Vice President Biden, speaking at J Street a few days ago, voiced the Obama Administration’s “overwhelming frustration” — at Israel for the lack of Mideast peace.
Well, “frustration” seems to be the Middle East’s middle name these days. Has the Administration or the Media bothered to inquire about the “overwhelming frustration” of millions of displaced Syrians, ethnically cleansed Iraqi Christians, disappearing Yazidis, and dare we say it: the citizens of Israel.
Many Israelis are “overwhelmingly frustrated” by the world’s stony silence, as their fellow citizens were literally being stabbed in the back by (primarily) young Palestinian terrorists.
They are “overwhelmingly” angered by a suicide bomber who failed to kill himself but who succeeded blowing up a Jerusalem bus and injuring 21 innocents at the height of rush hour.
How to gauge the level of their frustration at the contemptuous CNN.com headline that labeled the terrorist attack as “a bus fire.” And this is not the first dubious headline from the world’s supposed leading source of objective news. (See-coutersy of activist John Sutz: Why is CNN Wrong About Israel So Often? | Paula R. Stern | The Blogs | The Times of Israel, San Bernardino: CNN Asks Widow If Her Christian Husband Provoked Terror Attack – Breitbart, CNN anchor: Jews carried out terror attacks, should they be barred from entering US? – Diaspora – Jerusalem Post, CNN's Sciutto Frets Israelis Using 'Excessive Force,' Shooting 'Unarmed Protesters' ).
Imagine the “overwhelming frustration” of Jews in Israel and the world over at UNESCO- the international agency whose mandate is to preserve historic sites—when its executive board voted to erase The Western Wall (Kotel), as Judaism’s Holiest site, and instead reclassified it as Islamic!
How do we measure Israelis’ “overwhelming frustration” at a European Union, many of whose member states fail to even track anti-Semitic hate crimes against Shoah-remnant Jewish communities, who do nothing to disabuse old and new Muslim immigrants of deeply embedded anti-Jewish animus? This is the very same European Union that labeled Israeli products from the West Bank, while member states pour biilions in aid to the coffers of the utterly corrupt Palestinian Authority.
And speaking of Europe— France–whose Islamist terrorist-targeted Jewish citizens flee in the thousands to safe haven in Israel, is taking the lead in launching an obscene anti-Israel Resolution at the UN Security Council. It would pressure the Jewish State to retreat to its pre-1967 “Auschwitz Borders” ( a term coined by the later Abba Eban, founder of the Israel Peace Movement). Such a move would set the stage for the West Bank’s transformation into yet another launching pad for missiles and terror tunnels targeting at Israel’s population centers at point blank range.
Forgive Israelis if they feel an “overwhelming frustration” and a foreboding sense of deja vu as they witness yet again the ugly stain of “double standard” when it comes to the so-called global war against terrorism.
While world leaders bemoaned the innocent victims of San Bernardino, Paris, Brussels, and Lahore terrorist outrages, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv rarely passed their lips. Israelis sense eerie echoes dating back to the 1970s, when governments cut secret deals with terrorists to secure the safety of their streets and threw Israel under the international bus while European media pounded Israel as the Middle East’s (sometime Nazi-like) Goliath.
And in 2016, Palestinians see that no one, not Washington, Brussels, or Paris, let alone Moscow or Beijing is going to hold them in any way accountable for their terrorist atrocities. As for the other major European players, with President Obama ensuring the nuclear-linked sanctions are ended, the stampede to renew business ties with the Mullahocracy is led by Berlin and Vienna, human rights be damned. Imagine Mr. Vice President, the “overwhelming frustration” felt by the long-suffering Iranian people…
Bottom line: Israelis don’t need more lectures about the importance of a Two-State Solution. The vast majority hope and pray that one day that will be possible. But now? Tragically it is impossible. Not with 100,000 missile-laden Hezbollah on its Northern border. Not with with Iran and its lackeys trying to open a direct front opposite the Golan Heights. Not with Hamas’ terror tunnel construction continuing unabated. And not with a Palestinian Authority that praises terrorist attacks against its Israeli neighbors and whose bottomless corruption has destroyed its legitimacy with its own people .
So please Vice President Biden, spare the people of Israel another lecture. It will only add to their “overwhelming frustration” with their closest friend and ally.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper is Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Dr. Harold Brackman, ahistorian is a consultant to the Simon Wiesenthal Center
