Liberal Stupid-Ass Comment: Tom Brokaw Legitimizes Inane Comparison Between Holocaust and Israel-Palestine Conflict

... and Barack Obama’s response was scarcely better.

Comparing the actual atrocities committed against the Jews during the Holocaust with the imagined atrocities committed on the Palestinians by the state of Israel is the strategy of Jew- and Israel-haters worldwide. The offensive example of moral equivalency has been one of the modi operandi for demonizing and delegitimizing Israel througout its 60-year existence.

But apparently it’s more mainstream than we want to admit. On Thursday, while interviewing Barack Obama about his trip to Buchenwald concentration camp, NBC’s Tom Brokaw asked this inane question [h/t Hot Air via NewsBusters]:

What can the Israelis learn from your visit to Buchenward and what should they be thinking about their treatment of Palestinians?

To which Obama replied:

Well, look, there’s no equivalency here.

At this point, the Power Line blog commends Obama for rejecting Brokaw’s detestable premise.

And I too give Obama credit ... until the very next sentence he utters. I don’t think the folks at Power Line listened to what followed:

But I do think that given the extraordinary moral traditions of Judaism, the potential power of empathy that arises out of having gone through historic harships that will ultimately give the people of Israel the strength and purpose to seek a just and lasting peace and that, I believe, will involve creating two states side by side with peace and security.

So, first Obama says there’s no equivalency between the treatment of Jews (i.e., institutional persecution, rounding up for concentration camps, forced labor, starvation, torture, and mass murder) in the Holocaust and the treatment of Palestinians by Israelis (???). Exactly two seconds later he’s pointing his finger at the Israelis for failing to engage in a Middle East peace that is apparently desparately wanted by the Palestinians.

And I’m sorry, this was his message in Cairo too: First, after criticizing the practice of Muslims of denying the Holocaust—again props to Obama—he turns around and scolds Israel for being the barrier to a two-state solution vis à vis its treatment of Palestinians.

You want to teach a lesson about moral equivalency, President Obama? Stop making Israeli equally as accountable in the Middle East crisis!

Amazingly, no one I spoke to this weekend—and there were a lot of people; we had a party at our house—even knew about Obama’s Brokaw interview. Why is it only stuff that Rush Limbaugh says about Obama that makes for water cooler discussion?

Speaking of whom, there is probably no one who better responds to Brokaw’s outrageous question and Obama’s non-answer answer than El Rushbo, who on Friday’s show said:

I don’t know about you, this question outrages me, and the answer outrages me. … To his credit, Obama said, “there’s no equivalency there, Tom.” Then there’s always the “but.” That should have been the end of the answer …

Now, anybody who’s paid attention to this for the past 60 years knows that the Israelis have bent over forwards and backwards to try to come up and do things that the world has asked them to do to forge peace. They have given up land, they have been attacked. When they were attacked, they were victorious and they conquered land. They gave it back. 

Israel is a nine-mile-wide country at its narrowest point. Israel can see all of its neighbors from the Golan Heights. Now, the idea that the Israelis are the ones that have to do something here to seek a just and lasting peace is offensive as possible. Because, you see, the Limbaugh Doctrine, peace results from one thing, and that’s victory. 

We have been going through this mess of Middle East peace for I don’t know how long, and back in the 90’s, Bill Clinton gave Yasser Arafat everything Arafat was demanding, and he still rejected it because Palestinian leaders do not want a state side by side with Israel. They want no Israel. Everybody involved in this knows that. All of this is such a phony baloney, plastic banana, good-time rock ‘n’ roll political game. 

That question by Brokaw is an indication of the government-run media’s impression of the Israeli-Palestinian fight, that there may as well be the Israelis engaging in their own reverse Holocaust now. I get really frustrated. The Israelis do not bomb themselves on buses with Palestinian kids aboard. They don’t strap their four-year-olds with bombs and send them into the Palestinian territories and say, “Blow yourself up, kid.” They don’t do these things. It happens to them. 

And then when they fight back, they’re accused of atrocities. They sit there and they’ll take a barrage of missiles launched from Lebanon for days and not do a thing, then they’ll respond and all of a sudden the world says the Israelis are reacting out of proportion. What they mean is the Israelis should aim their missiles as horribly as the Palestinians aim theirs. These Hamas missiles and Hezbollah missiles from Lebanon mostly miss their targets but they’re still harassment and they still pose a great threat. The Israeli missiles don’t miss the target; the world gets mad. I don’t know how they keep their patience. 

I don’t know how they keep their decorum, but I’ll tell you this. This whole business of President Obama saying, “Well, you know, given the extraordinary moral traditions of Judaism, the potential power of empathy that arises out of having gone through such historic hardships, that will ultimately give the people of Israel the strength and”—ultimately? Ultimately? You mean eventually? As though they’re not existing with strength and a sense of purpose now?

You know, you can say what you want. I don’t care what you think of the Israelis. And I don’t care what your religious attitudes are toward the Israeli people. But there’s one thing that can’t be denied, and that is that they have been, as a race of people, subjected to holocaust and genocide throughout much of their existence, and it has not torn them apart; they have not lost their moral code; they have not lost their sense of decency. None of what Obama implied about them here is true, that they somehow have to summon that? That’s the reason they still exist today, is because they have not fallen apart as a result of all that’s happened to them. One day after delivering a speech that talks about all the contributions to the world from Islam and all of it was made up!

… Barack Obama’s got something against Israel. Now, if you look at who mentored him, Jeremiah Wright, you’ll find there’s a guy who’s got something against Israel. Louis Farrakhan? Not only does Louis Farrakhan have something against Israel, he’s got something against the Jewish people. …

Damn right!

You know, I’ll bet if I showed this text to any liberal Democrat Jew who loved and supported the State of Israel—and as oxymoronic as that sounds, there are many of them—they would probably agree with it. Then I would tell them it was Rush Limbaugh who said it and they would pass out …

Comments

[EricTheRed]

I *love* Steve Malzberg. Haven't listened to him in a long time. Might have to get back into him ...

[Rich]

I heard this on Steve Malzberg's show (I think) and I was disgusted.

Just imagine what this mental midget is saying:

"What can the Israelis learn from your visit to Buchenwald"

Does this imbecile even understand what went on at Buchenwald? And he's asking, what lessons can the ***Israelis*** learn from it? Disgusting!