Some things in life aren’t funny. You don’t snicker when you pass the burning remnants of a fatal car crash. You don’t giggle at pictures of burn victims. And you don’t smile at memorials for those murdered by terrorists. Who smiles at a funeral, save for a psychopath?
If you cropped the photo (and didn’t recognize the identity), you might assume you were viewing a picture of a happy older gentleman attending a family celebration. Zoom Out. A deranged smirk on the face of one attending a rally/march for those recently butchered by Muhammed’s disciples in France. A portrait of the Fatah terrorist Mahmoud Abbas (yemach shmo vzichro) reveling with ghoulish delight at the irony of the pornographic spectacle. How would liberals react if a smiling Klansman with blood on his hands attended a rally for MLK Jr.?
The photographs of Abbas’ wicked smirk are maddening. The world is blind to his evil. He continues to get away with murder. One who warrants nothing other than a bullet to his cranium, is celebrated as a moderate political leader, even though his blood crazed people represent the very essence of a mythology turned into history.
Juxtapose the reaction Abbas received from the European leadership to Netanyahu’s more bitter reception. Judging from French President Francois Holland’s desire to keep him away, you might think that Bibi was the serial murderer of innocents. Yet in the eyes of the European leadership, this is precisely how they view him.
Nothing to Gain
Many Jews were pleased to see that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended the recent unity march in Paris. Not I. It pained me. As I see it, Netanyahu should have stayed at home. Nothing good came out of his participation. Contrary to the misguided belief of too many Jews, his actions were not expressions of strength but of weakness and moral confusion. All we saw at the event was further evidence of the depth of European anti-Semitism. What was the purpose of the march? Certainly not to show support for the Jewish State and Jewish dignity. Their collective desire to keep Bibi away was precisely because they didn’t want the event to be associated in any way with the State of Israel. It was a typical response to terrible tragedies. Citizens of France, Jew and Gentile alike, were butchered by Muslims, and the deluded European leadership chose the histrionics of a meaningless event, rather than face the disease of Islam that is rapidly consuming Europe. The last person they wanted to see was Netanyahu. And why was it necessary to attend? A union of evil people is an event to boycott.
In addition to President Holland’s wish, the rest of the Arab pandering anti-Semitic European leadership also didn’t want Netanyahu in attendance. The fact that a Prime Minister of Israel had to fight his way to the front of the march is the stuff of grotesque farce. It should tell us something. Nothing has changed in Europe. The Jew is still the villain. Once upon a time we were christ-killers, host desecrators, rapists of christian women, drinkers of gentile blood. Financiers, bankers, and crafty usurers. In the eyes of much of the world we are still these things. Yet the moral relativism of contemporary socialist Europe provides a newer convenient vehicle for respectable modern anti-Semites to articulate age old hatreds; the Jew as a racist “Zionist Occupier.” That was the real lesson on display in France. Netanyahu’s hosts viewed him as a pariah, while they welcomed a terrorist with open arms. Netanyahu was the ghoul in residence.
The typical nebbish Jewish response to such sentiments is that Bibi had no choice but to attend. That “real-politik” doesn’t allow for such moral hair-splitting at such times. That those of us who denigrate his decision lack the political sophistication to understand the situation. I disagree vociferously. Precisely at such moments, true leaders take a stand. Any event which in part memorializes those who were slaughtered as Jews, should naturally be a forum for the leader of the Jewish State to attend. Those who attempt to isolate a Jewish Prime Minister from such an event expose their motives. And when a stubborn PM insists on his attendance and the price of entry is a similar invite to an Arab terrorist, such an event is one that no self-respecting, moral person (not to mention national leader!) should attend.
Of course this could never happen since Netanyahu is committed (even theoretically) to working a “peace deal” with Abbas and the PA leadership. He has nothing to say to these European clowns who watch on the sidelines as Islam devours their countries. The PA=Fatah=the PLO, yet since that black day in 1994, Israel has perpetuated the myth of moderate Arab peace partners and sacrificed thousands of Jewish lives on its pagan altar. Why wouldn’t they invite Abbas? They view him as a freedom fighter! As they see it (and their duplicitous European sensitivities have learned to mask their true sentiments), Netanyahu is the colonizer (JEW!) who murders innocent children in Gaza.
Once upon a time, no leftist politician would dare sit down with Arafat or pay lip service to the mythos of “a Palestinian people.” They were correctly sickened by the actions of Neturei Karta defectives who met with the Arab Hitler. Until the day that they decided to do likewise. The Left’s lunacy of yesteryear is the current platform for all mainstream politicians in Israel, and the end result is that too many Israelis today see Abbas as a moderate rather than a Holocaust denying Arab terrorist with much Jewish blood on his hands. What can one expect from such clueless leadership, save for the enduring shame and degradation on the international stage?
Netanyahu’s European hosts are partners in the slaughter of Jews. They never tire from stepping on Israel’s throat and demanding justice for mythical “Palestinians.” The EU uses every resource to cripple us. A true Jewish leader would have stayed home and cited the presence of terrorists and the enablers of terrorists as the reason. An argument can certainly be said that it would have been important to visit France for the sole purpose of standing with the Jewish community to memorialize the dead. I would agree with that. But to attend a unity march with those who would see Israel destroyed? Madness!
Ironically, Netanyahu and his cadre continue to demonize and harass the noble Lehava organization who fight the scourge of intermarriage in Israel, yet Abbas and his armed band of Fatah killers are deemed potential “peace partners” of the future. True Jewish leadership continues to be banned from the political arena, while Arab MKs spew incitement against Jews from the Knesset floor.
The greatest danger we face in Israel is internal. It has always been that way. Moral confusion. The notion that perhaps the Arabs have a claim similar to ours. And the inevitable next step that the next generation always takes. Perhaps we are the aggressors? When we finally heal the sick within our own camp, by casting out the toxic leftist ideologies that are warping the Jewish mind and soul, the Arabs will be a cake-walk for us. In the interim, we must endure the unendurable. Netanyahu remains obsessed with obtaining the unattainable love from the European Union and the rest of the Jew hating European world. Those with a modicum of Jewish self-respect watched another grotesque spectacle of Jewish weakness last week. Just another day of clinical madness in the Bedlam of contemporary Israeli society.
Moral man wants to see justice meted out on this earth, even as the G-d fearing firmly believe that no one gets away with anything in life. Yet the reality of evil men going unpunished on this earth is upsetting, since it distorts the fabric of a sane functional society. Similarly, when evil is celebrated, we find ourselves in a world of Sodom inspired anarchy. And yet Israel has no one to blame but herself. The legacy of European anti-semitism is an enduring one, and one needn’t refer to history books. A trip to Paris is all it takes.
To the Jews of France who still feel French even with the sword at their throats, and Heaven Forbid would stay with the sinking ship: Get out of Europe now! Islam is rising. The native Europeans who have more pets than babies will become a relic within a decade or two; fossilized frogs, if you will. And while France bleeds, the home-grown anti-semites will feed French Jewry to the flames of Islam on the altar of a false enlightenment.