[Rhodes22-list] Political

[Brad Haslett]

Boys and Girls, anyone who has paid attention over the years knows
that I'm a fan of Caroline Glick.  Here's her latest.  Brad

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Our World: Your abortions or your lives!
Sep. 22, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

American Jews have good reason to be ashamed and angry today. As Iran
moves into the final stages of its nuclear weapons development program
- nuclear weapons which it will use to destroy the State of Israel,
endanger Jews around the world and cow the United States of America -
Democratic American Jewish leaders decided that putting Sen. Barack
Obama in the White House is more important than protecting the lives
of the Jewish people in Israel and around the world.

On Monday, the New York Sun published the speech that Republican vice
presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin would have delivered
at that day's rally outside UN headquarters in New York against
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and against Iran's plan to
destroy Israel. She would have delivered it, if she hadn't been
disinvited.

The rally was co-sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major
Jewish Organizations, the National Coalition to Stop Iran Now, The
Israel Project, United Jewish Communities, the UJA-Federation of New
York and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Its purpose was to
present a united American Jewish front against Iran's genocidal leader
and against its genocidal regime which is developing nuclear weapons
with the stated intention of committing the second Holocaust in 80
years.

Palin's speech is an extraordinary document. In its opening paragraph
she made clear that Iran presents a danger not just to Israel, but to
the US. And not just to some Americans, but to all Americans. Her
speech was a warning to Iran - and anyone else who was listening -
that Americans are not indifferent to its behavior, its genocidal
ideology and the barbarity of its regime. Rather, they are outraged.

After that opening, Palin's speech set out clearly how Iran is
advancing its nuclear project, why it must be prevented from acquiring
nuclear weapons and why and how the regime itself must be opposed by
all right thinking people - not just Israelis and Americans - but by
all people who value human freedom.

PALIN'S SPEECH was a message of national - rather than simply
Republican - resolve against Iran's nuclear weapons program and its
active involvement in global and regional terrorism. She made this
point by quoting statements that Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton has
made against the Iranian regime.

The speech detailed Iran's past and current attacks against the US,
beginning with its bombing of US servicemen in Lebanon in 1983 and
continuing with Iran's proxy war against US forces in Iraq and against
Iraqis who oppose its intention of taking control of their country.

By discussing Iran's role in Iraq she not only made a convincing case
for why an American victory there is essential for defeating Iran. She
also made clear that Iran is actively making war against the US, not
just Israel.

>From Iran's war against Israel, the US, and freedom loving peoples
worldwide, Palin's speech turned to the regime's war against its own
people. She attacked the regime for its systematic repression of
Iranian women. She applauded the extraordinary bravery of women like
Delaram Ali who risked their lives and their families to demand basic
rights for Iranian women. Ali, she noted, was sentenced to 10 lashes
and three years in prison for having the courage to speak out. An
international outcry has temporarily suspended her sentence.

Then Palin returned to Iran's nuclear weapons program and its support
for terrorist groups pledged to Israel's destruction and to the
destruction of the US. She returned to Ahmadinejad's calls for
Israel's annihilation. She reiterated Republican presidential
candidate Sen. John McCain's solemn promise to work with Israel to
prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and she joined her name to
his promise to stand side by side with Israel to prevent another
Holocaust.

IF PALIN had been allowed to deliver this speech at Monday's rally,
she would done just what the organizers of the rally, and what the
Jewish people in Israel, America and worldwide need to have done. She
would have elevated the imperative of preventing Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons and the implicit moral and strategic imperative of
overthrowing the regime in Teheran to the top of America's national
security agenda. Given the massive media attention she garners at all
of her public appearances, Palin's participation in the rally would
have done more to steel Americans - across the political spectrum - to
the cause of opposing Iran than 10 UN Security Council sanctions
resolutions could do.

It was a remarkable speech, prepared by a remarkable woman. But it was
not heard. It was not heard because the Democratic Party and Jewish
Democrats believe that their partisan interest in demonizing Palin and
making Americans generally and American Jews in particular hate and
fear her to secure their votes for Obama and his running-mate Sen.
Joseph Biden in the November election is more important than allowing
Palin to elevate the necessity of preventing a second Holocaust to the
top of the US's national security agenda.

The rally's organizers invited both Clinton and Palin to speak. It was
a wise move. In light of Iran's monstrous oppression of Iranian women,
had the two most powerful women in American politics joined forces in
opposing the regime and its war against human freedom, their
appearance would have sent a message of American unity and resolve
that would have reverberated not just throughout the US and in the US
presidential race, but throughout the world and into Iran itself. But
it was not to be.

The moment that Clinton found out that she was to share a stage with
Palin, she cancelled her appearance. By cancelling, she signaled to
Jewish Democrats - and Democrats in general - that opposing Palin and
the Republican Party is more important than opposing Ahmadinejad and
the genocidal regime he represents.

THE JEWISH Democrats on the rally's organizing committee got the
message loud and clear. Two of the rally's co-sponsors - the Jewish
Council for Public Affairs and the UJA Federation of New York demanded
that the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations
disinvite Palin.

The JCPA is led by Steven Gutow. Before joining the JCPA, he served as
the founding executive director of the National Jewish Democratic
Council, which is the Jewish support arm of the Democratic Party. The
UJA Federation of New York is led by John Ruskay, who began his Jewish
communal career as an anti-Israel "peace" activist in the radical
CONAME and Breira organizations. Among their other endeavors, CONAME
and Breira opposed US military assistance to Israel during the Yom
Kippur War and called for US recognition of the PLO after the group
massacred 26 children in Ma'alot in 1974.

Gutow and Ruskay were supported in their demand to disinvite Palin by
the National Jewish Democratic Council and by the new Jewish
pro-Palestinian lobbying group J-Street.

In an attempt to assuage Gutow and Ruskay, the rally organizers
invited Biden to speak. But he had a scheduling conflict. So the
organizers contacted the Obama campaign and asked it to send a
representative. The campaign offered Congressman Robert Wexler.

But the Democrats knew that Wexler would be no match for Palin. So
they continued on the warpath, absurdly claiming that by inviting
Palin (and Clinton, Biden and Wexler), the organizers were endangering
the sponsoring organizations' tax-exempt status. That is, through
Ruskay and Gutow, in their bid to prevent Palin from appearing at the
rally, the Democrats threatened to bring down the organized Jewish
community.

Never mind that the threat is absurd. The likelihood that the Internal
Revenue Service would open an investigation against every major
American Jewish organization for daring to invite Palin to a rally
opposing Ahmadinejad's appearance at the UN and Iran's stated
intention of annihilating Israel is just slightly smaller than the
prospect of Ahmadinejad wrapping himself in an Israeli flag and
singing "Hatikva" on the UN rostrum.

But no matter. The fear that these Democratic Jews would openly split
the Jewish community on the need to confront Iran frightened the
organizers. The notion that the Democratic Party, and its Jewish
supporters would openly turn their backs on the need to confront Iran
to advance the political fortunes of their party and their party's
presidential slate was too much to take. Palin was disinvited.

LIBERAL AMERICAN Jews, like liberal Americans in general, and indeed
like their fellow leftists in Israel and throughout the West, uphold
themselves as champions of human rights. They claim that they care
about the underdog, the wretched of the earth. They care about the
environment. They care about securing American women's unfettered
access to abortions. They care about keeping Christianity and God out
of the public sphere. They care about offering peace to those who are
actively seeking their destruction so that they can applaud themselves
for their open-mindedness and tell themselves how much better they are
than savage conservatives.

Those horrible, war-mongering, Bambi killing, unborn baby defending,
God-believing conservatives, who think that there are things worth
going to war to protect, must be defeated at all costs. They must
intimidate, attack, demonize and defeat those conservatives who think
that the free women of the West should be standing shoulder to
shoulder not with Planned Parenthood, but with the women of the
Islamic world who are enslaved by a misogynist Shari'a legal code that
treats them as slaves and deprives them of control not simply of their
wombs, but of their faces, their hair, their arms, their legs, their
minds and their hearts.

The lives of 6 million Jews in Israel are today tied to the fortunes
of those women, to the fortunes of American forces in Iraq, to the
willingness of Americans across the political and ideological spectrum
to recognize that there is more that unifies them than divides them
and to act on that knowledge to defeat the forces of genocide,
oppression, hatred and destruction that are led today by the Iranian
regime and personified in the brutal personality of Ahmadinejad. But
Jewish Democrats chose to ignore this basic truth in order to silence
Palin.

They should be ashamed. The Democratic Party should be ashamed. And
Jewish American voters should consider carefully whether opposing a
woman who opposes the abortion of fetuses is really more important
than standing up for the right of already born Jews to continue to
live and for the Jewish state to continue to exist. Because this week
it came to that.

caroline at carolineglick.com