UPDATE 7/25: Caroline further expounds on her remarks last night concerning Obamania. Today's NRO:
Political Messiah in the Holy Land
Obama in the Mideast
Kathryn Jean Lopez: Am I wrong in saying that Barack Obama did not
impress Israel?
Caroline Glick:
Israelis are very caught up with our local news right now. Foremost on
our national agenda are the seven criminal probes being carried out against
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the political maneuvering surrounding those
investigations, and the expectation of new elections or some governmental
shake-up in the wake of Olmert’s likely indictment on fraud charges.
Consequently, Obama’s visit didn’t evoke any deep-seated interest in Israel.
At the same time, he didn’t make any serious mistakes during his visit
so to the extent he made any impression, he made a positive one. There is
trepidation in Israel about the statements he has made about Iran and the
division of Jerusalem and his associations with anti-Semites like Rev. Jeremiah
Wright. But the media wasn’t given much opportunity to challenge him on these
points and so the trepidation was not dispelled. But again, Israelis by and
large just weren’t that into him.
Lopez:
What was the point of the trip there so far as you can tell?
Glick: The point of the trip was clearly to shore
up support for Obama among American Jewish voters. It is hard to know whether he
was successful in doing so or not, although he certainly didn’t hurt himself
among those who already support him.
His repeated assertions of his
commitment to Israel’s security were repeatedly contradicted by the policies he
wishes to adopt if elected. On the one hand he opposes permitting Iran to
acquire nuclear weapons, but on the other hand, he insists that the way to make
this happen is to sit down and talk to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has
made annihilating the Jewish state one of his main goals in office. He says he
understands Israel’s need to protect its citizens from terror attacks but then
he says that Israel’s interests are served by strengthening the Palestinian
terror groups by extending Palestinian sovereignty from Gaza to the West Bank.
Gaza is ruled by jihadists from Hamas who are bankrolled, trained and armed by
Iran. How are Israel’s interests served by importing jihadist control to the
outskirts of Tel-Aviv and to Jerusalem?
Then again, like Israeli Jews,
American Jews are not too caught up in details. He said he supports Israel and
got his picture taken at Yad Vashem and the Wailing Wall wearing a kippa. So he
probably succeeded in pulling more American Jews into his camp of
supporters.
Lopez: How close did
you get to the “messiah”?
Glick: I
generally try to stay as far away as I possibly can from people who say they can
make oceans recede. Our paths didn’t cross. In fact, I managed to be out of the
country on Wednesday.
Lopez: How
did the Palestinians take to him?
Glick: They were certainly gratified that
unlike Senator John McCain, Obama made the trip to Ramallah and had his picture
taken with Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas against the backdrop of Yasser Arafat’s
photograph. It is hard though to know if Obama’s trip changed the Palestinians’
impression of him. It is already clear, and has been for months that the
Palestinians, like the Arab world (minus Iraq) prefer Obama to McCain because
they view him as sympathetic to their war against Israel and their hostility
towards the U.S. and the rest of the West. But he was in Israel for such a short
time that it is hard to say that his visit excited anyone.
Lopez: Does he remind you of anyone?
Glick: Obama acts like a European leader in his
treatment of Israel. On the one hand, he professes this profound respect for
Israel and the Jews, and goes on and on about how our security is important to
him. On the other hand, he espouses policies that undermine Israeli security and
threaten its survival, and demands that the Jewish state become the only state
that turns its other cheek towards our enemies as they try to kill us. This is
the same sort of message that we hear from all Europeans leaders. And it is
tiresome and insulting.
Beyond that, Obama is in a unique situation
because of the adulation he enjoys from the U.S. and Western media. The media is
willing to ignore all of the substantive contradictions inherent in his policy
pronouncements and to base their support for him on a quasi-religious faith. I
don’t remember this ever happening before in an American election — at least not
to the same extent. It is an interesting sociological phenomenon that is worthy
of academic research. On a political level, it makes debate very difficult since
Obama is treated more as a symbol than a politician. And it is hard to debate a
symbol.
Read it all
If you missed tonight's Voices of Freedom show on KFNX with featured guest Caroline Glick, you can download it here: Download 2nd_Show_July_24.mp3 much thanks to Michael for recording :)
And here's the lyrics to the world premiere broadcast of Appeasement by a group of concerned rock stars calling themselves Weapon of Musical Defense (WMD) - I dedicated it to Obamacide
UPDATE: THE WEBSITE IS UP!
Appeasement
Appeasement
Dressed up as
Political compromise
It's
immediate
The benefits seem immediate - And
popular
And tangible - And profitable
Peace at what price? - Good for
elections
But is it not an illusion, are we not kidding ourselves?
Not
just staving off the day of reckoning?
Can evil
Ever be
compromised?
Evil will live on, evil will live on
Evil will live on,
evil will live on
Evil will live on, evil will live on
Evil will live on,
evil will live on
Do we sacrifice our principles?
In
the name of diplomacy
Tolerate blatant intolerance
Shake hands with those
who hate us
Can they ever be satisfied?
Could a
foreign flag yet fly over Paris
London, Rome and Washington
Do they
want to take over, dominate their neighbour, does their teaching
Demand it,
their culture require it?
Has political correctness
Made free men blind?
Could a take over be by stealth, by
demographics
Will democracy last long, or will it
waste, exhaust and
murder itself. Will democracies commit
suicide?
The enemy feels the weakness and they
Teach their
flock
The free world's decadent
and weak and soft
And hedonistic and
corrupt
And materialistic as if they're not
And they should be able to
defeat it.
That's what Hitler and Stalin thought
Let's hope
they
underestimate the will, the resolve
of the free world to defend
itself
That democracies are up to it and strong,
don't
submit,
surrender, don't succumb.
Evil will live on, evil will live on
Evil
will live on, evil will live on
Evil will live on, evil will live on
Evil
will live on, evil will live on
Evil will live on, evil will live
on
The evil that men do
Lives after them