If Obama Wants To Speak To Israel The Way He Addresses The Muslim World, He Should Follow PM Harper's Example

This week Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Ottawa for the second annual conference of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Antisemitism. Prime Minister Harper spoke out about anti-Semitism:

“Jews today in many parts of the world and many different settings are increasingly subjected to vandalism, threats, slurs, and just plain, old-fashioned lies.

“Let me draw your attention to some particularly disturbing trends. Anti-Semitism has gained a place at our universities, where at times it is not the mob who are removed, but the Jewish students under attack. And, under the shadow of a hateful ideology with global ambitions, one which targets the Jewish homeland as a scapegoat, Jews are savagely attacked around the world, such as, most appallingly, in Mumbai in 2008.

“One ruthless champion of that ideology brazenly threatens to ‘wipe Israel off the map,’ and time and again flouts the obligations that his country has taken under international treaties. I could go on, but I know that you will agree on one point: that this is all too familiar.

“We have seen all this before. And we have no excuse to be complacent. In fact we have a duty to take action. And for all of us, that starts at home.

One would naturally expect PM Harper to speak out about anti-Semitism at the conference, and it is not surprising that he mentioned Mumbai--but Obama was in Mumbai this past week, and what did he talk about?

While the students at St. Xavier's, a 141-year-old Jesuit institution in this pretty seaside city, were exceedingly polite to Mr. Obama - in interviews many said they admired him - they seemed unafraid to get straight to the point, even if Mr. Obama did not always get straight to his.

"Well," he said, tackling the question about jihad, "the phrase jihad has a lot of meanings within Islam and is subject to a lot of different interpretations."

He carefully avoided saying that he was opposed to jihad - which has several meanings, including both holy war and a personal quest for self-improvement - and instead said: "I think all of us recognize that this great religion in the hands of a few extremists has been distorted to justify violence towards innocent people that is never justified. And so, I think, one of the challenges that we face is, how do we isolate those who have these distorted notions of religious war."

Obama defends the term 'jihad' when it was Jihadism that was behind the terrorist attack that murdered Jews among the 166 people killed by terrorists in Mumbai--but you would not know that from listening to Obama's apologetics.

In his speech, PM Harper went on to talk about Israel:

“But of course we must also combat anti-Semitism beyond our borders, an evolving, global phenomenon. And we must recognize, that while its substance is as crude as ever, its method is now more sophisticated.

“Harnessing disparate anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-Western ideologies, it targets the Jewish people by targeting the Jewish homeland, Israel, as the source of injustice and conflict in the world, and uses, perversely, the language of human rights to do so.

“We must be relentless in exposing this new anti-Semitism for what it is. Of course, like any country, Israel may be subjected to fair criticism. And like any free country, Israel subjects itself to such criticism — healthy, necessary, democratic debate. But when Israel, the only country in the world whose very existence is under attack — is consistently and conspicuously singled out for condemnation, I believe we are morally obligated to take a stand. Demonization, double standards, delegitimization, the three D’s, it is the responsibility of us all to stand up to them.

“And I know, by the way, because I have the bruises to show for it, that whether it is at the United Nations, or any other international forum, the easy thing to do is simply to just get along and go along with this anti-Israeli rhetoric, to pretend it is just being even-handed, and to excuse oneself with the label of ‘honest broker.’ There are, after all, a lot more votes, a lot more, in being anti-Israeli than in taking a stand. But, as long as I am Prime Minister, whether it is at the UN or the Francophonie or anywhere else, Canada will take that stand, whatever the cost. And friends, I say this not just because it is the right thing to do, but because history shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israeli mob tells us all too well if we listen to it, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are a threat to all of us.

Read Prime Minister Stephen Harper's whole speech.

Compare that to Obama, who took the opportunity to criticize Israel's refusal to unilaterally freeze building in Jerusalem--playing to his Muslim audience in Indonesia.

Real Clear Politics notes:

Speaking at a press conference in Jakarta alongside Indonesian President Suslilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Obama said that he "barely recognized" the country's capital city.

One can say the same about Obama's attitude towards Jerusalem and Israel as well.

The bottom line is that if Obama wants cooperation from Israel, one would expect him to cater to Israel's sensitivities at least as much as we see him catering to the Muslim world.

And Obama could do worse than follow the example that Prime Minister Harper has set.

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