazeera that any black person who supported Israel had to be brainwashed to do so—a deeply racist sentiment that didn’t seem to bother this serial liar.) The secular bullies don’t care that Israel’s record on human rights is absolutely stellar next to every other country in the region; they don’t care that Israel’s record on women’s rights is better than or equal to any nation on the planet; they don’t care that Israel allows freedom of religion, up to and including handing over the holiest site in Judaism, the Temple Mount, to the tender caresses of the artifact-destroying Muslim Waqf. All that matters to the secular left is that Israel be endlessly criticized, labeled a colonialist outpost, and undermined in every way.
Now, it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Israel’s actions. Every country does things worthy of criticism. But it is anti-Semitic to hold Israel to a higher standard than any other nation; to ignore all of its good points in favor of its flaws; to ignore the historic Jewish tie to the land of Israel; to associate with anti-Semites; to engage in activities that dramatically undermine Israel’s security. The Obama administration has done all of this.
President Obama is on the leading edge of the anti-Semitic secularist thug crowd. If he’s not an anti-Semite, he’s certainly quite comfortable with them. Jeremiah Wright, his longtime pastor, is a massive anti-Semite, a man whose newsletter included quotes from Hamas and Louis Farrakhan. Obama’s ideological mentor, Professor Derrick Bell of Harvard Law School, was an anti-Semite, too, a man who denounced “Jewish neoconservative racists who are undermining blacks in every way they can,” and said that the black community should celebrate Farrakhan and his deputy, Khalid Muhammad, who maintained that Jews were “bloodsuckers” whose “father was the devil.”30
During the 1990s, Obama spoke at Palestinian fund-raisers. His friend Ali Abunimah, founder of the anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada, said, “I knew Barack Obama for many years as my state senator—when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time. . . . Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation. . . . He was very supportive of US pressure on Israel.” According to Abunimah, Obama told him in 2004 that he’d be more anti-Israel after he got elected; at the time, he was in a tough primary fight.31
In 2003, Obama attended a dinner for his good friend, former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi, at which attendees delivered addresses comparing “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden and suggesting that Israel “will never see a day of peace.” Hussein Ibish, a defender of terrorist professor Sami Al-Arian and an anti-Israel extremist, called Obama “more sympathetic to the position of ending the occupation than either [Hillary Clinton or John Edwards].” And Obama himself praised Khalidi thus: “[My talks with Khalidi are] consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation.”32
And Obama has continued that conversation. During his campaign, one of his surrogates, Robert Malley, was caught communicating with the terrorist group Hamas. No wonder Hamas, which now controls the Gaza Strip, endorsed Obama for president in 2008, claiming “he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principles.” For his part, David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign honcho, said the words were “flattering.”33 During the 2008 cycle, Obama also allegedly raked in illegal campaign cash from the Palestinian territories.34 Obama’s campaign staff was chockablock with anti-Semites—Merrill McPeak, who suggested that American Jews were controlling politicians (a common anti-Semitic slur); Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of Obama’s foreign policy advisors and a former Jimmy Carter national security advisor, who agrees with McPeak that Jews control American politics; Al Sharpton, who has called New York Jews “bloodsuckers” and “white interlopers”; Samantha Power, his current special assistant, who suggested that America place troops on the ground in Israel to stop the Jews from engaging in anti-Palestini
an human rights violations.
Worst of all is Obama’s association with Media Matters, a deeply anti-Semitic organization filled to the gills with anti-Israel bigots. M. J. Rosenberg, Media Matters’ senior foreign policy fellow, routinely used the white supremacist anti-Semitic slur “Israel Firster” to describe any Jew who was hawkish on Israel. Only after Alan Dershowitz pointed out the nastiness of Obama’s association with Media Matters did Obama pressure Media Matters to throw Rosenberg under the bus.
But that didn’t solve Media Matters’ little anti-Semitism problem. Eric Boehlert, senior fellow at Media Matters, wrote a piece on September 11, 2001, for Salon.com in which he quoted a Muslim stating, “We won’t rest until all the Jews are dead.” Boehlert lamented, “In the wake of the WTC attacks, however, those brash sentiments were muted.” It’s a good indicator you’re an anti-Semite when you think “kill the Jews” is no more than a “brash sentiment.” And Boehlert didn’t stop there. He defended Professor Sami Al-Arian (“God cursed those who are sons of Israel. . . . Those people, God made monkeys and pigs”) as an “innocent.” He thinks that media coverage of Israel isn’t anti-Israel enough, and suggests that Jewish pressure affects journalism.35
And there’s Oliver Willis, too. Willis is a prominent research fellow at Media Matters; he once referred to Paul Wolfowitz as “filthy” and Joe Lieberman as “fascistic.” He accused Israel of “Playing Games With American Lives,” and he said he wanted to tell both Israel and the Palestinians “to go to hell.” He wanted the Democratic Party to “marginalize” pro-Israel liberals. He defended the “Israel Firsters’ ” anti-Semitic nastiness.36
This is Obama’s favorite group.
So, what does Obama himself think about Israel? His actions speak louder than his words—but his words, too, speak rather loudly. When he visited Cairo to speak to the Muslim world in February 2009, Obama sent a subtle message about the legitimacy of the state of Israel. And it wasn’t good. “[T]he aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied,” said Obama. “Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust.”
This is a massively problematic reading of Israel’s raison d’être. It suggests that Israel exists only due to anti-Semitic persecution. It ignores Israel’s historic ties to the land. It ignores Israel’s religious ties to the land. It reduces Israel to a colonialist outpost thrust in the midst of Muslim land. Obama doesn’t have to believe the Pentateuch. But if he’s going to quote the Koran when talking about what Muslims think, he ought to quote the Bible when talking about the basis for the state of Israel.
Obama’s actions have been worse than his words. He has held the Palestinians to no standard at all with regard to their anti-Semitism—in fact, in April 2012, Obama unilaterally disregarded Congress’s call to cut off aid to the Palestinians after Mahmoud Abbas tried to declare Palestinian statehood at the UN. Instead Obama handed them $192 million of U.S. taxpayer dollars. His spokesperson lied and stated, “[T]he PA [Palestinian Authority] had fulfilled all its major obligations, such as recognizing Israel’s right to exist, renouncing violence and accepting the Road Map for Peace.”37 Which is somewhat like saying that the Taliban have renounced violence, accepted the presence of secularism in Afghanistan, and declared their willingness to engage in the political process. Or pretending that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is a worthy anti-violence organization without anti-Semitic aspirations—and then cutting them an enormous foreign aid check. Oh, wait. Obama did all that, too.
Leaving aside Obama’s shoddy treatment of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu—Obama has repeatedly snubbed Bibi behind the scenes,38 and agreed with then–French president Nicolas Sarkozy on an open mic that Bibi was a liar—Obama’s policies on Israel have been consistently anti-Israel. Back in 2008, after he said that he wanted Jerusalem to remain undivided, he quickly backtracked—he couldn’t state that the capital of the Jewish state should remain Jewish.39 A couple of years later, Obama called on Israel to return to its suicidal pre-1967 borders40—borders so indefensible that inside Israel they’re often referred to as the Auschwitz borders. In fact, his State Department later refused to say whether Jerusalem was even a part of Israel. At all.41
And then there’s Obama’s treatment of Israel with regard to Iran. This alone shows the Obama administration to be the biggest anti-Israel bully administration in American history. In April 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Israel that if it didn’t make concessions to the Palestinians, the Arab world might not lend it support in its fight against Iran going nuclear. This was a tacit threat. That threat became explicit the next month when supposed pro-Israel thugmaster Rahm “Dead Fish” Emanuel visited the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where he told major AIPAC donors that “thwarting Iran’s nuclear program is conditional on progress in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.” In other words, the United States would let Iran go nuclear unless Israel ponied up to the Palestinian terror regime.42
The Obama administration was so desperate to protect Iran’s burgeoning nuclear anti-Semitic genocidal regime that it has routinely leaked Israeli security secrets, sinking any Israeli attempt to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities. In June 2010, the Times of London reported that the Saudis had cut a deal with the Israelis to allow Israel to use their airspace for a strike on Iran. According to the Jerusalem Post, the report was sourced to a “US defense source.”43
In February 2012, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced in the Washington Post that Israel might strike Iran in April, May, or June. Why would Panetta do that? Explained the Post, “President Obama and Panetta are said to have cautioned the Israelis that the United States opposes an attack, believing that it would derail an increasingly successful international economic sanctions program and other non-military efforts to stop Iran from crossing the threshold.”44
Then, in March 2012, another leak—this one absolutely devastating for Israel’s attempts to defend herself. Foreign Policy magazine reported that Israel had created ties with Azerbaijan that would allow Israel to use that country’s airbases as a stopover point for an aerial attack on Iran’s facilities. Who leaked it? According to Foreign Policy, “four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers.”45
And then another. In June 2012, the Obama administration leaked that the Stuxnet computer virus, which devastated Iran’s nuclear production capabilities for well over a year, was a joint U.S.-Israel project.46
So it’s safe to say that the Obama administration is far less concerned with Israel’s security than Iran’s. And this is the worst form of bullying—revealing the secrets of another sovereign ally in order to undermine their national security.
Obama knows he’s vulnerable with the Jewish community. To shore up his collapsing support in the Jewish community, he’s teamed up with the anti-Semitic bully front group J Street. J Street, for those who haven’t heard of it, is the Jewish equivalent of Media Matters—it’s a nonprofit organized to do the bidding of the secular bullies in the Obama administration. Its entire business model is predicated on finding self-hating Jews willing to criticize Israel ceaselessly. And its chief funder is self-hating Jew George Soros, who says that Israel is essentially the sole rationale for resurgent world anti-Semitism. A militant secularist, Soros says, “I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence—but I don’t want to be a part of it.”47 Except that he does deny that right, by denying Israel’s legitimacy.
And he’s the man behind J Street, which acts out his vision. When M. J. Rosenberg of Media Matters came under fire for his “Israel Firster” garbage, J Street—purportedly a pro-Israel organization, remember—defended him. “If the charge is that you’re putting the interests of another country before the interests of the United States in the way you would advocate that, it’s a legitimate question,” self-hating Jew Jeremy Ben Ami, president of J Street, said. Why would J St
reet defend such a piece of human dreck? Because one of J Street’s biggest funders is—no coincidence—one of Media Matters’ biggest funders.48
J Street has even sided with a group of radical leftists who propose boycotting Israel—a tactic only the worst anti-Semites would use. J Street hosted the book launch party of Peter Beinart, a newfound anti-Israel poseur who suggests that the way to help promote Israel among young Jews is to tear it limb from limb in the press.49 They ushered Richard Goldstone, author of the virulently anti-Semitic Goldstone Report, around Capitol Hill;50 the report, which falsely labeled Israel a massive human rights violator, was so nasty that even Goldstone later apologized for it. J Street acted in concert with the National Iranian American Council, suggesting that Iran not be subject to new sanctions. The J Street PAC took cash from one of the producers of the virulently anti-Semitic film Valley of the Wolves, in which Jewish doctors steal Muslim organs.51
Were the Obama administration not anti-Semitic, this would seem like the last group with which they’d want to associate.
Not so much.
Early in the administration, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported, “The Obama administration appears to be welcoming the efforts of the left-leaning Jewish lobby in Washington, J Street.
“While Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. will probably not be attending the group’s October 25 conference, senior U.S. administration officials who have confirmed their participation include James Jones, national security adviser in the Obama administration. . . . Senior members of J Street have had close ties to senior figures in the Obama campaign, and since he was elected, they have been consulted by the administration.”52