Thursday, March 19, 2015
From: Gary L. Bauer
Playing The Race Card
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest played the race card against Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday. During a press briefing with reporters aboard Air Force One, Earnest went out of his way to criticize Israel’s newly-elected leader. After answering a question about communications with Hillary Clinton’s staff, Earnest added this:
“There’s one other thing that I anticipated might come up that I just did want to mention as it relates to the Israeli elections. Specifically, there has been a lot of coverage in the media about some of the rhetoric that emerged yesterday that was propagated by the Likud Party to encourage turnout of their supporters that sought to, frankly, marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens. . . . this administration is deeply concerned by divisive rhetoric that seeks to marginalize Arab-Israeli citizens.”
The rhetoric Earnest is referring to was this message Netanyahu posted on his Facebook page after getting reports of massive Arab-Israeli turnout: “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are going en masse to the polls. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them on buses.”
Does Earnest have any idea what he is talking about? He is accusing the most democratic nation in the Middle East of violating equal rights and the rules of democracy. By the way, the Senate has launched an investigation into how State Department funds (your tax dollars) were spent by those left-wing non-governmental organizations.
Moreover, the results of the election suggest this is a non-issue: The Arab bloc is now the third largest political force in the Israeli parliament — behind Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party and the opposition Zionist Union.
When administration officials play the race card they are trying to delegitimize the results. They are taking a page right out of the radical left’s playbook, most often used by extreme activists on our university campuses who condemn Israel as an illegitimate apartheid state.
I could ask that President Obama demand Hamas stop marginalizing its Jewish citizens in Gaza, but there aren’t any — alive or dead. All of them had to be evacuated (yes, even the graves of dead Jews) not because they wouldn’t be allowed to vote, but because they would have been killed and the graves would have been desecrated.
No Time To Call
During his remarks to reporters yesterday, Earnest made it clear that the president has not found time yet to pick up the phone and congratulate the newly-elected prime minister of Israel, our most reliable ally in the Middle East. Earnest said he expected the president would make a call “in the coming days.”
Make no mistake about why Obama is finding this so hard to do. Netanyahu not only beat Obama, but in the process he exposed the terrible nuclear deal Obama is ready to make with Iran. He also exposed the ludicrous demands for a Palestinian state in the middle of a region where such a state would quickly become just another jihadist nation dedicated to Israel’s destruction and ours.
Yet as irritating as this is, much worse may be coming. Politico reports that administration officials may punish Israel by no longer blocking anti-Israel resolutions at U.N. forums.
The dictators and thugs who run some of the U.N.’s international bodies must be salivating at the chance to attack Israel.
Terror In Tunisia
The Islamic State is claiming responsibility for yesterday’s terrorist attack in Tunisia that killed 23 people and left 44 wounded. The attack was clearly aimed against the values of our civilization.
Most of the victims were foreign tourists visiting the Bardo National Museum, known for its collection of Greek and Roman artifacts. In its message taking credit for this slaughter, ISIS called the attack a “blessed invasion of one of the dens of infidels and vice in Muslim Tunisia.”
The Arab Spring, which many heralded at the time, began in Tunisia. Despite the unrest that rages in Libya, Tunisia had been relatively free of such violence. But it now seems the Islamic State has further extended its tentacles of terror.
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