On Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry told the Trilateral Commission that Israel would turn into “an apartheid state” unless it made concessions to the Palestinians – the same Palestinians who just signed a peace deal between the Palestinian Authority and internationally recognized terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The same Palestinians who have stated time and again that they will not accept the existence of a Jewish state.
Kerry went on to state that Israel risked more violence if it didn’t make concessions, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was an impediment to peace, and that he would attempt his own two-state solution. Both sides, he said, would have to “take it or leave it.”
This is pure anti-Semitism. Blaming Israel for its incapacity to make peace with people whose stated goal is to murder Jews cannot be construed as anything other than Jew-hatred. Likening the Jewish state to South Africa, despite the fact that there are well over a million Arab citizens with full voting rights, and despite the fact that the Palestinian territories are completely Judenrein, is more of the same.
Upon tape of his remarks hitting the press, Kerry immediately backtracked, stating, “I will not allow my commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly for partisan, political purposes…” He then disclaimed that he ever said Israel was an apartheid state, and said, “if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term to have a Jewish state and two nations and two people is through a two state solution.”
Sadly, Kerry is simply not believable at this point. The Obama administration has demonstrated a consistent pattern of anti-Semitic rhetoric – even aside from their practical undermining of any Israeli attempt to stop the Iranian nuclear program with repeated national security leaks. It peppers the top ranks of the Obama White House. Here are some of the top examples:
UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s “Massive Protection Force.” In 2002, Power explained that to protect the Palestinians, the United States would have to place a “mammoth protection force” on the ground in Israel.
Chuck Hagel’s Anti-Semitism. The new Secretary of Defense has a long history of anti-Semitic activities, including telling the “Jews to pay” for the USO’s Haifa retreat, refusing to back action against Russia’s rising anti-Semitism in 1999, refusing to condemn Yasser Arafat’s 2000 Intifada, and stating in 2007, “The State Department has become adjunct to the Israeli foreign minister’s office.”
National Security Advisor Susan Rice’s Anti-Israel Diatribe. In 2011, as the United States rejected yet another in the endless stream of anti-Israel UN resolutions, then-UN Ambassador Rice delivered a sermon about the evils of Israeli settlement activity:
[O]ur opposition to the resolution before this council today should … not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity….On the contrary, we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity. For more than four decades, Israeli settlement activity in territories occupied in 1967 has undermined Israel’s security and corroded hopes for peace and stability in the region. Continued settlement activity violates Israel’s international commitments, devastates trust between the parties, and threatens the prospects for peace.
In other words, it’s Israel’s fault. One wonders what exactly Israel did to earn Arab enmity between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip and Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria.
Hillary Clinton’s Comments About Israeli Lack of Empathy. In December 2012, Hillary told the 2012 Saban Forum on US-Israel Relations that Israel didn’t care enough about the Palestinians:
I’m not making excuses for the missed opportunities of the Israelis, or the lack of generosity, the lack of empathy that I think goes hand-in-hand with the suspicion. So, yes, there is more that the Israelis need to do to really demonstrate that they do understand the pain of an oppressed people in their minds, and they want to figure out, within the bounds of security and a Jewish democratic state, what can be accomplished.
Characterizing Israel as unfeeling while Israel has made concession after concession to an implacable enemy is beyond sickening. But we should expect nothing less from the woman who once hugged Suha Arafat.
Barack Obama’s Threat of Boycott. Obama’s first call in office was to PA’s Abbas. He still has not cut off aid to the PA, even after their peace deal with Hamas. In 2009, Obama stated that he wanted to put “daylight” between the US and Israel.
In March, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote of an interview he did with Obama in which Obama mirrored Kerry’s disreputable comments. Goldberg, an Obama defender, even stated that Obama had issued a “veiled threat” against Israel. Obama stated:
If you see no peace deal and continued aggressive settlement construction — and we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we’ve seen in a very long time. If Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited.
John Kerry’s Repeated Threats Against Israel. In November, Kerry stated that Israel would face a “third Intifada” if it did not make concessions to the Palestinians. In January, he stated that Israel would face delegitimization and boycott.
Kerry’s denials of anti-Semitism ring hollow. So do this administration’s.
Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.