RUTH KING

On December 14th, a group of 150 prominent Jewish leaders, attorneys, intellectuals, journalists and diplomats assembled in New York under the auspices of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The stated goal was the indictment of Iran’s President Ahmadinejad for inciting genocide.

As is predictable at such august gatherings, there was much soap box rhetoric. Most were enraged and sincere, but some statements were over the top. Irwin Kotler, a former Minister of Justice in Canada, went so far as to compare Ahmadinejad to (gasp) Pinochet! If only Israel’s enemies were like Pinochet.

Alan Dershowitz announced that he was drafting a legal brief justifying the use of preemptive force against Iran: "If the international community fails, we reserve the right of self-defense." Kotler accused Ahmadinejad of “state-ordered, state-sanctioned genocidal anti-Semitism.” Meir Rosenne, a former Israeli ambassador added: "When 6 million Jews were killed, countries remained silent. At that time, everyone said they didn't know. Today, they know, but…they don't care...The apathy of the civilized world when it comes to killing Jews is probably a matter of tradition."

Other speakers denounced the United Nations for its inaction in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. The editor-in-chief of The New Republic, Martin Peretz, slammed Kofi Annan as a “handmaiden to Darfur” and compared James Baker to Neville Chamberlain.

Hello? They denounce the UN even as they bring their lawsuit to the United Nations International Court of Justice? Forgive my cynicism, but the long and the short of it is that they will sue the bastard. Well, as they say on the farm “that‘ll learn him.”

My, my….did the noble gentlemen ever listen to the daily "state-ordered, state-sanctioned, genocidal anti-Semitism" that prevails throughout the Arab world? Have they heard the sermons or read the newspapers or seen the schoolbooks calling Jews vermin, bacteria and dogs? What about the daily and ritual chants of “death to the Jews”? And, how about the fact that Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are best sellers throughout the Arab world? Did they ever see the vicious cartoons of Israelis and Jews that flood Arab newspapers or witness the daily flag burnings and street theater calling for the destruction of “evil and illegitimate Israel.” Have they a clue that jihad and Jew hatred have a long and deadly history among the Moslems of the world?

No dear sirs…these atrocities do not take place only in Iran. They are random and routine in the Arab gutters of all Israel’s enemies….but you do not denounce them, you do not sue them, you do not curse them…..you accept this in the name of peace processing. You brandish your collective fist at Iran, but you ask Israel to negotiate with the rest of this genocidal scum. In fact you sanction Israeli concessions to these thugs whose aim is identical to that of Iran’s lunatic President.

Did you not gather like fools in the White House to applaud Yasser Arafat, a genocidal anti-Semite if there ever was one? Did you protest when Sadat, author of a fawning letter of praise to Hitler, went to Israel to issue demand after demand rather than an apology for the nearly devastating sneak attack on Israel on Yom Kippur of 1973? Do you not call Mahmoud Abbas, a well known terrorist and Holocaust denier, “Mr. President” and a “moderate”? Did you not urge Israel to leave Gaza and do you not urge Israel to leave Judea and Samaria even in the face of the chaos and murder that ensues after each Israeli concession? Do you not indulge in the massive identity theft that has usurped the title “Palestinian” by changing its definition and history?

To be sure among those gathered were decent people. Among those protesting against Ahmadinejad is Elie Weisel whom I like and respect. Who could forget his speech when he was invited to the White House shortly after it was announced that President Reagan was to visit a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany where members of the SS, the Nazi elite notorious for their murderous anti-Semitism, were buried.

At the ceremony where Weisel was to be honored with a Congressional Medal of Achievement, he invoked the Jewish tradition which commands one “to speak truth to power” and asked the President to cancel his visit to Bitburg with the stirring words “That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.”

Why can’t Jewish leaders speak truth to power? Why, instead of posturing about indicting Iran’s President, can’t they urge President Bush to abandon the “road map” and why don’t they openly denounce those who bend the President’s ear and mind with respect to Israel and its enemies? Why can’t they gather in Hebron, the cradle of the Jewish faith and the locus of the unbroken chain of Jewish survival which our tormentors sought to break? Their place is with the intended victims.

Instead, the convenient whipping boy is Ahmadinejad, while so many of the “Jewish leaders” continue to nurture the hallucination of the “two state solution.”

It is their indifference and ignorance and indolence that will certainly speed up the two state solution…the state of war and the state of extinction.