I too have issues with Obama, but I also had issues with Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and I never thought to harbor the kind of hateful thoughts about them that so many of us seem to harbor toward Obama.
I’ve never seen a president – liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican – demonized on such a level by so many in the frum community. I’m sorry, but this has to go beyond mere disagreement over policy. What is it about the man that makes so many of us so crazy? I have my suspicions, but I won’t spell them out here. What I will say is that I appreciate the editorials in The Jewish Press that take Obama to task in no uncertain terms but that do it respectfully. You never resort to name-calling and you have not hesitated to say positive things about Obama if you feel he’s earned that praise.
To those who say Obama hates Israel, I say prove it. Even in his much-maligned Cairo speech in 2009, Obama told the Arab world that the bonds between the U.S. and Israel were unbreakable. Since then he’s increased the level of defense and intelligence aid and cooperation between the U.S. and Israel to unprecedented levels; stood with Israel during the Goldstone Report controversy; backed Israel over the Gaza flotilla incident; urged Congress to fund Israel’s Iron Dome project; stood against the whole world in preventing the formation of a Palestinian state last fall and then went into the lion’s den – the United Nations – and gave a speech that was more pro-Israel than anything any previous American president ever said at the UN.
And as much as I disagree with Obama’s positions on settlements and the ’67 lines, they have been U.S. policy for more than 40 years; every previous president has pressured Israel on settlements and has envisioned a peace agreement based on the ’67 lines with adjustments. Some referred to those adjustments as accommodating reality on the ground while others called them land swaps, but basically the idea was that the negotiations would involve to one extent or another the territories in Judea and Samaria that Israel won in the Six-Day War.
I happen to be a conservative Republican who voted against Obama in 2008 and will do so again later this year, but I can’t stand the ignorance and hate that too may frum Jews exhibit when it comes to the man.
Howard Feinberg
(Via E-Mail)
