The President Should Speak Up For Israel Now

Today, as I write, Israel is under attack once again.  So why should we Americans even care?  Should the U.S. officially change its policy on Israel?  After all, this is something President Obama has unofficially been doing for years.  So does it really matter?

In a New York Times interview published on Sept. 23, the new president of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi, makes his demand for a change in U.S. foreign policy if Egypt is to have a friendly relationship with the U.S. He states that the U.S. would have to give up "supporting Israel over the Palestinians."

President Morsi, in effect, was echoing the position of people in the Arab world: The U.S. must end its close relationship with Israel to have peace with them, a relationship that every president since Harry Truman supported.

When the U.S. became the mediator between the state of Israel and the PLO, created by Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians recognized the existence of that special relationship.

Notwithstanding its existence, they readily agreed to have the U.S. chair the negotiations. They and the Arab states knew that only the U.S. could get Israel to make concessions affecting its security when it was facing hostile Arab populations and Arab and Iranian armed forces vastly larger than its own that are at war with Israel. At the time the PLO had clauses in its charter calling for the total destruction of the state of Israel.

Those relevant clauses were ultimately revoked by the PLO and Yasser Arafat, but they remain today in the Charter of Hamas which governs Gaza which is the very source of today’s attacks.  The latter has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the European Union, the United Nations and Russia. It hopes one day to defeat the Fatah Party and its leader Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Abbas) in a general election to be held in both Gaza and the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority knows that only with the assistance of the U.S. would it be possible to achieve a final accord with Israel, because no other nation could induce Israel to accept an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza threatening its very existence.

Only the U.S. could provide the security assurances Israel needs to take the chance of allowing a Palestinian state to be created. Hamas defeated Fatah in an election in Gaza and then expelled Fatah from Gaza, leaving itself in sole control of Gaza.

In its position of mediator, the U.S. has demanded that Hamas revoke its charter demanding the elimination of Israel, give up violence, and accept all agreements previously entered into by Israel and the Palestinian Authority. It refuses to do so.

If President Morsi has his way, the U.S. would no longer be Israel's ally. If the Palestinian Authority were asked would it prefer the U.S. to abandon its efforts to establish peace and a final accord between the parties or continue to assist the parties as mediator while maintaining its alliance with Israel, I have no doubt that it would opt for the latter.

In the Times interview, President Morsi said:

"If you want to judge the performance of the Egyptian people by the standards of German or Chinese or American culture, then there is no room for judgment. When the Egyptians decide something, probably it is not appropriate for the U.S. When the Americans decide something, this, of course, is not appropriate for Egypt."

He and other Islamists, who believe in the use of terrorism to achieve their goals, demand that western civilization accept the Muslim philosophy that blasphemy, e.g., defaming the Prophet Muhammad, allows for deaths not only of Muslims but of others in western countries as well.

When the Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten created cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in September 2005, it caused violent demonstrations in the Muslim world, ending in 100 deaths and the bombing and burning of Danish embassies in some Muslim countries.

Then there was the Fatwah or death warrant demanding the death of Salman Rushdie who wrote a book deemed by Muslim clergy to be blasphemous. More recently a Christian girl in Pakistan, whose job it is to sweep trash, was found with a burned Koran.

She has been charged with blasphemy. Many more situations exist where Muslim mobs rioted and in some cases killed to punish blasphemy, including episodes involving American soldiers in Afghanistan.

While Muslim countries have the right to impose their laws and mores upon their own citizens, they do not have the right to impose them on others. We in the U.S. and other western countries treasure the right of free speech.

Our relationship with Egypt has clearly changed. As President Obama has said, it is no longer an ally. Our relationship henceforth should depend on what they do with each passing day as it relates to the interests of the U.S. Any financial support we give them should be conditioned upon their actions.

In his first foray into foreign affairs, President Obama delivered a speech in Cairo in June 2009 in which he sought a new beginning with the Arab world, "based on mutual interest and mutual respect."

The recent events in Egypt, including the election of an Islamist president, a leader of the Muslim brotherhood, and the sacking of the American embassy in Cairo, etc., have demonstrated the futility of his approach. President Obama should acknowledge this failure.

For the U.S. the concept of free speech covers the rude, crude, false and the blasphemous. Our response to that which offends us is to criticize but not to prohibit or seek by violence to deter.

We will not surrender our most precious and fundamental right to those Islamists and others opposed to those democratic liberties who threaten us with violence and death if we don't surrender.

We now know that the Islamists in the Muslim world who rioted, alleging as the reason the video made by an American provocateur which blasphemed Muhammad, were simply using the video as a pretext. Their intention was to celebrate the catastrophe of 9/11 by other acts of terrorism on the anniversary date of the original infamous act.

I believe the hostility of Egypt's president and government toward the U.S. is also the result of a decision by Egypt to recapture from Turkey the leadership of the Muslim world which it once enjoyed and was usurped by Turkey when it became Islamist and aggressively hostile to Israel.

Will we have the resolve to stand up and protect the lifestyles and mores of western civilization now under attack by the Islamists in a war that can and will probably last for decades or will we ultimately surrender? I believe we will fight for our freedoms as we did in World War II and once again prevail.

Was Tuesday's Vote a Vote For Slavery?

I feel this most recent election will go down in history as the first time a majority of Americans voted based not on which candidate would be best for the country.  But instead they vote base on which candidate would give them the most free stuff.  Unfortunately, those very voters have no idea what they have to give up in order receiving their free stuff.

The old adage “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” rings true because of five primary factors:

• Although a free lunch is offered with the enticing promise of “something for nothing,” ulterior motives too often lurk in the background.

• While someone else might pay the monetary cost of our meal, we always pay with our time, which is the most valuable commodity we own.

• The giver nearly always wants something from us in return – perhaps just simple conversation, but more often than not, commitment to the giver’s cause, whatever that cause may be.

• By accepting a free lunch, we also accept an implied expectation of reciprocation – of giving back at some future point in time.

• Repeated acceptance of free lunches builds a lingering dependency upon, and consequential firmer commitment to, the lunch giver.

By accepting free lunches, we trade independence for dependence on and commitment to another, or, in the extreme case, freedom for slavery.

Political entitlements, such as government bailouts, health care safety nets or government pensions not directly tied to our personal contributions, are like free lunches. Each comes draped in the alluring promise of “something for nothing,” but requires the ultimate sacrifice of personal freedom.

Does this sound harsh? How can we equate acceptance of a payout from government to yielding to personal slavery? How can the government entitlements be as onerous as pre-civil ware slavery?

Accepting free lunches over a period of time instills a feeling of entitlement or inherent claim to something in the recipient. Once that feeling of entitlement becomes ingrained, enslavement kicks in. Dependence on the giver replaces independence in the recipient. Freedom is traded for slavery as surely as opiate addiction overcomes personal choice.

Accepting government handouts over a period of time has a similar effect. Politicians and the government institutions they control always want something in return for handouts or entitlements, including votes, political support and control.

For example, federal grants to states for education always come with explicit control over how states operate educational programs. Federal bailouts of private enterprise always come with federal control over corporate operations. Government grants to students come with an implied expectation of political support for the sponsors of such legislation. In each case, the receiving institutions or individuals trade independence for external control, freedom for slavery.

But a more insidious consequence is the personal slavery that emerges when individuals progressively accept and become dependent on government entitlements as an essential part of their personal lives. Too often, easy money from government programs dulls personal motivation, reduces sense of opportunity, limits the drive to personal economic independence and mires recipients in a hopeless spiral of dependence. The implied “security” of government aid allows economic and emotional slavery to replace personal independence and freedom.

In the United States, years of government largess has progressively built an entitlement culture, a culture of slavery to the government. Personal freedom and independence have, for many people, been traded for the false sense of security promised by the recurring free lunch. 

Capitalizing on this pervasive expectation of something for nothing, politicians promise more and more in the form of pork barrel spending, government bailouts, and health care reform, knowing that if citizens are willing to trade personal independence and freedom for dependence on the government and consequential slavery, political objectives of power and control are easily within reach.

We must not stand by and allow the freedoms we enjoy be progressively eroded by the accelerating threat of entitlement slavery. As surely as our nation of freedom fought to break the chains of black slavery, we must fight to break the insidious bonds of entitlement slavery that threatens the very foundation of our free society. We must be willing to say “No more free lunches for us, thank you.” We must raise our voices in an articulate and resolute war of words to stop the downward spiral of our precious free society into the slavery of government entitlements.

But sadly, based on last Tuesday’s voting I feel it may already be too late.