OBAMA

AND THE WAR AGAINST

THE JEWS

BY
DAVID HOROWITZ
AND
JACOB LAKSIN
 Copyright 2010
David Horowitz Freedom Center
PO BOX 55089
Sherman Oaks, CA 91499-1964
[email protected]

www.frontpagemag.com
ISBN: 1-886442-75-4
Printed in the United States of America

$3.00 Each
$1.00 each for orders of 25 or more
 Obama and the War Against
the Jews
By David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin

No other country in the world faces an array

of existential threats such as the nation of Israel
confronts daily. The world’s only Jewish state
is also its most precarious. Geographically
tiny, Israel is surrounded by theocracies
that reject its very existence as a “nakba” –
a catastrophe – and call for its destruction.
To carry out these malignant ambitions, anti-
Israel Islamists have mobilized three rocket-
wielding armies, sworn to wipe Israel from the
face of the earth.

First and most aggressive among them is

the Gaza-based Hamas, a fanatical religious
party committed in its official charter to
obliterating Israel and killing its Jews. Hamas
is the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, the
inspirer of al-Qaeda and the global Islamic
jihad, whose official motto declares: “Death in
the service of Allah is our highest aspiration.”
In Gaza, Hamas has created a terrorist state and

1
a national death cult whose path is martyrdom
and whose goal is openly proclaimed: “O, our
children: The Jews – brothers of the apes,
assassins of the prophets, bloodsuckers,
warmongers – are murdering you, depriving
you of life after having plundered your
homeland and your homes. Only Islam can
break the Jews and destroy their dream.1”

Given that hatred for Jews is the animating

passion of the Hamas militants, their response
to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in
2005 was not surprising. Far from greeting
this as a gesture of peace, Hamas regarded the
Israeli withdrawal as a surrender to its terrorist
attacks and an opportunity to escalate them. In
the days and months following the withdrawal,
Hamas launched 6,500 unprovoked rocket
strikes on towns and schoolyards in Israel
until the Israelis decided to strike back.

Israel’s western border is home to the al-

Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the Palestine Liberation
Organization and other terrorist groups, armed
and protected by the Palestinian Authority, the
1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/15/
hamasandantisemitism

2
so-called “moderate” wing of the Palestinian
jihad. Like Hamas, the Palestinian Authority
officially rejects Israel’s existence and the
right of its Jews to self-determination. Like
Hamas, the Palestinian Authority provides a
curriculum for Gaza’s school-children, that
teaches them to hate Jews and hope to kill
them, seeking martyrdom and sainthood in
the process. In pursuit of these genocidal goals,
all Palestinian schoolchildren are taught from
maps of the region from which Israel has been
erased.2

On Israel’s northern border, in Lebanon,

is Hezbollah, the “Party of God,” which
is busily stockpiling tens of thousands of
Iranian rockets in anticipation of the war of
annihilation it has promised to wage against
the Jewish state. Created by Iran’s Republican
Guard and supplied by Syria’s (officially)
fascist dictatorship, Hezbollah is the largest
terrorist army in the world. Like Hamas, it
makes explicit its hatred for the Jews and
its agenda in regard to them – to “finish
the job that Hitler started”. Its fanatical
2 http://www.ict.org.il/Articles/tabid/66/Articlsid/592/
currentpage/2/Default.aspx

3
leader, Hassan Nasrallah, leads thousands of
believers in chants of “Death to Israel, Death
to America.” He has said, “If Jews all gather in
Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after
them worldwide.”3 Under the complicit eye
of UN “peacekeepers” Hezbollah continues
to amass rockets whose sole purpose is the
obliteration of Israel. In May 2006, Nasrallah
boasted: “Today all of Israel is in our range…
Ports, military bases, factories – everything is
in our range.”4

But it is Hezbollah’s sponsor, the totalitarian

– and soon to be nuclear – state of Iran that
presents the most disturbing threat to Israel’s
existence. Its blood-soaked dictators have
been targeting Israel for destruction since 1979
when Iran became an Islamic republic and
its theocratic ruler, the Ayatollah Khomeni,
identified Israel and America as “the Little
Satan” and “the Great Satan.” Its former
president Akbar Hashem Rafsanjani has
publicly announced his support for nuclear war

3 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/books/the-enemy-
within.html?sec=&pagewanted=all
4 Amos Harel, Avi Issacharoff, 34 Days: Israel, Hezbollah,
and the War in Lebanon, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 48.

4
against the Jewish state, reasoning that since
Iran is more than 70 times the size of Israel it
could survive a nuclear holocaust while Israel
could not.5

Iran’s current leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,

has called for America and Israel to be “wiped
from the map” – and there was no dissent
from the other 56 Islamic states that make
up the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Amateur semanticists insist that Ahmadinejad’s
words were mistranslated, and that he really
meant that both countries should be “erased
from the pages of history.” But this is a
distinction without a difference. For what can
that threat possibly mean if Israel or America
should continue to exist? Meanwhile, Iran
continues to build long-range nuclear missiles
that could be used for just such a purpose and
no serious effort to check that ambition has
been made by the international community or
by the United States.

Where, indeed, does the international

community stand in the face of this brazen
preparation to bring about a second Holocaust
of the Jews? Since the creation of the state of
5 Mitchell Bard, Will Israel Survive? Macmillan, 2008. p.77.

5
Israel in 1948, the Arab states have conducted
three unprovoked, aggressive, conventional
wars against it. along with a continuous
terrorist war that began in 1949. Yet, between
1948 and 2004 there were 322 resolutions in
the UN General Assembly condemning the
victim, Israel, and not one that condemned an
Arab state.6

The United Nations is today dominated by

the Organization of the Islamic Conference,
a group that was established in 1969 at a
summit convened, according to its official
website, “as a result of criminal arson of the
al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem” – in
other words as a result of the criminal Jews.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference
regularly passes one-sided resolutions that
condemn Israel, particularly for its efforts
to combat Palestinian terrorism and disrupt
Palestinian weapon smuggling into Gaza.
The U.N.’s most notorious assault on Israel
was the so-called “Goldstone Report,” which
was commissioned by the U.N. Human
Rights Council in September 2009 and which
6 http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0704/prager_israel_
arab_stats.php3

6
condemned Israel’s belated response to the
unprovoked Hamas rocket attacks.

Relying on the testimony of Hamas

terrorists, the Goldstone report charged that
Israel had deliberately targeted Palestinian
civilians and had committed war crimes in
Gaza. Outside the precincts of the Islamic
propaganda machine, however, Israel’s record
is, in fact, that of a nation more protective of
enemy civilians than any other. In testimony
ignored by the Goldstone Report, for example,
Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander
of British forces in Afghanistan, noted that
“During Operation Cast Lead [the Israeli
response to the Hamas attacks], the Israel
Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights
of civilians in a combat zone than anyother
army in the history of warfare.”7 Hamas, by
contrast, is notorious for building military
headquarters under hospitals, for placing its
military forces in refugee camps and for using
“human shields” provided by women and
children to deter attacks. Hamas’s rockets
are known to be so inaccurate they cannot
be directed against military targets; they can

7 http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/55622

7
only be used effectively against civilians. In
addition, since Hamas’s war against Israel was
a response to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal,
it was a criminal aggression responsible for
all the subsequent casualties, something the
Goldstone Report and the U.N. Human Rights
Council conveniently overlooked.

The Human Rights Council was created in

2006. In its first year, the council listed only
one country in the entire world as violating
human rights: Israel. It condemned Israel
despite the fact that Israel is the only state in the
Middle East that recognizes human rights and
protects them. Not one of the world’s other
194 countries was even mentioned, including
North Korea, Burma, and Iran – the last of
which hangs gays from cranes for transgressing
the sexual prescriptions of the Koran.8 The
reason for these oversights is no mystery. The
UN Human Rights Council has been presided
over by representatives of such brutal human
-rights violators as Libya, China, Saudi Arabia
and Cuba, and was such a travesty from its
inception that it was boycotted by the United

8 http://www.unwatch.org/site/c.bdKKISNqEmG/
b.3820041/#1st

8
States until Barack Obama decided this year
to join its ranks. This decision by the Obama
administration, along with its overtures to
Syria, Iran, and other noxious regimes, lent
a stamp of legitimacy to the hypocrisy of the
council and encouraged its malice.

In these sinister developments, which

have now stretched over a decade, the world
is witnessing a reprise of the 1930s, when the
Nazis devised a “final solution” to the “Jewish
problem,” and the civilized world did nothing
to halt its implementation. This time, the
solution is being proposed in front of the entire
international community, which appears
unruffled by the prospect. It has turned its
collective back on the Jews, and refuses to
recognize the gravity of the threat. Moreover,
by enforcing the fiction that there is a “peace
process” that needs to be brokered between
the sides, and ignoring the overt preparation
for Israel’s destruction by the Palestinian side,
the “peacemakers” lend their support to its
deadly agenda.

For decades now, Israel has been isolated

and alone in the community of nations with

9
one crucial exception. That exception has
been the United States, a country on which it
has relied for its survival throughout its 60-
year history. Every would- be aggressor has
understood that the world’s most powerful
nation was behind Israel and would not let her
be destroyed. Every government harboring ill-
will toward the Jewish state has had to reckon
with the fact that the United States was in
Israel’s corner. Every vote of condemnation
in the United Nations, had to confront a veto
by the nation that porvides its chief financial
support.

Until now.

In the words of a recent Reuters dispatch,

“Under President Barack Obama, the United
States no longer provides Israel with automatic
support at the United Nations where the Jewish
state faces a constant barrage of criticism and
condemnation. The subtle but noticeable shift
in the U.S. approach to its Middle East ally
comes amid what some analysts describe as
one of the most serious crises in U.S.-Israel
relations in years.”9

9 http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6570SP20100608

10
 The Relationship Fractures

This change first became apparent during

an official visit to Jerusalem visit by Vice
President Biden earlier this year. On March
9, The Vice President arrived for a dinner at
the home of the Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu nearly two hours late. His
tardiness was not accidental but a calculated
diplomatic slight – specifically, a punishment
for Israel’s announcement of plans to build
1,600 new homes in a predominantly Jewish
section of Jerusalem.10 The vice president was
embarrassed by the announcement.’s being
made during his visit.

In fact, the announcement was a routine

step, the fourth in a seven-stage bureaucratic
approval process for new construction. While
its timing might be construed as inopportune,
the building of homes in a Jewish neighborhood
in Israel’s capital city was hardly an issue to
create any sort of problem, let alone to cause
a rupture between allies. Nonetheless, Israeli
officials, conscious of their dependence on their

10 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.
aspx/182263

11
American partners, immediately apologized
for any perceived offense.

But the Obama administration would

have none of it. As severe reproaches of
Israel from top U.S. officials followed, the
crisis escalated. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton berated Netanyahu, calling Israel’s
announcement a “deeply negative signal” for
U.S.-Israel ties.11 Senior presidential advisor
David Axelrod delivered the same scolding
message to an American audience, going on
cable news shows to vent the administration’s
displeasure. Branding Israel’s announcement
an “affront” and an “insult,” Axelrod claimed
that Israel had made the “peace process” with
the Palestinians much more “difficult.”12

Unlike Israel’s housing announcement,

which was made without Netanyahu’s
knowledge, Washington’s response was
dictated by President Obama. When the Israeli
prime minister arrived in the United States
for a meeting with the president that same
11 http://www.reuters.com/articleidUSN1213959520100312
12 http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2010/03/axel-
rod-israel-settlement-approval-an-affront-insult.html

12
month, there was no ceremony in the White
House Rose Garden and no posing before
press cameras – the usual good-will gestures
afforded visiting heads of friendly nations, not
to mention long-time allies.

The reception was at least as cold in

private. When Netanyahu arrived at the
White House for what he thought was going
to be a dinner with the president, Obama
unceremoniously presented him with a list
of demands – including that Israel cease all
housing construction in East Jerusalem – and
curtly abandoned his guest to have dinner
with his wife and daughters in the White
House residential wing.13 As Obama left the
meeting room, he informed his stunned ally
that he would “be around” should the Israeli
leader change his mind. As the Israeli press
reported afterwards, “There is no humiliation
exercise that the Americans did not try on
the prime minister and his entourage.”14
Washington Post columnist and Middle East

13 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamer-
ica/usa/barackobama/7521391/Obama-snubbed-Netanyahu-
for-dinner-with-Michelle-and-the-girls-Israelis-claim.html
14 http://tinyurl.com/3xxz5wq

13
expert Jackson Diehl was even more blunt,
writing that “Netanyahu is being treated [by
Obama] as if he were an unsavory Third World
dictator.”15

Contrary to the administration’s insistence

that Israel was jeopardizing peace by
encroaching on negotiable terrain, the
construction site in Jerusalem was anything but
disputed territory. Jerusalem is Israel’s capital
and the construction site is in Ramat Shlomo
a Jewish neighborhood. Housing construction
had been underway in Ramat Shlomo since
the early 1990s, and it would remain part of
Israel in any conceivable peace settlement.16
Consequently, when Netanyahu had agreed
under pressure to a partial ten month freeze
on settlements in the disputed territories,
he specifically excluded Jerusalem. By its
insistence that Israel cease all building in East
Jerusalem, it was the Obama administration,
not Israel that was breaking with precedent,
and opening up the political center of Israel
itself to Palestinian claims.
15 http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/03/
obama_and_netanyahu_pointless.html
16 http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=170707

14
 In opposing Israeli construction in a Jewish
neighborhood in Jerusalem, the Obama
administration embraced a version of Middle
Eastern history that directly lent itself to the
Arab war against the Jewish state. In the Arab
narrative justifying that war, Jerusalem is
alleged to occupy a central place in the history
of Muslims and Arabs. In the same narrative
Jerusalem is claimed as the capital of a future
Palestinian state. But the spiritual centrality
of Jerusalem for Muslims is in fact a relatively
recent claim and dubious on its face, while the
religious claims are by-products of Muslim
military conquests.

The Prophet Mohammed never visited

Jerusalem and consequently Jerusalem is never
mentioned in the Koran. Today even Islamists
regard it as only the third holiest city in Islam,
after Mecca and Medina. It was never the
capital of any Arab state. Indeed, for centuries,
Jerusalem was a forgotten city to most Arabs,
and it was allowed to fall into ruin under
Ottoman rule, which lasted until the creation of
Israel and Jordan in the aftermath of the First
World War. On a trip to Jerusalem in 1867,
Mark Twain despaired that the city “has lost all

15
its grandeur, and is become a pauper village.”17
When Jordan occupied Jerusalem between
1948 and 1967, it was treated like a backwater.
Only one Arab leader, Morocco’s King Hassan,
cared enough to pay a visit to the city Muslims
involved in the jihad against Israel now
suggest is an essential part of their history.18

Origins of the U.S. Turn Against Israel

The sudden fracture in the U.S-Israel

relationship in March caught the Israeli
government off-guard. But close observers
of the Obama administration would have
recognized it as the logical endpoint of a series of
markers that had been laid down since Obama
emerged as a leading presidential contender
in 2008. With these markers Obama was
signaling a major shift in U.S. policy moving
toward the Muslim world and America’s
traditional enemies, and away from allies like
Israel.

17 Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad, p. 393

18 Dennis Prager, Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews? The
Reason for Anti-Semitism, (Simon & Schuster, 2003), p.
168.

16
 The first sign of this shift was visible
during a February 2008 presidential debate
when Obama sought to differentiate himself
from Hillary Clinton, his then opponent and
future secretary of state, by announcing that
unlike her he would be willing to meet with
hostile governments “without preconditions.”
It was a position he justified by asserting that
it was critical for the United States to “talk
to its enemies.” This was a rare example of a
campaign promise Obama has kept.19

On entering the White House, Obama

quickly moved to set a new tone toward the Arab
and Muslim world. His very first call to a foreign
leader from the Oval Office was to Palestinian
president Mahmoud Abbas, and it was not an
effort to dissuade Abbas from his support for
terrorism or his opposition to the existence
of a Jewish state.20 One of the first interviews
Obama gave, in January 2009, was to the
Dubai-based television network al-Arabiya. In
it, Obama effectively offered an apology to the
Arab world for alleged American misdeeds.
19 http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5561241.html
20 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_
americas/us_elections/article5563280.ece

17
He assured his interviewer that with him in
charge Arab states could look to America as
a friend. “My job to the Muslim world is to
communicate that the Americans are not your
enemy,” Obama said, adding that the United
States “sometimes makes mistakes. We have
not been perfect.”21

It was the first leg of what would become

an extensive “apology tour” for America’s sins
around the world. In April 2009, he visited
Turkey, a NATO ally, which was rapidly –and
alarmingly – becoming an Islamist state.
addressing its parliament he hailed Turkey as
a “true partner,” and suggested that it was the
United States that had been the faithless friend.
In a not so oblique attack on President Bush,
Obama expressed his regret for the “difficulties
of these last few years” referring to a strain in
relations caused by Turkey’s refusal to allow
American troops to deploy from Turkish soil
during the war in Iraq. Obama lamented that
the “trust that binds us has been strained, and
I know that strain is shared in many places
where the Muslim faith is practiced.” In
21 http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/27/obama.
arabia/index.html

18
other words, Turkey’s refusal to help America
support the Muslim citizens of Iraq and topple
a hated tyranny was a response to America’s
prejudice against Muslims.

In his review of past grievances, Obama

did not mention the millions of Muslims
–including Palestinians in the West Bank
and Gaza – who had cheered the 9/11 attacks
on U.S. soil by Islamic fanatics. Nor did he
complain about the spread of anti-American
and anti-Israeli conspiracy theories concerning
those attacks in the Muslim world, including
Turkey. As recently as 2008, polls found that
as many Turks (39 percent)believed the United
States or Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks as
believed Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were
the culprits.22

Even more worrisome, Obama used the

occasion of his Turkish visit to break with the
U.S. policy of treating countries that harbor
terrorists as hostile nations. President Bush
had declared that there would be no room for
neutrality in the war against terror – “You are
22 http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep08/
WPO_911_Sep08_quaire.pdf

19
either with us or against us.” But Obama now
assured his listeners in Turkey and throughout
the Muslim world that their governments no
longer had to choose between America and
al-Qaeda. “America’s relationship – with the
Muslim world,” Obama said, “cannot and will
not be based on opposition to al-Qaeda.”23

Obama’s pandering to Arab and Muslim

sensibilities has already been embarrassingly
on display a few days earlier, when he took the
step, unprecedented for an American president,
of making an elaborate bow to Saudi Arabia’s
King Abdullah, ruler of a nation in which it
is illegal to carry a Bible or build a church or
for women to drive automobiles. The incident
took place when President Obama attended
the G-20 economic summit in London. When
critics decried the president’s subservient
gesture to the Arab despot, the administration
was caught by surprise and attempted to deny
that it had ever taken place. Inconveniently
for White House damage control, a video had
captured Obama in full obeisant mode.24

23 http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/04/06/obamas-
remarks-to-turkish-parliament/tab/article/
24 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077463.html

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 Faulty History Fuels the Arab Cause

The shift in Washington’s policy toward

the Arab world reached a new level in Obama’s
speech in Cairo two months later. On the one
hand, the president defended the U.S. military
campaigns in the Middle East as driven by
“necessity”, condemned the Holocaust denial
and Jew hatred that are rife in the Arab world
and promoted by its governments; and called
on Palestinians to abandon violence against
Israel. But these statements were accompanied
by others that appear particularly troubling in
the light of subsequent administration moves.

While Obama rightly condemned Holocaust

denial, he left the impression that Israel’s
legitimacy derived solely from the legacy
of European anti-Semitism and the Nazis’
extermination of six million Jews. This echoed
the Arab propaganda claim that Israel is a
problem created by Europeans and unfairly
imposed on the Arab world. Once again Obama
was bolstering an Arab myth that served to
delegitimize the Jewish state.

The Holocaust is not merely a European

21
legacy. Arab states such as Iraq and Iran actively
sided with Hitler’s armies, Arab generals
served with Rommel, Hitler’s commander in
North Africa, and Arab leaders applauded and
actively promoted the extermination of the
Jews. The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood,
Hassan al-Banna, was an admirer of Hitler
and had Mein Kampf translated into Arabic
in the 1930s as a text to guide his followers.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and founder
of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin al-
Husseini, was an active and vocal supporter
of Hitler’s “final solution,” and spent the war
years in Berlin recruiting Arabs to the Nazi
cause. Al-Husseini, a man revered to this day
on the West Bank and in Gaza as the George
Washington of a Palestinian state, organized
anti-Jewish pogroms in the 1920s and 1930s,
actively planned to build his own Auschwitz in
the Middle East and was thwarted only when
Rommel was defeated at El-Alamein.

The Arab canard that Israel is Europe’s

attempt to unload its problem onto the backs
of the Arabs ignores – as did Obama – the fact
that Jerusalem has been the spiritual capital of
the Jewish people for nearly 3,000 years and

22
that Jews have lived in their historic homeland
continuously for all that time. Jerusalem is at
the center of the Jewish spiritual tradition, and
Jews have been its largest religious community
since 1864. Prime Minister Netanyahu was
historically accurate when he admonished
Obama, saying that “the Jewish people were
building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, and
the Jewish people are building Jerusalem
today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our
capital.”

In his Cairo speech, Obama also showed

little appreciation of the modern history of
Israel, a nation that was not built on Arab – let
alone “Palestinian” – land. The state of Israel
was created out of the ruins of the Turkish
Empire.

In 1922, Great Britian created the state

of Jordan out of 80 percent of the Palestine
Mandate – a geographical, not an ethnic,
designation. The territory in the Mandate had
been part of the Turkish (not Arab) empire for
the previous four hundred years. Then in 1948,
a U.N. “partition plan” provided equal parts
of the remaining Turkish land to Arabs and to

23
Jews living on the banks of the Jordan River.
In this plan, the Jews were assigned 10 percent
of the original Palestine Mandate, while the
Arabs received 90 percent. None of this land
had belonged to a “Palestinian” nation or a
Palestinian entity. In the previous 400 years
there had never been a province of the Turkish
empire called “Palestine.” The entire region
out of which Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria,
Israel, Gaza and the West Bank were created
was known as “Ottoman Syria.”

In what would prove to be a continuing

pattern, the Jews accepted the partition’s
grossly unequal terms – their portion consisted
of three unconnected slivers of land, of which
60 percent was arid desert. The Arabs, who had
already received 80 percent of the Mandate
land, rejected their additional portion as they
would continue to reject any arrangement that
would allow for a Jewish state.

Immediately, five Arab nations launched a

war against the Jews, who repelled the Arab
attacks and established a Jewish state. 25 When

25 Martin Gilbert, The Routledge Atlas of the Arab-Israeli

Conflict, Routledge 2005, 187pp., pp. 36 – 37.

24
the fighting ended, the parts of the partition that
had been earmarked for the Arabs – namely, the
West Bank and Gaza– were annexed by Jordan
and Egypt, respectively and disappeared from
the map.26 There was no protest from the Arab
world at the disappearance of “Palestine” into
Jordan and Egypt, no Palestine Liberation
Organization, no complaint to the U.N. The
reason for the silence was that there was no
Palestinian identity at the time, no movement
for “self-determination,” no “Palestinian”
people to make a claim. There were Arabs
who lived in the region of the Jordan. But they
considered themselves inhabitants of Jordan
or of the Syrian province of the former Ottoman
Empire. The disappearance of the West Bank
and Gaza was an annexation of Arab land by
Arab states.

Arab and Western revisionists have turned

this history on its head to portray the Jewish
war of survival as a racist, imperialist plot to
expel “Palestinians” from “Palestine.” This
is an utter distortion of the historical record.
The term “Palestine Mandate” is a European
reference to a geographical section of the
26 Ibid.

25
defeated Turkish empire. The claim that there
was a Palestinian nation from which ethnic
Palestinians were expelled and which Israel
now “occupies” illegally is a political lie.

In 1967, the Arab states attacked Israel

again with the express aim of “pushing the
Jews into the sea.”Again they were defeated.
And once again defeat did not prompt the
Arab states to make peace or to abandon
their efforts to destroy Israel. At an August
1967 summit in Khartoum, Arab leaders
declared that they would accept “no peace, no
recognition, and no negotiations” with Israel.
This is the permanent Arab war against Israel.
It is a war driven by religious and ethnic hate,
which is the only durable cause of the conflict
in the Middle East.

It is hardly surprising given this historical

reality that Israel should regard with
skepticism the Arab demands that Israel
surrender territory it captured in defending
itself against Arab aggression. As Prime
Minister Netanyahu has said, “What kind
of moral position is it to say that the failed
aggressor should be given back all the territory

26
from which he launched his attack?” In fact, of
no other nation that has been victimized – and
victimized repeatedly –by aggressors is such a
concession demanded.

Yet Israeli concession–including an

agreement not to build houses for its own
people in its own capital – are precisely what
the Obama administration is demanding a
precondition of peace. It is ostensibly doing
so on the dubious assumption that if only
Israel would make further concessions to the
Palestinians, peace would be possible. But
this assumption flies in the face of 60 years
of continuous Arab aggression, including
unrelenting terror attacks against Israeli
civilians and explicit commitments to wipe
out the Jewish state.

The very idea that Israeli settlements (let

alone Jewish houses in Jewish neighborhoods)
are an obstacle to peace perpetuates the
mythical claims of the Arab cause. There are
a million Arabs settled in Israel, and they
enjoy more rights as Israeli citizens than do
the Arab citizens of any Arab Muslim state.
So why are the settlements of a few hundred

27
thousand Jews on the West Bank a problem?
The only possible answer is Jew hatred, the
desire to make the West Bank Judenrein, and
ultimately the 60-year Arab campaign to push
the Jews into the sea.

The Obama administration’s pressure

on Israel to give up its settlements – or to
concede that its capital is disputed terrain
–feeds the inherent racism of the Arab cause
and undermines Israel’s ability to resist the
genocidal campaign against it. Such pressure
cannot promote peace negotiations when the
other party is openly dedicated to Israel’s
destruction and has already shown that it will
derail even the most generous offers of peace(as
when Arafat rejected the Clinton-Barak 2000
plan). Its immediate consequences are to
reinforce Palestinian intransigence, escalate
Palestinian demands, incite Palestinian
violence, and accelerate the drift toward a
Middle East war.

Directly following the Obama administration’s

attacks on Israel’s building project in
Jerusalem, the Palestinians invoked Israeli
intransigence as a pretext for pulling out of

28
the indirect peace talks that had been taking
place. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas
further went on record as refusing to enter
into direct talks with Israel unless it instituted
an immediate construction freeze in its own
capital city. Palestinians had previously
participated in talks without that condition,
but, as one observer noted, “How could the
Palestinian position be softer on Israel than the
American position? Of course the Palestinians
would have to hold Israel to the newly raised
standards of the Obama administration.”27
In this way, did the Obama administration
further the efforts of the Arabs to dismantle
the Jewish state.

Observers of this ominous development

warned that by attacking Israel over settlements
the administration was encouraging a violent
buildup that could eventually erupt into a
third Intifada. A Hebrew-speaking Arab
protester interviewed on Israeli radio called for
armed resistance against Israel’s “assault on
Jerusalem,” declaring that the time had come

27 http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/1628/obama-effect-
in-muslim-world

29
for a new Intifada.28 The call was taken up
by Hamas, which declared a “day of rage” to
lash out against Israel. Arab rioters protested
in the streets, hurled stones at buses, cars
and police, and clashed with Israeli security
forces. On Israel’s Highway 443, connecting
Jerusalem with the city of Modi’in, Israeli
Arabs firebombed passing motorists, with
one attack wounding a father and his nine-
month old infant.29 Arab parliamentarians in
the Israeli Knesset further fueled the violence
echoing the Obama administration, one of
them said, “Anyone who builds settlements in
Jerusalem is digging a grave for peace.”30

Emboldening Iran

Even as the new Obama policies were

igniting tinderboxes in the Palestinian
territories, their most dangerous effects were
being felt in Iran. From the beginning of his
presidency, Obama had made “reaching out”

28 http://danielgordis.org/2010/03/26/obama-intifada/
29 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.
aspx/136490
30 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1156775.html

30
to the Iranian police state a major part of his
approach to the Middle East. In March 2009,
Obama addressed a special Persian New Year
message to the Iranian people and the leaders
of what he called the “Islamic Republic of
Iran,” itself an ingratiating reference that
served to legitimize the totalitarian rule
imposed on the country by the 1979 overthrow
of the shah. Doubly shameful were Obama’s
direct appeals to the mullahs, whom he urged
to move the “Islamic Republic of Iran to take
its rightful place in the community of nations.”
At the time, Iran’s rulers were engaging in
surrogate wars against the United States in
Iraq and Afghanistan, supplying al-Qaeda
and the Taliban with IEDs, which were the
principal cause of the American deaths there.
The contrast between Obama’s appeasement
of this enemy and his aggressive displeasure
toward a democratic ally could not have been
more striking. It sent a dangerous message
to the many other dictatorships and hostile
forces in the Middle East.

Obama’s apologists insist that his message

was no different from those that President
Bush had previously delivered on the

31
Persian New Year. But an actual reading of
Bush’s messages reveals the absurdity of the
comparison.31 Unlike Obama, Bush addressed
his words directly to the Iranian people, not
to the oppressive Iranian regime, which he
condemned for pursuing nuclear weapons
and depriving its citizens of the right to “live
in a free society.” The word freedom appeared
three times in one of Bush’s messages. It did
not appear once in Obama’s. Confronting
Iran’s defiance of the world community, its
determination to build nuclear weapons and
its brutal suppression of its own people, would
have interfered with the overtures Obama was
making towards a criminal regime.

In May 2009, Obama sent a personal letter

to Iran’s “supreme leader,” the Ayatollah
Khameni, again disregarding his oppressed
subjects. The president’s letter appealed for
better “co-operation in regional and bilateral
relations.”32 Khameini ignored the letter.
Then, in mid-June, he mentioned it scornfully

31 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2009/03/20/AR2009032003512_pf.html
32 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/24/khamenei-
obama-letter

32
in a sermon in which he inveighed against
alleged American interference in Iran’s rigged
elections that month.33

Obama’s acquiescence in the Iranian

regime’s brutal suppression of the opposition
during its presidential elections demonstrated
how far the White House was willing to
compromise its values in the interests of an
elusive “dialogue” that it had come to value
above all else. As pro-democracy protesters
shouting, “Death to the dictator!” were being
brutally crushed on the streets of Tehran,
the Obama administration maintained
a deafening silence. There was no official
message of solidarity with the demonstrators,
no serious admonition to the regime about the
right of free assembly, no support for changing
a regime that was killing its own citizens while
threatening its neighbors. There was no stern
warning to an aggressive power that was
brazenly defying the international community
in racing to acquire nuclear weapons.

After a week of bloodshed and arrests, the

33 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/24/khamenei-
obama-letter

33
closest the administration would come to an
official reproach was when Vice President
Biden suggested that there was “some real
doubt” about Iran’s official elections results
– in itself a generous understatement.34 Prior
to the election, the victor had run close to his
opponent in the polls but when the ballots were
counted, Ahmadinejad won in a landslide,
claiming more votes than any politician in
Iran’s history. However, so that Iran’s thugs
would not mistake Biden’s remark for a policy
statement, the vice president made it clear that
neither the fraudulent election results nor the
continuing repression would sway the Obama
administration from its single-minded wooing
of the regime. “We are ready to talk,” Biden
said. Without conditions.35

But the Iranian mullahs were in no mood

to compromise. And why should they be?
A year of defiance had cost them nothing
while gaining them precious time to carry
out their designs. Ahmadinejad responded to
34 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/
ALeqM5j1SSLTI28ydxcun0zvJWLBeNmV0A
35 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/
ALeqM5j1SSLTI28ydxcun0zvJWLBeNmV0A

34
Biden’s wrist slap by attacking America as a
“crippled creature” but asserting that it was
still an “oppressive system ruling the world.”
Spurning Washington’s outstretched “hand
of friendship,” he baited Obama with an
invitation to take part in a debate about “the
injustice done by world arrogance to Muslim
nations.” Speaking at a staged “victory” rally,
Ahmadinejad vowed that he would never
negotiate with the United States or any foreign
power over his country’s nuclear ambitions:
“That file is shut, forever.”36

Although it was not clear when Iran would

finally be able to produce enough enriched
uranium for an operational nuclear weapon,
the U.S. military warned in April 2010 that
the time frame could be as short as a year.
Besides its illicit work on a nuclear weapon,
Iran continued to develop a range of missiles
that made it a regional and even a global
threat. For instance, an unclassified Defense
Department report released in April estimated
that by 2015 Iran could have a missile capable
of striking the United States. With a nuclear
36 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124502114089613711.
html

35
arsenal, Iran at last will have a chance to
realize its apocalyptic dream of a holy war
that will destroy the two countries it calls the
source of evil in the world, “the Great Satan
and the Little Satan.”

Confronted with fresh evidence of Iran’s

defiance, the Obama administration did
not so much stick to its guns as offer to lay
them down. In April, Obama announced
that the United States was no longer going
to develop new nuclear weapons and would
not use nuclear weapons to retaliate against
countries that attacked the U.S. – even if they
had used biological or chemical weapons.37
The president’s policy of unilateral nuclear
disarmament did include an exception
for rogue states like Iran, but given the
administration’s track record of backing
down in the face of Iranian intransigence, it
is difficult to imagine that the warning struck
fear in the hearts of the mullahs.
With Obama’s charm offensive failing,
Washington was left without a strategy, a fact
Obama’s own secretary of defense conceded.
In April, the press leaked the contents of a
37 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/06arms.html

36
memorandum written by Defense Secretary
Robert Gates to the White House four months
earlier. According to the press reports,
the memorandum conceded that the U.S.
possessed no effective policy to stop Iran from
building a nuclear bomb.

Appeasement and the Gathering

Clouds of War

Obama’s multiple overtures, his apologies

for America’s actions in the past and his
deference to her enemies in the present have
not made the world a safer place. His attempts
to make Israel –America’s most loyal ally in the
Middle East and the region’s only democratic
state – the culprit in the dramas engulfing the
region have encouraged the jihadist cause
both at home and abroad.

It is hardly coincidental, therefore, that Obama’s

tenure in office has been accompanied by a
rash of terrorist assaults. In September 2009,
the FBI foiled a plot by three American al-
Qaeda recruits to plant homemade bombs on
the busiest subway stops in Manhattan during

37
rush hour. According to Attorney General
Eric Holder, the attacks would have been
the “most serious” since 9/11. In November,
army psychiatrist and jihadist Major Nidal
Malik Hasan went on a shooting rampage at
the army base in Ford Hood, Texas, killing 13
people and wounding 32 others. In December,
a 23-year jihadist from Nigeria was disarmed
by passengers as he tried to blow up Northwest
flight 253 over Detroit using explosives he had
snuck aboard the plane in his underwear. In
May, a Pakistani-born naturalized American
citizen, jihadist Faisal Shahzad almost
succeeded in turning New York’s Times Square
into a fiery inferno when he abandoned an
SUV rigged to explode there.38

In the midst of these attacks by Islamic

fanatics, the Obama administration refuses
even to recognize the religious nature of the
enemy we face. In testimony before Congress,
Attorney General Holder repeatedly refused
to make a connection between those terrorist
acts and any religious belief, although the
38 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamer-
ica/usa/7696765/Did-hard-times-create-the-Times-Square-
bomber.html

38
perpetrators themselves proclaimed their
fealty to Islam and the Koran. On a seperate
occasion, Obama’s deputy national security
adviser, John Brennan, explained the
administration’s political correctness: “Nor
do we describe our enemy as ‘jihadists’ or
‘Islamists’ because jihad is a holy struggle, a
legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify
oneself or one’s community, and there is nothing
holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering
innocent men, women and children”39 – even
though many Islamic imams are on record as
proclaiming that there is.

Obama insists that the U.S. is not at war

with Islam. But it is clear that many Muslims,
including the leaders of al-Qaeda, Hezbollah,
Hamas and Iran, believe that Islam is at war
with the United States and Israel. The name of
the ruling party in Gaza, with much innocent
blood on its hands, is “Hamas,” which stands
for “Islamic Resistance Movement.” While the
Obama administration maintains that Israel’s
enemies are not engaged in a religious war,
the Hamas charter declares in the clearest
39 http://townhall.com/blog/g/a3d154df-ad05
4552-b838-8c067247dd81

39
possible terms that it is engaged in one
mandated by the Prophet Mohammed whose
goal is the destruction of Israel and a genocide
of its Jews:

The Islamic Resistance Movement

aspires to the realization of Allah’s
promise, no matter how long that
should take. The Prophet, Allah
bless him and grant him salvation,
has said: “The Day of Judgment
will not come until Muslims fight
the Jews and kill them. When the
Jew hides behind the stones and
the trees, the stones and trees
will say, O Muslim, there is a Jew
hiding behind me, come and kill
him.”40

And further: “Israel will exist and will

continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it,
just as it obliterated others before it.”41

And: “There is no solution for the Palestine

40 http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm
41 Ibid.

40
question except through jihad.”42

Because of its diminutive size, Israel

is a country with little margin for error.
Confronted by 300 million hostile Muslim
neighbors, its security depends in no small
measure on the perception that it has the
inalienable support of the world’s lone
superpower. It is this perception that has
been gravely undermined by the Obama
administration with consequences that are
already apparent. It is hardly coincidental,
for example, that the United Kingdom chose
the precise moment of the row over housing
in Jerusalem to expel unnamed Israelis from
its territory for an alleged connection to the
death of a notorious Hamas arms dealer in
Dubai. But it is the regional ramifications of
this suddenly weakened U.S.-Israel alliance
that are truly worrisome.

It is only because Israel has had an

American security umbrella that there has
been no conventional war against Israel
since 1973. If its enemies perceive Israel to
have been cast adrift by America, they will be
42 Ibid.

41
emboldened to try once more the methods
that have failed to destroy Israel in the
past. Hezbollah is now operating bases and
arms depots on Syrian territory, where it is
stockpiling long-range Syrian-supplied Scud
missiles capable of striking Israeli cities like
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.43 Egypt has begun
staging war games in the Sinai Peninsula using
large numbers of infantry and artillery units as
well as warplanes.44 While Egypt has justified
the maneuvers as essential to maintain the
readiness of its armed forces, many observers
see them as a dress rehearsal for war.

The shift toward Islamic militancy and

war preparations on Obama’s watch is even
more pronounced in Turkey. Turkey was once
a staunch NATO ally, and a friend to Israel
but it has been moving for several years in
a radical direction under its Islamist prime
minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ignoring this
development, Obama chose Turkey as the final
stop on his first overseas visit as president,
and praised it as a “model for the world.” Said
43 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3895828,00.
html
44 http://www.haaretz.com/news/egyptian-army-condu series-
of-war-games-on-sinai-peninsula-1.270380
42
Obama: “I’m trying to make a statement about
the importance of Turkey, not just to the United
States but to the world. I think that where
there’s the most promise of building stronger
U.S.-Turkish relations is in the recognition
that Turkey and the United States can build a
model partnership in which a predominantly
Christian nation, a predominantly Muslim
nation – a Western nation and a nation which
straddles two continents, that we can create
a model international community that is
respectful, that is secure, that is prosperous,
that there are not tensions – inevitable
tensions between cultures – which I think is
extraordinarily important.”45

At the very moment Obama was expressing

this vapid hope his Turkish host was moving his
NATO country closer to the mullahs of Iran.
While Obama was wooing and being rejected
by Iran, the mullahs were forming an entente
with Turkey that would undermine his efforts
to keep them from building a nuclear weapon.
Just a year after Obama’s visit, the Turkish
prime minister met with his opposite number
45 http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/06/obama.
turkey/index.html

43
in Brazil to conclude a fuel-swapping deal.
The deal effectively allowed Iran to continue
enriching uranium for a nuclear weapon. With
this newly formed alliance, the mullahs would
be able to avoid even the ineffective sanctions
that the Obama administration had finally
come around to considering.46

Turkey’s embrace of the Middle East’s

Islamist axis – Syria, Iran, Lebanon, the West
Bank and Gaza – occurred simultaneously
with an international conference to review the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. With the
United States standing idly by, the conference
ignored the chief proliferator, Iran, while
singling out Israel as the principal nuclear
threat.

These ominous developments were the

immediate background to the brazen attempt
by Hamas and its new patron, Turkey, to
break the arms blockade of Gaza, which was
a joint effort by Israel and Egypt to prevent
weapons from being smuggled into the
46 http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/06/01/brazils-
foreign-minister-says-nation-oppose-respect-new-iran-
sanctions/

44
terrorist state. The six ships that attempted to
run the blockade departed from Istanbul and
flew under Turkish flags. The flotilla political
camouflage – it described its mission as
“humanitarian” – was provided by a Turkish
non-governmental organization associated
with the United Nations and known by the
acronym “IHH.” Posing as a humanitarian
aid group, the IHH is a well-documented ally
of Hamas and al-Qaeda, and was identified
in the trial of the “millennium bomber” as
playing a key role in the plot to blow up Los
Angeles airport. The real mission of the flotilla
– to break the weapons blockade – was made
transparent when it refused Israel’s offer to
unload any humanitarian aid it was carrying
at the secure port of Ashdod.

On board one of the vessels, the Mavi

Marmara were active Turkish terrorists who
had been allowed to board without inspection
in Istanbul and had vowed on departure to
become jihadist martyrs.47 The terrorist’s
armed themselves with steel pipes and knives,
and were prepared to attack any Israeli soldiers
47 http://israelmatzav.blogspot.com/2010/06/idf-names-
five-terrorists-on-mavi.html

45
who boarded the vessel to enforce the blockade.
A principal organizer of the operation was the
Free Gaza Movement, which had attempted
to break the blockade the previous June.
Among its leaders were two close friends and
political allies of President Obama, former
Weather Underground terrorists, William
Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who paid a
visit to the leader of Hamas after the effort
failed.48 Also among its company were major
Obama donor and supporter Jodie Evans and
Saddam Hussein supporter and founder of the
pro-Hamas group Viva Palestine, British MP
George Galloway, along with many other pro-
Hamas activists.49

Prior to the incident, the Obama White

House had exerted serious pressure on Israel
to exercise maximum restraint. Consequently,
Israeli authorities did not equip the commandos
who boarded the ship with riot gear and tear
gas, and their side arms were holstered.50 They
descended from a helicopter armed with paint
48 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/
beltway-confidential/ayers-dohrn-helped-organize-flotilla-
group-95435639.html
49 Ibid.
50 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/01/2915586.htm

46
ball guns, which proved ineffective against
the steel bars and knives. They were quickly
overwhelmed by what the media would
insist on describing as “peace” activists, who
stabbed them, beat them with the steel pipes,
threw one of them off the deck and stole two
firearms which they began shooting until the
other soldiers were able to draw their side
arms and fight back. Nine of the belligerents
aboard were killed and others wounded; also
wounded were six Israeli soldiers, two of
whom were in critical condition.51

An attempt to run a wartime blockade

would in other circumstances have resulted
in a full armed naval assault. Israel’s
restraint was rewarded by international
media and governments alike describing the
confrontation as a brutal attempt to block a
humanitarian aid effort. Jihadists immediately
seized on the event to further their campaign
to de-legitimize the Jewish state. This effort
was led by Turkey, the very country behind
the provocation and thus responsible for the
deaths.
51 http://www.aipnews.com/talk/forums/thread-view.
asp?tid=14674&posts=2

47
 Prime Minister Erdogan denounced Israel
as guilty of “state terrorism” and called the
efforts of the Israelis to defend themselves
a “bloody massacre.” He then claimed “The
heart of humanity has taken one of the heaviest
wounds in history.”52 (This was from a man
who the previous year had defended Sudanese
president Omar al-Bashir when he was
indicted by the International Criminal Court
for killing half a million Sudanese Christians
and non-Arab Muslims.) Erdogan called for a
jihad against Israel, and threatened that the
Turkish navy would escort the next attempt to
run the blockade. This threat was seconded by
Iran, which vowed to send two “humanitarian
aid” ships under escort by the Iranian navy. If
carried out, this threat would be, in effect, a
declaration of war.53

In Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, a leader

of the terrorist organization Fatah, Mounir al-
Makdah, said, “The freedom flotilla brings a
message of the beginning of the end of Israel.”
He announced plans for a mass invasion on
Israel’s northern border, using civilians as
52 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3899490,00.html
53 http://ht.ly/1WdvU

48
human shields. “It could be that they will just
break through the border, with their children
and their elderly;” he explained, “What will
Israel be able to do? Even if they kill all those
who take part in the march, the number of
remaining Palestinians will still be more than
all the Jews in the world.”54

Far from voicing alarm at the jihadist

threats or disapproval of Turkey’s aggression,
the international community expressed its
sympathy for the Islamist runners of the arms
blockade. France’s president Nicolas Sarkozy
deplored Israel’s “disproportionate use of
force,” while Italy’s undersecretary of state for
foreign affairs, Stefania Craxi joined the Turks
in condemning what she called “the massacre
of Gaza.” U.N. secretary general Ban Ki-moon
joined in, declaring himself “shocked” at
Israel’s actions.55

President Obama also failed to condemn

Turkey’s role in the incident, and insisted

54 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.
aspx/137992
55 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870356
1604575282740991794622.html

49
instead that Israel allow an international body
to investigate its actions. Obama then met with
Mahmoud Abbas, to promise $400 million in
economic aid to the West Bank and to Gaza
-- in other words to shore up the terrorist state
and its ruling terrorist party. At the same time,
senior officials of the Obama administration
began telling foreign governments that the
United States would support a U.N. resolution
calling for a commission to investigate Israel’s
(but not Turkey’s or Hamas’s) role in the
incident.56
This paved the way for a reprise of the
Goldstone report, which had relied on Hamas
sources to condemn Israel’s defensive war in
Gaza the previous year. It was essentially a
demand that Israel’s right to self-defense be
subject to international approval –something
no sovereign country could be expected
to tolerate.57 At the same time, the Obama
administration was leaning on Israel to end
its naval blockade in favor of some “new
approach,” such as an international naval

56 http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sources-obama-
administration-support-anti-israel-resolution-un-next-week
57 http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/03/israel-gaza-blockade-
obama-opinions-contributors-anne-bayefsky.html

50
force.58 This was an even more direct assault
on Israel’s right to self-defense. Not only did it
challenge Israel’s fully justified efforts to keep
arms and bomb-making materials out of the
hands of the Hamas terrorists, but it shifted
responsibility for Israel’s security to the
same international community that was now
savaging the Jewish state for its efforts to stop
the flow of arms into the hands of Hamas.

During the year and a half Obama has been

in office so far, he has indeed brought change to
America and to the world. He has transformed
a nation that had been the world’s bulwark of
democracy and freedom into an enabler of
the very forces that are intent on destroying
them. He has helped to isolate America’s only
ally in the Middle East, its sole democracy and
most vulnerable people. And he has brought
the impending war of annihilation against the
“crusaders” and the Jews, which the jihadists
have promised, measurably closer to its
nightmare fruition.

58 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/04/world/
middleeast/04flotilla.html?pagewanted=1&hp

51
David Horowitz is the founder of the David
Horowitz Freedom Center.

Jacob Laksin is managing editor of

Frontpage Magazine. He is co-author, with
David Horowitz, of One-Party Classroom:
How Radical Professors at America’s
Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and
Undermine Our Democracy.

52