Is Obama familiar with anything that happened in Egypt since his speech? Seriously.I ask you, instead, to think about what can be done to build trust between people.Again, this is from Obama’s big Jerusalem speech and it proves that he either has no clue what happened in Egypt or is just determined to tell insane lies hoping that college students don’t watch the news.
Four years ago I stood in Cairo in front of an audience of young people. Politically, religiously, they must seem a world away. But the things they want — they’re not so different from what the young people here want. They want the ability to make their own decisions and to get an education and to get a good job, to worship God in their own way, to get married, to raise a family. The same is true of those young Palestinians that I met with this morning. The same is true for young Palestinians who yearn for a better life in Gaza.
The outcome of democratic elections in Egypt showed that what they wanted was theocracy, the repression of Christians and women, and a state of sectarian conflict.
They didn’t want to worship God in their own way. They wanted to compel everyone to worship Allah their way.
They didn’t want the ability to make their own decisions, they wanted a theocracy that would make those decisions for them.
Obama’s analogy is dangerously apt. Gaza is run by Hamas, which is the local arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas won the last elections in the Palestinian Authority. If actual elections were held now, Hamas would win them again.
That is why Obama calls on Israelis to trust them, but doesn’t call on his good buddy President Abbas to hold elections that would prove conclusively whether that trust is merited.
Everyone wants a better life. That’s not the question here. The Nazis wanted a better life. The Communists wanted a better life. But they only wanted a better life for themselves.
Obama demands empathy from Israelis but makes no such parallel request of the other side. Most Israelis have wanted the fighting to end for decades. The problem is on the other side. And that is what Obama fails to address.
Wanting a better life is not the same as wanting peace. Wanting a better life for yourself is not the same as a willingness to let someone else have a better life too.
Rather than address the hatred and bigotry on the terrorist side, Obama takes refuge in meaningless words and demands that Israelis show an empathy that has not been and will not be reciprocated. And he uses the meltdown in Egypt to bolster his case where Islamists and their opponents have been fighting it out in the streets.
Obama refuses to learn from history and he insists that Israelis should likewise refuse to learn from history.
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