Yet another ‘idealistic’ idiocy

Did they run away from ISIS and accordingly hate us in the Assad-Hezbollah-Iranian idiom? Or did they escape Assad and despise us in the rabid Jihadist vein?

No one was about to shoot him, sadistically torture his  wife
or bash the baby’s head 

By SARAH HONIG 

When it suits them, Israel’s left-wingers tug manipulatively at Jewish heartstrings. They know how to play us – or so they think.

And thus Labor leader Isaac Herzog would have us believe that just because we are descendants of persecuted refugees (literally running for their very lives), it now behooves us to open the gates of our still-beleaguered mini-state to the still-inimical descendants of those who denied asylum to distraught Jewish refugees (and thereby sentenced them to death).

Out to garner warm accolades from the indefatigable do-gooder set, Herzog urges that Israel admit Syrian refugees – the very ones who imbibe Nazi-like Judeophobic propaganda with their mothers’ milk. There’s no doubt that they hate us. The only question is whether they ran away from ISIS and accordingly hate us in the Assad-Hezbollah-Iranian idiom or whether they escaped Assad and despise us in the rabid Jihadist vein.

Conceivably, by Herzog’s reckoning, ushering into our midst outright intractable enemies is a sure-fire vote-getter. Besides, it appears that no pretext to embarrass the government is taboo. And so, to underscore his ploy, Herzog has posted on his Facebook page nothing less than the contention that those who disagree with him: “have forgotten what it means to be Jews”.

By so saying, he and like-minded beautiful souls (such as – how else? – Meretz’s Zehava Gal-On and Yesh Atid’s Elazar Stern) draw the analogy between existential Jewish desperation in the years leading up to the Holocaust (which the Arab world, including Syria, avidly supported and assisted) and the present Third World craving for Germany’s (or Britain’s) standard of living (versus that of Turkey, Hungary and even France).

Herzog’s very comparison not only insults our intelligence but it also insults the memories of yesteryear’s “unwanted Jews” (as the British Foreign Office shamelessly called them). Herzog should know better.

Recent scenes in Hungary were instructive. Syrians migrants (and among them also such non-Arab non-refugees as Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) had no fear of grievous bodily harm, to say nothing of mass execution. Defiance posed no mortal risk. The hot-blooded father who pushed his wife and infant son onto the train tracks amid hysterical shouts impressed world opinion with his presumed plight.

To Europeans such volatile carryings-on denote utter hopelessness. But Western onlookers don’t know that a display of pseudo-impulsive out-of-control rage is part of the Mideastern body-language. Appearing to go crazy and throwing frightening tantrums is a common mode of expression in this region. Exhibiting an apparent deranged devil-may-care anger/aggression is hardly unconventional.

Furthermore, the man who seemed to go berserk could afford to be choosy, make demands of the local forces and flout their authority with all the self-stoked frenzy he could muster. No one was about to shoot him, sadistically torture his wife or bash the baby’s head.

But the bloodiest brutality is exactly is what the Jews once herded at Hungarian rail terminals knew for a fact would be their lot. They weren’t demanding, clamoring, chanting, shrieking or in any way expecting to force the troops around them to do their bidding. In the end they ended up in the Auschwitz crematoria, dispatched there by some of the forebears of some of those who now welcome Syrians to Bavaria with flowers and toys.

Reduced to its bare nitty-gritty, the big picture looms grotesque. Germany which once committed the greatest hate crime in history against Jews now appears to make amends by showering latter-day Jew-haters with kindness.

Should we participate in this travesty just because it has been made trendy by kitsch-mongers the world over? According Herzog, this is no less than the essence of our Jewishness.

We’re paradoxically obliged to surrender our most basic survival instincts for the sake of good press abroad – although it’s improbable that anyone would pat us on the back for yet another idealistic idiocy.

Our self-destructive altruism, assuming anyone at all acknowledges it, would at most only generate pressure for a follow-up of taking in so-called Palestinian refugees as well.

If anything, Herzog lifted the lid off a Pandora’s Box that a wiser man would have left alone. But in truth, there’s no surprise here. Our sanctimonious Left has a proven track record.

Its ringleaders are the very ones who serially scare public opinion against hanging on to even a scrap of territory won in the 1967 war of self-defense imposed upon us. Pointedly omitting mention of this country’s nine-mile wide waistline and the acute vulnerability of its densest population centers, leftists warn that Israel will lose its Jewish identity should it fail to forthwith divest itself of all its strategic assets.

To hear them, since this country was indeed founded to afford Jews the one place on earth where they aren’t an endangered minority, even suicidal sacrifices are mandated to maintain said Jewish majority.

It was in the name of this Jewish majority that the Left inflicted the Oslo folly upon us in 1993. Yet few Israelis are aware that as part of its Oslo undertakings Israel had admitted 150,000 Palestinian Arabs ostensibly to facilitate “family reunions.” Needless to say their numbers have since swelled and massively inflated Arab population proportions within Israel proper – all in the name of preserving the Jewish majority.

The political Left, moreover, bitterly battles legislation geared to prevent a further Arab influx into the Jewish state in the fraudulent guise of family reunions.

The very notion that Israeli-Arab/Palestinian couples can “reunite” beyond the Green-Line grievously offends its sensibilities. Our Left hankers for the migration of ever-greater numbers of Arabs into our Jewish-majority sanctuary – all in the name of that hallowed Jewish majority they purportedly champion.

Simultaneously, leftist groups cannot abide the notion that Israel require its hypothetical peace partners to recognize its legitimacy as a Jewish state rather than as an undefined de facto entity and candidate for future Arabization.

Who cares if the entire Arab/Muslim sphere’s quite unconcealed strategy has always been to overrun Israel, wipe out its Jewish majority and then obliterate the tattered remains of insufferable Jewish sovereignty? In short, anyone has an inalienable right to this country but us. While Jews are painted as amoral usurpers/settlers, it is somehow their duty to be inundated by hostile Arabs, African infiltrators and even clans of Filipino economic migrants.

However viewed, the common denominator between disingenuous leftwing slogans and contradictory left-wing actions is the weakening of Israel as a Jewish state.

It’s time to recognize that anything which weakens Israel is eagerly espoused by leftwing manipulators – be it yielding territory to ever-implacable enemies, importing hostile Arabs, opposing legislation to decrease the danger of being overrun by would-be annihilators or even undermining efforts to mitigate the illegal (mostly Muslim) deluge from Africa. Some sub-Saharans already intone the mantra that “this is our country – for Muslims, not Jews”” To allow all the above because of our erstwhile refugee status, grates hard against the raison d’être of establishing and defending our Jewish state. Israel exists so that no Jew anywhere would be left without a safe haven in any storm. Our paramount concern should be to safeguard our safe haven and never let it be compromised in the slightest.

This isn’t paranoia. It’s realism.

What happened to refugee Jews in the 1930s and 1940s? Did anyone shelter them? The contrary is true.

Anti-Jewish antagonism doesn’t derive from foreign aversion to Israel’s supposed strength (i.e. our so far unbearably successful self-defense). It fulminated most disgracefully when the Jewish people couldn’t imaginably have been more helpless – on the eve of the Holocaust. Worse yet – this antagonism wasn’t merely rife in the Third Reich. It also flourished among the democracies, even if in a sinisterly duplicitous guise.

In 1938 (when German concentration camps already operated, Jewish heads were busted in the streets, Jewish businesses were vandalized, Jewish property was robbed, Jewish books were burned, Jewish children were kicked out of school and all Jews had to don yellow-star patches) put-upon representatives of the world’s democracies conferred in Evian-les-Bains, on Lake Geneva’s French shore, to deliberate what to do about the bothersome refugees (whom they expressly refrained from calling Jews, lest they offend the fuehrer).

But, to Hitler’s raucous delight, it all turned into an unabashed contest to find the most inaccessible and inhospitable exile for Nazism’s desperate outcasts – no improvement to speak of on Hitler’s initial intent to banish the Jews to Madagascar.

Britain resentfully refused to allow Jews into the land mandated to it as the Jewish National Home. The Nazi-sympathizing forebears of today’s Arabs made sure that vulnerable Jews wouldn’t be rescued. His Majesty’s appeasement-minded government willingly acquiesced (i.e. the 1941 Struma episode).

Jews were likewise excluded from the immense unpopulated spaces of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

American benevolence notwithstanding, fleeing Jews weren’t wanted in the Land of the Free either (i.e. the 1939 St. Louis episode).

In the spirit of Uncle Sam’s effusive compassion, 10,000 Jewish refugees were even barred from Alaska.

FDR, though, proposed dumping German Jews in Ethiopia or Central Africa. Others suggested that the Siberian arctic might be a preferable hardship to the rigors of the tropics for urbane Jews.

Britain finally came up with the uninhabitable hinterland jungles of faraway Guyana, or as it was then known – British Guiana. Even so, London’s bureaucrats dragged their feet only to be rendered irrelevant by the “final solution.”

To be sure, the world’s holier-than-thou hypocrites have no more sympathy for Jews in our day. The only difference is that we are independent in our own historic homeland.

That’s why we can never remotely countenance the notion of endangering our precarious self-determination by allowing even limited entry (whatever “limited” means) to an enemy population. Our overriding rationale is to never again become refugees ourselves.

We can take it for granted that no kindness would be shown us in tragic circumstances.

Rather than try to curry favor with enduringly ill-intentioned world opinion, Herzog would do well to memorize what his party’s founding father David Ben-Gurion said to the “civilized nations” in 1942: “As long as the bias against the Jewish people continues, we will not believe the sincerity of your pronouncements about justice, freedom and truth.”

www.sarahhonig.com Debunking the Bull, Sarah Honig’s book, was recently published by Gefen.

In Senate Floor Speech, Rubio Opposes Iran Deal

transcript:

The Senator from Florida.

Mr. President, I will be brief, I know that the senator from Tennessee would like to close on this matter. I think everything that needs to be said about the details of this deal has already been said. I do want to be recorded for history’s purposes, for I know what is going to happen in regards to this if it goes through.

Iran will immediately use the money that it is receiving from sanctions relief to begin to build up its conventional capabilities. It will establish the most dominant military power in the region outside the United States and it will raise the price of us operating in the region. They are going to build anti-access capability, rockets capable of destroying our aircraft carriers and ships, continue to build the swift boats that are able to come on us, these fast boats that are able to swarm our naval assets, and will make harder and harder for US troops to be in the region. They will also work with other terrorist groups in the region that target American servicemen and women, and they may and may not deny that they are involved, but they will target us and raise the price of our presence in the Middle East until they hope to completely pull us out of that region.

They will also continue to build long range missiles. Missiles capable of reaching the United States, those are not affected by this deal and they will continue to build them as they have been doing. And then at some point in the near future, when the time is ripe, they will build a nuclear weapon, and they will do so because at that point they will know that they have become immune, that we will no longer be able to strike their nuclear program because the price of doing so would be too high.

This is not just a work of imagination, it exists in the world today – it is called North Korea, where a lunatic possesses dozens of nuclear weapons, and a long range rocket that can already reach the United Sates.  And we cannot do anything about it. An attack on North Korea today would result in an attack on Tokyo or Soul, or Guam, or Hawaii or California.

And so the world must now live with a lunatic in possession of nuclear weapons.

And this is the goal Iran has as well. To reach the point when they become immune to any sort of credible military threat, because the price of military strike would be too high, and then they become an established nuclear weapons power. And never in the history of the world has such a regime ever possessed weapons so capable of destruction.

           

Iran is led by a supreme leader who is a radical Shi’a cleric with an apocalyptic vision of the future. He is not a traditional geopolitical actor who makes decisions on the basis of borders or simply history, or because of ambitions. He has a religious apocalyptic vision of the future.    One that calls for triggering a conflict between the non-Moslem world and the Moslem world. One that he feels specially obligated to trigger.  And he is going to possess nuclear weapons?!

This is the world we are on the verge of leaving our children to inherit, and perhaps we ourselves will have to share in it. And so I want to be recorded for history’s purposes if nothing else to say that those of us who opposed this deal understood where it would lead, and we are making a terrible mistake, and I fear that the passage of this deal will make it even harder for us to prevent it, and I hope that there is still time to change our minds, but here is the good news. Iran may have a supreme leader, but America does not. And in this nation we have a republic, and soon we will have new leaders, perhaps in this chamber, but also in the executive branch, and I pray that the first day in office, they will reverse this deal and re-impose the sanctions, and back them up with a credible threat of military force, or history will condemn us, for not doing what needed to be done at this critical moment in world’s history. I yield the floor. 

WATCH: Congress can't stop Iran deal. Now what?

Kruathammer: The Iran charade on Capitol Hill

The Washington Post

By Charles Krauthammer

Congress is finally having its say on the Iran deal. It will be an elaborate charade, however, because, having first gone to the United Nations, President Obama has largely drained congressional action of relevance. At the Security Council, he pushed through a resolution ratifying the deal, thus officially committing the United States as a nation to its implementation — in advance of any congressional action.

The resolution abolishes the entire legal framework, built over a decade, underlying the international sanctions against Iran. A few months from now, they will be gone.

The script is already written: The International Atomic Energy Agency, relying on Iran’s self-inspection (!) of its most sensitive nuclear facility, will declare Iran in compliance. The agreement then goes into effect and Iran’s nuclear program is officially deemed peaceful.

Sanctions are lifted. The mullahs receive $100 billion of frozen assets as a signing bonus. Iran begins reaping the economic bonanza, tripling its oil exports and welcoming a stampede of foreign companies back into the country.

It is all precooked. Last month, Britain’s foreign secretary traveled to Tehran with an impressive delegation of British companies ready to deal. He was late, however. The Italian and French foreign ministers had already been there, accompanied by their own hungry businessmen and oil companies. Iran is back in business.

As a matter of constitutional decency, the president should have submitted the deal to Congress first. And submitted it as a treaty. Which it obviously is. No international agreement in a generation matches this one in strategic significance and geopolitical gravity.

Obama did not submit it as a treaty because he knew he could never get the constitutionally required votes for ratification. He’s not close to getting two-thirds of the Senate. He’s not close to getting a simple majority. No wonder: In the latest Pew Research Center poll, the American people oppose the deal by a staggering 28-point margin.

To get around the Constitution, Obama negotiated a swindle that requires him to garner a mere one-third of one house of Congress. Indeed, on Thursday, with just 42 Senate supporters — remember, a treaty requires 67 — the Democrats filibustered and prevented, at least for now, the Senate from voting on the deal at all.

But Obama two months ago enshrined the deal as international law at the U.N. Why should we care about the congressional vote? In order to highlight the illegitimacy of Obama’s constitutional runaround and thus make it easier for a future president to overturn the deal, especially if Iran is found to be cheating.

As of now, however, it is done. Iran will be both unleashed — sanctions lifted, economy booming, with no treaty provisions regarding its growing regional aggression and support for terrorists — and welcomed as a good international citizen possessing a peaceful nuclear program. An astonishing trick.

Iran’s legitimation will not have to wait a decade, after which, as the Iranian foreign minister boasts, the U.N. file on the Iranian nuclear program will be closed, all restrictions will be dropped and, as Obama himself has admitted, the breakout time to an Iranian bomb will become essentially zero. On the contrary. The legitimation happens now. Early next year, Iran will be officially recognized as a peaceful nuclear nation.

This is a revolution in Iran’s international standing, yet its consequences have been largely overlooked. The deal goes beyond merely leaving Iran’s nuclear infrastructure intact. Because the deal legitimizes that nuclear program as peaceful (unless proven otherwise — don’t hold your breath), it is entitled to international assistance. Hence the astonishing provision buried in Annex III, Section 10, committing Western experts to offering the Iranian program our nuclear expertise.

Specifically “training courses and workshops.” On what? Among other things, on how to protect against “sabotage.”

Imagine: We are now to protect Iran against, say, the very Stuxnet virus, developed by the NSA and Israel’s Unit 8200, that for years disrupted and delayed an Iranian bomb.

Secretary of State John Kerry has darkly warned Israel to not even think about a military strike on the nuclear facilities of a regime whose leader said just Wednesday that Israel will be wiped out within 25 years. The Israelis are now being told additionally — Annex III, Section 10 — that if they attempt just a defensive, nonmilitary cyberattack (a Stuxnet II), the West will help Iran foil it.

Ask those 42 senators if they even know about this provision. And how they can sign on to such a deal without shame and revulsion.

*****

When I read this article I felt horror and repulsion.  It reminded me of a paragraph from George F. Kennan’s Memoirs: 1925-1950, page 143:

“The experience taught me something about the behavior of human beings in adversity: the untrustworthiness and failure of a minority at one end of the human spectrum; the rather passive response to leadership on the part of a majority in the middle; the extraordinary faithfulness, courage, and general excellence of a few. I came away with a new admiration for one portion of mankind, but a portion which, as I now recognized, would never be more than a minority. For the majority at the center, I felt a mixture of sympathy and solicitude. For the remainder there was only horror and repulsion.”

Re-reading George F. Kennan's Memoirs - Why is there nobody today to write The Long Telegram on Iran?

The Syrian Gambit

The Rewards of the Obama Doctrine

The Wall Street Journal

Offering a helping hand to America’s enemies in Iran, Russia and Cuba will ruin lives and many more will die.

By GARRY KASPAROV

A quick glance at the latest headlines suggests a jarring disconnect from the stream of foreign-policy successes touted by the Obama White House and its allies. President Obama has been hailed by many as a peacemaker for eschewing the use of military force and for signing accords with several of America’s worst enemies. The idea that things will work out better if the U.S. declines to act in the world also obeys Mr. Obama’s keen political instincts. A perpetual campaigner in office, he realizes that it is much harder to criticize an act not taken.

But what is good for Mr. Obama’s media coverage is not necessarily good for America or the world. From the unceasing violence in eastern Ukraine to the thousands of Syrian refugees streaming into Europe, it is clear that inaction can also have terrible consequences. The nuclear agreement with Iran is also likely to have disastrous and far-reaching effects. But in every case of Mr. Obama’s timidity and procrastination, the response to criticism amounts to this: It could have been worse.

Looking at the wreckage of the Middle East, including the flourishing of Islamic State, it takes great imagination to see how things would be worse today if the U.S. had acted on Mr. Obama’s “red line” threat in 2013 and moved against Syria’s Bashar Assad after he defied the U.S. president and used chemical weapons.

Or farther east, one would need to have believed Moscow’s overheated nuclear threats to think that Ukraine would be worse off now if NATO had moved immediately to secure the Ukrainian border with Russia as soon as Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea in 2014.

Over the past year, especially in the past few months, Mr. Obama’s belief that American force in the world should be constrained and reduced has reached its ultimate manifestation in U.S. relations with Iran, Russia and Cuba. Each of these American adversaries has been on the receiving end of the president’s helping hand: normalization with Cuba, releasing Iran from sanctions, treating the Putin Ukraine-invasion force as a partner for peace in the futile Minsk cease-fire agreements.

In exchange for giving up precisely nothing, these countries have been rewarded with the international legitimacy and domestic credibility dictatorships crave—along with more-concrete economic benefits.

When dealing with a regime that won’t negotiate in good faith, the best approach is to use a position of strength to pry concessions from the other side. But instead the White House keeps offering concessions—while helping its enemies off the mat. That such naïveté will result in positive behavior from the likes of Ayatollah Khamenei, Vladimir Putin and the Castro brothers should be beyond even Mr. Obama’s belief in hope and change.

Dictatorships, especially the one-man variety like Russia’s, are unpredictable, but they do operate on logical underlying principles. They often come to power with popular support and a mandate to solve a crisis. Once a firm grip on power is achieved, the junta or supreme leader blames his predecessors for any problems, and he cracks down on rights. With democracy dead and civil society hunted to extinction, the only way left to make a legitimate claim on power is confrontation and conflict. Propaganda is ratcheted up against mythical fifth columnists and the usual scapegoats, like immigrants and minorities.

The next and usually final phase arrives when other tricks have become stale. Domestic enemies are never threatening enough—and eventually there is no one left to persecute, as in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin—so the dictator looks abroad, inevitably finding a “national interest” to defend across a convenient border.

This external-conflict phase is especially dangerous because there are very few examples of aggressor nations moving away from it peacefully. War and revolution are the more frequent ways it burns itself out. The Soviet Union altered its confrontational course after Stalin’s death, but it was a unique and gigantic superpower with enough resources for its leadership to believe that it could compete with the Free World instead of declaring war on it.

As it turned out, the Soviets were wrong, something that more-recent autocrats, including Mr. Putin, no doubt understand. They have watched and learned that their people will eventually begin to compare living standards and see the truth if left unmolested by war and strife. This window on the Free World is even larger in the Internet age, so the conflicts and propaganda have to be even more extreme.

Iran has been operating in the confrontational phase for years, with America and Israel as the main targets, in addition to Tehran’s regional Sunni rivals. Mr. Putin moved into confrontation mode with the invasion of Ukraine and he cannot afford to back down.

The dictatorship that Nicolás Maduro inherited from Hugo Chávezin Venezuela is approaching the final stage as well, as seen from the country’s recent launch of a border and immigrant conflict with Colombia. The emptier the shelves in Venezuelan supermarkets, the more threatening the Colombians must be made to seem. China has relied on tremendous growth to forestall internal unrest for human rights, but if its economy falters substantially, last week’s giant military parade in Beijing will be seen as prelude, not posturing. Taiwan, always in China’s sights, has good reason to be troubled by the West’s feeble responses in Syria and Ukraine.

Power abhors a vacuum, and as the U.S. retreats the space is being filled. After years of the White House leading from behind, Secretary of State John Kerry’s timid warning to the Kremlin this week to stay out of Syria will be as effective as Mr. Obama’s “red line.” Soon Iran—flush with billions of dollars liberated by the nuclear deal—will add even more heft to its support for Mr. Assad.

Dead refugee children are on the shores of Europe, bringing home the Syrian crisis that has been in full bloom for years. There could be no more tragic symbol that it is time to stop being paralyzed by the Obama-era mantra that things could be worse—and to start acting instead to make things better.

Mr. Kasparov, chairman of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, is the author of “Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped,” out next month from PublicAffairs.

Passionate political conflict & civility

Even if understandable because of political realities, it remains disappointing that the majority of Democratic legislators conceded to pressure from their president.

By ISI LEIBLER

The bitterness of the debate in the United States in relation to Iran has again raised questions concerning civil discourse when contentious and emotional issues arise.

Israeli politicians are renowned for resorting to hyperbole and even outright abuse. One need only observe the behavior in Knesset debates with individual MKs verbally assailing one another like animals. In contrast, Americans conduct their congressional proceedings with greater decorum and civility.

However, US President Barack Obama unleashed unprecedented anger in his own country by his obsessive determination to enshrine his legacy by consummating a deal empowering the Iranian terrorists, irrespective of the cost. This despite the fact that even in the midst of the negotiations, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsed calls of “death to America” and adamantly reiterated that the destruction of Israel would remain a primary objective of Iran.

Obama effectively agreed to transform Iran into a threshold nuclear power and released billions of dollars of frozen funds, much of which the Iranians proudly boast will be directed toward bolstering their terrorist surrogates. If that wasn’t sufficient, the administration also agreed to trust the duplicitous Iranians to supervise their own compliance.

Last week, a new Quinnipiac University poll indicated that 58 percent of Americans oppose the Iran nuclear deal, with only 28 percent supporting it. Clear majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives also oppose the deal in its current form.

If, as expected, Congress votes to reject the deal, Obama will veto that decision. Further, the president has gone to unprecedented lengths, bordering on hysteria, to prevent a bipartisan effort to overturn his veto, and made support for his Iran policy a litmus test of loyalty to the Democratic Party. He also made disparaging remarks about the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – describing it as a powerful lobby employing vast funds to promote warmongering – which were considered by many to be a throwback to the outdated and discredited traditional anti-Semitic slur implying that Jews were disloyal citizens. Jewish leaders were also accused of being hijacked by Likud and neoconservatives.

Only after releasing the demons did Obama focus subsequent comments on asserting his friendship to the Jewish “family” and commitment to Israel, condemning extremism and somewhat hypocritically calling for civil discourse when “families have disagreements.”

More out of self-interest than conviction, the majority of Democratic legislators – including most Jewish members – finally succumbed unenthusiastically to presidential pressure and supported the deal, rupturing the hitherto bipartisan approach toward Iran and stymying the two-thirds majority required to override a presidential veto. Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the few Jewish Democrats who opposed the deal, was accused of harboring dual loyalties and betraying his country.

Supporters of Israel unleashed their fury on Jewish Democratic legislators endorsing the deal, especially those with substantial Jewish constituencies.

This was exemplified by a wave of vitriol directed against Democratic congressman Jerrold Nadler, who represents one of the largest constituencies of religious and committed Jews, including Borough Park.

In response to his announcement that after painfully reviewing the issue he would back Obama, he was accused of being a coward, of betraying and abandoning his people, and of being a traitor to Israel and the US. He was assailed with obscenities, was called a “Nazi” and a “stinking kapo,” and allegedly received death threats.

These primitive outbursts, aside from their vulgarity and repudiation of any modicum of civility, were utterly counterproductive. They diverted the debate away from a condemnation of Obama’s Iran deal to the liberal media’s condemnation of ad hominem attacks against Nadler.

Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League which oppose Obama’s Iran deal issued press releases condemning the “appalling” lack of civility and upholding Nadler’s pro-Israel record. There were intensified pressures on critics of Obama to cool it and ease protests and demonstrations.

The media was replete with articles alleging that the Jewish community was now divided and many were fed up with the right-wing Israeli government. But this was nonsense, because despite some initial doubts, the reality was that no issue has united American Jews to such an extent since the Yom Kippur War.

As details emerged amplifying Obama’s craven capitulation to Iranian demands, every major Jewish political organization, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the American Jewish Committee and the ADL publicly backed AIPAC’s initial lead of opposing the deal. Even the Reform movement leadership, noted for its traditional slavish support for Obama’s policies, remained silent. The only exception was the so called “pro-Israel pro-Peace” J Street, which intensively canvassed on behalf of the administration and applauded Obama’s “victory,” again demonstrating its inherently anti-Israel stance.

There are of course some Jews so totally involved with the Democratic Party that liberalism has become part of their DNA, and many even confuse or substitute it for their Jewish heritage. There are others who are Jews in name only, utterly assimilated, with no understanding of Judaism or genuine feeling for Israel.

But the fact is that the overwhelming majority of committed Jews are bitterly opposed to Obama’s tryst with the ayatollahs, with many complaining that their leaders should have protested earlier and more vigorously.

The harsh critics of Nadler were immediately accused – unfairly – for having unleashed the torrents of offensive personal abuse and castigated for challenging his devotion to the Jewish state.

Of course those who uttered death threats and vulgarities like calling Nadler a kapo or likening him to a Nazi were irresponsible and should be chastised. But challenging Nadler’s commitment to Israel was entirely justified.

The majority of Americans and committed Jews are totally opposed to the Iran deal. More importantly, over 90% of Israelis consider seriously Iran’s ongoing threats to wipe them off the map and bitterly oppose Obama’s policy.

Even if understandable because of political realities, it remains disappointing that the majority of Democratic legislators conceded to pressure from their president.

That applies especially to Jewish legislators who gave their political standing in Obama’s Democratic Party priority over responding to the existential threat to Israel which this deal poses.

Nadler falls into a special category. He represents a constituency largely comprising Jews, the majority of whom are passionate about Israel, and is aware that opposition to this policy has a rare bipartisan consensus in Israel.

He insists that he analyzed the situation objectively and claims he is acting in the best interests of Israel.

Many would challenge his sincerity. But setting aside his motivations, what does a Jewish representative of a major Jewish constituency expect when the bulk of his constituents are bitterly opposed to a deal that they consider threatening and he adopts a stand based on his belief that he has a better understanding of Israel’s security requirements than 90% of its citizens? His Jewish constituents are entitled to feel betrayed and justified in conveying their anger. His former pro-Israel approach does not exonerate his behavior, which will undoubtedly be taken into account by voters in the next election. If Nadler feels that this is unjustified, he simply fails to appreciate the gravity of his act. This issue is not a minor political squabble.

It relates to a Jewish legislator with a largely pro-Israel Jewish constituency which considers that he betrayed them during a crisis.

Pro-Israel elements should continue campaigning against this wretched deal despite Obama’s success in intimidating sufficient Democratic legislators to prevent voiding his veto. This will create the climate for Obama’s successor to review the situation and send a message to future administrations that there are strong Jewish and pro-Israel forces that are willing to stand up and resist efforts to undermine Israel and the US-Israel relationship. But they must do so with civility and courtesy, avoiding vulgarity and abuse.

The writer’s website can be viewed at www.wordfromjerusalem.com. He may be contacted at ileibler@leibler.com.