My Open Letter to Senator Menendez

Dear Senator Menendez,

As a politically conservative Jew with a strong attachment to Israel, I commend you, a liberal non-Jewish congressional Democrat, for your strong public stance in favor of the Jewish State. Your speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate last week, widely circulated on “YouTube,” directly contradicts the sentiments of our President vis-a-vis Israel as expressed in his June 4th Cairo speech and in other contexts. I hope and pray that your forceful rejoinder to the President’s mischaracterization of Israel’s founding premise his ushers in a growing chorus of similar repudiations of the President’s Israel policy from congressional Democrats and Republicans alike.

In light of the heinous act of violence by James von Brunn, the neo-Nazi anti-Semite who murdered the security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum the other week, you are quite correct in your assertion that anti-Semitism has not been eliminated. You rightly condemned anti-Jewish words and deeds in America, Europe and the Middle East. But I was especially gratified by your focus on the issue of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, which has unfortunately been called into question at the highest levels of government.

Barack Obama asserted that Israel’s founding in 1948 as an independent state was a direct result of centuries of oppression of Jews in Europe culminating in the virtual elimination of European Jewry by the murderous Nazis. Superficially a condemnation of the Jew-hatred that resulted in the Shoah, Obama’s locution was in fact designed to plant the seed of doubt about Israel’s legitimacy in the Middle East. According to his view, Israel’s existence is nothing but an artifact of European post-war guilt. Why should Arabs continue to suffer for the misdeeds of Germany and its sympathizers when Jews are perpetrating morally reprehensible acts of their own against Arabs?

In a powerful riposte you made the undeniable case that modern Israel’s re-establishment as a nation-state is rooted not in the Holocaust but in events occurring in the time of Abraham: “The argument for Israel’s legitimacy does not depend on what we say in speeches…it has been made by history.” You acknowledge that Israel’s legitimacy has been further secured by “the men and women who have made the desert green… by Nobel Prizes earned…by lives saved…democracy defended…peace made and battles won.” From your own experiences in Israel you know that in the heart of every Jew is a strong yearning for peace.

The Arabs have invented a narrative that insists that in anticipation of its declaration of independence in 1948 the Jews of Israel forcibly evicted the Arabs of “Palestine” from their homes. Many Americans—non-Jews and Jews alike--are unaware that this Naqba –“catastrophe”-- did not happen. This is not to deny that isolated acts of brutality and terror by Jews occurred during this time period. But as historian Mitchell Bard points out, “The Palestinians left their homes in 1947-48 for a variety of reasons. Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders' calls to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of a battle.”

To listen to President Obama, it would appear that he has bought into the Arab false narrative without reservation, which explains his willingness to solve the Arab “refugee” crisis at Israel’s expense. You, however, pointed out that while 700,000 or so Arabs left Israel either voluntarily or under pressure from leaders of the surrounding Arab countries, an equal number of Jews were expelled from Arab and Muslim lands they called home for a millennium. At last check no Jew has asked these countries for reparations, territorial concessions or a right of return.

Unlike President Obama, who apparently believes an irredentist terror group like Hamas, which currently “governs Gaza,” can be brought into a unity government with Fatah and negotiate peace with Israel as its equal, you state correctly that there is no moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas:

Israel is a sovereign democratic state of Jews, Muslims and Christians…Hamas is a terrorist organization which won control of Gaza when men in ski masks waged gun battles with another branch of Palestinians. Hamas then used their control of Gaza to launch rockets at sleeping children in Israeli cities. This is the thanks Israel got for withdrawing from Gaza. Hamas does not recognize agreements that Palestinian leaders have made with Israel, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist at all and in fact is ideologically committed to Israel’s annihilation.

I wish that our President and his Secretary of State were possessed of such simple moral clarity. Instead they insist that Israeli citizens stop building in their towns and cities while Palestinians “assassinate [Israel’s] people with rockets and its national character with poisonous rhetoric.” While our Secretary of State doles out a billion dollars to Gaza, its bloody regime continues to import arms financed by Iran and Syria with the help of Egypt and Sudan for the sole purpose of killing innocent Jews.

President Obama says he is “moved” by normal Iranian citizens who risk their lives to protest a stolen election (and the Islamist theocracy), yet insists on “engaging” the brutal regime once they finish cracking the skulls of its citizens. By Obama’s lights the mullahs can be persuaded to give up their nuclear aspirations if only they will sit down across the table from him.

Indeed Israel is in your words a “rose in a desert rampant with repression.” Obama sees Israel as the problem; you see it correctly as the solution to the problem of Arab fundamentalism and extremism. As you said, “we cannot erase the moral distinctions between tyranny and freedom and we must not edit history.”

Sadly, many in the world and even in our own country would attempt just that—to blur the line between the forces of good and evil. Our President specializes in hiding his anti-Israel bias under the cloak of “evenhandedness.” It is not evenhanded to suggest that the life of the Palestinians under Israeli “occupation” is or has been anything like the extermination of the Jews under Hitler. It is the cheapest kind of moral equivalency. It is editing history.

May you be blessed by the God of Israel with the strength and courage to keep standing for Israel and the Jewish people.

Sincerely,

Scott Italiaander