As President Obama prepares for his first trip to Israel, I hope when he gets there he sees what I saw.
Several weeks ago I returned from my first trip to Israel. I went with a delegation headed by Governor Mike Huckabee, who visits Israel at least once every year.
What did I see?
I saw kids, no more than 18 years old, walking down the street, waiting at bus stops, wearing Army green khakis, and carrying machine guns on their backs. One young girl was as black skinned as me.
Kids doing their compulsory army service as part of Israel’s citizen army. Three years for boys, two years for girls. No university deferment. First high school, then army, then university.
I also saw Masada. The fortress at the top of a mountain rising high above the Judean Desert, where, almost 2000 years ago, a contingent of Jewish zealots, having fled Jerusalem after the fall of the second Temple, took their own lives rather than surrender to the Roman troops closing in on them.
New recruits into Israel’s army, the Israel Defense Forces, climb the long winding path to the mountaintop fortress at Masada and vow to not let Masada fall again.
I also saw Israel’s Holocaust Museum, Yad VaShem – the name taken from a verse in Isaiah, “….I will give in mine house and my walls a place and a name…an everlasting name which shall not be cut off…” that documents the horrors out of which the State of Israel emerged.
I walked through the halls of deep mourning and saw the displays, the photos, the books and papers, documenting the unimaginable.
The unimaginable and intentional slaughter of 6 million Jews, a third of the world’s Jewish population, done less then three quarters of a century ago and perpetrated by a German nation which was home to some of the foremost scientists, writers, and philosophers of modern times.
A crime of dimensions beyond human conception, perpetrated by a madman whom at the time some in the Western world thought they could do business with. Now today a madman in Iran, who some in the Western world think they can do business with, denies these events even occurred.
My thoughts turned with agony back to my own home in America where the lives of 55 million unborn children have been taken since 1973.
I saw the prime minister of Israel take 40 minutes out of his busy day, in the midst of trying to form a new government in this boisterous democracy, to welcome our small group into his office in the parliament building and take our questions. He even took one from me, which he answered at length and with care.
I saw a once barren land – a land once described by Mark Twain as “a desolate country…. a silent and mournful expanse” - now fruitful and ripe. Everything the Israelis have touched seems to have come alive and then some.
You see the result of the relationship of a land that uniquely goes with a people and the people that uniquely goes with that land, and you think of the Song of Songs: “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine: he browses among the lilies.”
I saw the great hope of my scriptures come alive right before my eyes, and I was left exuberant and confident that the God of truth and justice is still speaking today.
In the words of the Psalmist: “When the Lord brings about the return to Zion we will have been like dreamers…. Then they will say among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them, The Lord has done great things for us. We will then rejoice.”
Yes, I pray that when the president of the United States lands in Israel, for his first time, that he sees what I saw.
There has been much talk of late about America’s “fiscal cliff.” As troubling as our impending (Obama-spurred) economic collapse may be – and it is more troubling than even our most pessimistic economists are willing to admit – I’m even more concerned about fast-mounting tensions worldwide.
As the world government ship of fools drifts unmanned amid a sea of unparalleled global volatility, we, her passengers, behold – brewing on the horizon – an economic and foreign relations “perfect storm.”
As so often is the case, the hurricane swirls around the Middle East.
Historically, the president of the United States has captained the ship. He has, heretofore, been duly regarded “leader of the free world.”
Not now. Not with Gilligan reaching for the helm.
Indeed, the current occupant of the Oval Office spends more time with his feet on JFK’s Resolute desk than he does leading from behind it.
But “leading from behind” he does.
More commonly known as “following,” President Obama’s follow-the-leader strategy in the Middle East represents, in my view, either inherent weakness on his part, sympathy toward the Islamic cause or both.
I suspect both.
Indeed, during his first term, Mr. Obama betrayed both weakness personified and sympathy toward the goals of Islamic fundamentalism with his ongoing embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood.
This extremist group, with Obama’s help, now controls much of the Arab world. It has sworn, in its own words, to “destroy” our “Western civilization from within … so that it is eliminated and God’s religion (Islam) is made victorious over all other religions.”
Not surprisingly, today the Brotherhood rushes to the aid of both the terrorist group Hamas and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Palestinian Authority. This, as terrorists ramp-up decades-long rocket attacks and suicide bombings against innocent Israeli women and children.
Nonetheless – and clearly stemming from a cynical political calculus – Mr. Obama persists in paying shallow lip service to support for Israel. All the while he continues to play footsie with the Muslim Brotherhood.
Recall that, just last year, the president touted the “Arab Spring” – which any high school history buff could have predicted would devolve into the utter chaos it has – as “an extraordinary change taking place,” wherein, “Square by square, town by town, country by country, the [Muslim] people have risen up to demand their basic human rights.” (You know, like the Quran-given right for Muslim men to beat or kill women and homosexuals with impunity; or like the human right for both Iran and the Palestinian Authority to “wipe Israel from the face of the earth.”)
As America’s light fades under the Obama regime, Israel has become – for now at least – “the shining city on the hill.”
With a nuclear Iran perhaps only months away, Western civilization needs defending now more than ever. Israel needs defending now more than ever. Consider these words from top Hamas cleric Muhsen Abu ‘Ita: “Annihilation of the Jews here in Palestine is one of the most splendid blessings for Palestine.”
Thus, Israel defends herself. Israel defends the free world.
To be sure, the worldwide Islamic juggernaut has become emboldened by the actions – by the inaction – of a sympathetic, do-nothing U.S. president. Muslim terrorists have, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) recently noted, “turned Gaza into a frontal base for Iran, terrorizing residents of Israel and forcing them to live under unbearable circumstances.”
Yet, inexplicably, many in the West – people Vladimir Lenin might have called “useful idiots” (i.e., “progressives,” mainstream media and moderate American Muslims) – willfully suspend disbelief. They play directly into the blood-soaked hands of these terrorist cowards.
Having time and again demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice their own innocent people (consider child suicide bombers), these monsters today both deliberately target Israeli neighborhoods with rockets and intentionally place their own military launch sites and terrorist headquarters next to mosques, playgrounds, factories and the like.
This, as intended, has created a propagandist boon. Much of the world blames Israel when these human shields are tragically killed during pinpoint military strikes. Who needs missile defense when you have women and children to hide behind?
To both the Israeli and the Arab victims of radical Islam, I say this: You are in our thoughts and our prayers. Our hearts break for you. We pray that God will cover and protect you during these dark days and nights.
With the recent turmoil escalating throughout the Middle East, NBC's David Gregory is joined by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to a compelling interview to address the current situation as well as analyzing the 'red lines' that must be established going forward.
As President Obama prepares for his first trip to Israel, I hope when he gets there he sees what I saw.
