“For there is no sincerity on their lips; their heart is filled with malice; their throat is an open grave; their tongue slippery.” (Psalms 5:10)
“Drink waters from your own cistern, running water from your own well.” (Proverbs 5:15) JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh
I refrained until after the chag to read the text of Obama’s speech which he recently delivered at Washington’s Adas Israel synagogue. Since anything related to Obama is antithetical to the concept of simchat yom tov (celebrating the festival), I was unwilling to subject myself to Obama’s trademark falsehood, and the grotesque spectacle of liberal Jews groveling before the duplicitous anti-Semite in chief. So the newspaper sat in the corner until Monday morning.
There were no surprises. True to form, Obama used his not inconsiderable skills of deception and deflection to flatter the fawning, adoring, liberal Jewish audience, who sat enraptured throughout the speech. In truth, Obama never really has to worry about his support among American Jews, who go gaga for him and above all remain “Liberals of the Mosaic Persuasion.” Since his first presidential campaign, liberal American Jewry mirrored their gentile counterparts by ignoring Obama’s close friendships with anti-Semites, and creating ridiculous excuses for him. This is in line with the unwritten rule among liberal Jews which hearkens back to the 1960’s. Never call a black anti-Semite an anti-Semite, lest people think you are racist. (After all, “what will the goyim say”?) The irony of such undignified behavior is that it renders the purported liberal a genuine racist, albeit a liberal one with a patronizing angle, since it sets a lower standard of decency for those of a different color.
It’s not only black anti-Semites, though. All anti-Semitic democrats get a pass. Once upon a time, Hillary Clinton kissed Suhah Arafat, moments after the latter publicly hurled a Middle Age blood libel at Israel. Despite this incident which was widely covered in the media, it wasn’t long before the Hadassah organization degraded itself and saw fit to honor Clinton. Hillary never suffered a whit from her actions, nor from similar incidents which fed fuel to the charge of anti-Semitism. Similarly, Obama can skate from any sin as long as he periodically sits down with the elitists of liberal Jewry and uses his practiced forked tongue to sanitize his ugly past. You will recall, that shortly after the Reverend Wright scandal became a thorn in Obama’s side (during his first campaign), he responded with a speech which deflected the whole glaring issue of his own personal friendship with such a man, and instead waxed poetic about race in general. Liberals were in ecstasy, calling it one of the greatest speeches about race in U.S. history. People of honesty and intellect saw what he had done. But it was too late.
Dissecting the text of any Obama speech is a frustrating ordeal, since it requires one to immerse himself in a sea of distortions, half-truths, and lies, for the sake of exposing falsehood. People are often dazzled by demagogues with the gift of speech, and Obama is a gifted orator when it comes to reading off a functional teleprompter or a carefully prepared speech. Such forums are ideal for demagogues, where there is no occasion to contest specific points or request clarification. In any event, Obama’s speech to the congregants of Adas Israel was an exercise in preaching to parishioners. They were enthralled.
Flattery of the Snake
Obama is crafty and his talented speech writers are adept at maximizing his skills. We can be certain that Obama knew nothing of the festival of Shavuot before he ever looked at his prepared speech. And while terms such as “tikkun olam” and references to “oppressing the stranger” are cliché in progressive Jewish circles, Obama’s writers knew their audience well enough to craft a narrative of social justice and then turn it on the audience in the most subtle manner. The trick is to adhere to certain rules, and then create false associations.