Recently, I attended a conference for Jewish educators in Fort Lee.
Sponsored by Avi Chai and the Schusterman Foundations, we were being trained to help our day school and yeshiva high school students better prepare for college campus issues they might run squarely into.
Namely BDS.
Already, the misinformation, the hateful shout downs, the co-opting of words like “genocide,” “apartheid” and even “occupation” has positioned Jewish students who have even the slightest attachment to Israel in the center of anti-Semitism’s vicious target.
On Friday, the outgoing President and his administration made life on American campuses and European campuses even more precarious. His ongoing snit with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu gave him license to take this nation’s far and away best friend in the region, if not the world, and throw it under the bus.
If you feel the world powers of Russia and China had receding respect for President Obama and this nation, it now watched as the U.S. stood by and did nothing for Israel.
I do not deny that the issue of West Bank settlements continues, yet as long as the Palestinians refuse to come to the peace table without anything other than the right of return on their plate, then settlements are not the real issue. Twice in this new century, Israel offered up peace in exchange for West Bank territory. The Palestinians balked.
But let’s get up to date. Because when thugs like Omar Bargouti, one of the BDS founders, calls for the occupation to end, he’s not referring to land taken by Israel after it was attacked by the then Soviet Union-backed Arab armies of Egypt, Syria and Jordan. No, he is referring to the state given the Jews by UN Resolution 181 back in 1947.
“From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.” This is what the Students for Justice in Palestine shout on the campuses at Jewish students and others. And sometimes, naïve Jewish students shout this as well.
The non-veto on Friday simply validates the cause of these hateful, uninformed people, and I believe places Jewish students in danger.
The non-veto will also empower those who use knives, cars, ball-bearing bombs and other weapons to kill and injure Jews who do live in Judea and Samaria. And why not, even the President of the United States didn’t offer his protection with just mere days left in his administration.
Meanwhile we still wait for this President and, for that matter, the UN, and let’s throw in college activists, who seem to continue their hatred towards Israel while Russia and the Assad regime killed children, targeted hospitals as it barrel bombed into submission Aleppo, once one of this civilization’s most historic cities.
No word, no action.
Instead a veto impacting Israel and those who support and love the Jewish State.
This is how it ends, President Obama. Eight years. When you first ran, I was so proud to vote for your understanding the historical significance of your victory. I voted for you again in 2012, but I had no idea that, over time, you would turn away from Israel.
On Friday, this nation, under your direction, turned its back on the State of Israel.
If one Jewish student is hurt or if a Jew on the West Bank is injured because of your Friday action, for that I will never forgive you.
