Our World: Standing on a landmine

By CAROLINE B. GLICK
08/17/2010 03:38

Obama’s stance on the Ground Zero mosque should

signal to Israel that the president is so wed to his
ideology that he will push it regardless of political
conditions.

Talkbacks (140) US President Barack Obama’s warm

endorsement of the plan to build a mosque by theruins
of the World Trade Center tells Israel – and its enemies
– everything we need to know about the president of the
United States of America.

Speaking during a Ramadan fast breaking meal at the

White House to an audience of people affiliated with
various Muslim Brotherhood- related groups in the US,
Obama couched his support for the mosque at Ground
Zero in constitutional terms.

In his words, “As a citizen, and as president, I believe

that Muslims have the same right to practice their
religion as everyone else in this country. And that in
cludes the right to build a place of worship and a
community center on private property in Lower
Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and
ordinances.

This is America. Our commitment to religious freedom

must be unshakable. The principle that people of all
faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not
be treated differently by their government is essential
to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.”
Of course, none of those who have voiced opposition to
the mosque project at Ground Zero have claimed that
the Islamic group behind the mosque project is acting
unlawfully in seeking to construct a mosque.

The nearly 70 percent of Americans who oppose

building a mosque at Ground Zero oppose the mosque
because they believe it is wrong to build a mosque at
the site where less than a decade ago Muslims acting in
the name of Islam murdered nearly 3,000 people in an
act of war against the US and an act of terror against
the American people. Obama has been pilloried by his
opponents for his position.

And his fellow Democrats, facing the likelihood of

massive defeats in the Congressional elections in three
months, are reportedly deeply frustrated by his
statements. Indeed, the uproar Obama’s pro-mosque
remarks has unleashed has been so harsh it raises the
question of why he made it. THERE ARE two possible
explanations for Obama’s move. Either he was
motivated by politics or he was motivated by ideology.
The view that Obama was motivated by politics is
easily dismissed.

With more than two-thirds of Americans telling pollsters

they oppose the Ground Zero mosque project, it makes
no political sense for a politician to strike out a position
in favor of the mosque. Indeed, major Democrats have
either refused to state a position on the issue or, like
New York Governor David Paterson, they have
recommended that the mosque builders construct their
mosque elsewhere.

Perhaps Obama thought he could he could get away

with making his statement. However, with his polling
numbers consistently eroding, it is hard to imagine
Obama’s advisers would have told him that was a
realistic view. This leaves ideology.

But what ideology motivates Obama to embrace such

an unpopular initiative at such an explosive political
juncture? Obama and his supporters would like us to
believe this is a civil rights issue. In his defense of the
Ground Zero mosque, Obama claimed his position was
based on the American values such as, “The laws that
we apply without regard to race, or religion, or wealth,
or status.

Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect

towards those who are different from us.” But if Obama
is motivated by a belief in civil rights that is so strong it
propels him to take on deeply unpopular causes in an
election season, then one could reasonably expect that
his support for civil rights would be absolute.

That is,one could expect him to use the same yardstick

for all groups, in all places an d at all times. But for
Obama, there are some groups who must be denied the
same civil rights he upholds as absolute in his defense
of the plan to build a mosque e at Ground Zero.
As Obama has made clear since his first days in office,
he believes that Jews should be denied the right to
their property in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria simply
because they are Jews.

OBAMA IS so firm in his belief that Jews should be

denied civil rights in Israel’s capital and in the
heartland of Jewish history that he has provoked
multiple crises in his relations with Israel to advance
this bigoted view. Almost from his first day in office
Obama has struck out a radical position in which he has
insisted that Jews must be prohibited from building
anything – synagogues, homes, nurseries, schools – in
Judea, Jerusalem and Samaria on land they own. Jews
– Israeli and non-Israeli – should be barred from
exercising their property rights even if their
construction plans have already been approved “in
accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

At the same time, Obama has insisted that Israel take

no action to enforce its “local laws and ordinances”
against illegal structures built by Arabs in Jerusalem,
Judea, or Samaria. Next month the deeply
discriminatory and legally dubious 10-month
moratorium on Jewish building in Judea and Samaria
that Obama coerced Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu into instituting is set to end.

So now Obama is putting the full weigh t of the White

House on Israel to again coerce Netanyahu into
prolonging the discriminatory ban that denies the civil
rights and property rights of Jews simply because they
are Jewish. Obama claims to be embracing the
nullification of Jewish civil right in the interests of
peace. In his stated view, to forge peace in the Middle
East it is necessary for the Palestinians to achieve
statehood. But it hard to see how the establishment of
a Palestinian state squares with Obama’s purported
dedication to civil rights.

In a briefing with the Egyptian media last week

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas told reporters that
no Jews will be allowed to live in a future Palestinian
state. He also said that while he would agree to allow
NATO forces to deploy in the future Palestinian state,
he would not permit any Jewish soldiers to serve in the
NATO units stationed on the territory of such a state.

As he put it, “I will not agree that there will be Jews

among NATO forces and I will not allow even one
Israeli to live amongst us on the Palestinian soil. ”The
notion that an inherently anti-Semitic Palestinian state,
predicated on Jew hatred that strong, could possibly
live at peace with Israel is simply ridiculous.

But tellingly, in all the American pressure that has been

placed on Abbas tobegin direct negotiations with Israel,
at no time has the administration been re ported to
have insisted that Abbas abandon his anti-Semitism.
Obama has made no statement addressing the fact that
the Palestinians demand that Jews be barred from
living in the future Palestinian state. He has certainly
not objected to this position although it squares with
none of the American values of tolerance and property
rights he upheld so strongly in his remarks on the
Ground Zero mosque. SO THE ideology Obama holds so
strongly that it provokes him to take positions
antithetical to the political interests of his party during
an election season is not civil rights.

Rather it has to do with his commitment to advancing

the interests of a specific group or groups over the
interests of other specific groups. In the case of the
Ground Zero mosque he prefers the rights of Muslims
over the values of the overwhelming majority of
Americans. In the case of the Palestinians, he prefers
their anti-Semitic nationalism over the civil rights of
Jews.

Obama’s behavior tells Israel’s leaders something very

important about how they should think about their
relations with the Obama administration. It tells them
that Obama is so wed to his ideology that he will push it
regardless of political conditions.

This means that for Israel, dealing with Obama is like

standing on a landmine. Just as a landmine can explode
at any minute, Obama can attack Israel a t any moment.
He is so ideologically bound to the Palestinian cause
against Israel that he is liable to provoke a crisis when
it is least politically advantageous – from his
perspective – for him to do so. This lesson is
particularly urgent on the eve of yet another round of
direct negotiations with the Palestinians and as the
freeze on Jewish property rights is a bout to expire.
Obama’s ideological fanaticism means that nothing
Israel does in the upcoming talks will help us. As
Obama’s media surrogates like Tony Karon at Time
magazine have made clear in recent weeks, the anti-
Israel narrative has already coalesced.

Everything that happens regarding those negotiations is

Israel’s fault. It is Israel’s fault that they haven’t begun.
It will be Israel’s fault when they falter. It will be
Israel’s fault when they fail. And if they succeed, Israel
will still be blameworthy.

Facing this US President and his radical ideology,

Netanyahu and his deputies must understand that they
cannot appease him. They cannot convince him of
Israel’s good intentions.

The US leader who has rejected the expressed views of

68 percent of his fellow citizens in favor of the
construction of a mosque at Ground Zero is not going to
be moved by reason. The American president who
defends the Ground Zero mosque builders even though
their leader refuses to acknowledge that Hamas is a
terrorist organization and has claimed that the US had
the Sept. 11 attacks coming to it; and the American
president who upholds the Palestinian cause even
though it is virulently, and often genocidally anti-
Semitic is not going to be appeased by Israeli building
freezes and other confidence building gestures.

What this means is that Netanyahu and his deputies

must concentrate on defending Israel and advancing its
national interests. It is in Israel’s national interests to
guarantee the civil rights and property rights of Jews. It
is in Israel’s national interests to forthrightly set out
and defend Israel’s legal rights in Judea and Samaria
and its sovereignty in united Jerusalem.

It is in Israel’s national interest to enforce its laws

without prejudice towards all its citizens and expect all
its citizens to respect its laws. We are dealing with a
self-consciously radical President who intends to
remake the US relationship with the Muslim world. We
will find no understanding from him

caroline@carolineglick.co