On Equivalency: Introducing the President of Newton's Third Law of Motion...

This post seems way too paranoid to me, expressing outrage at moral equivalency that you implied into the speech and wish to let fester as a resentment while you mock Obama's visit to Buchenwald as not enough. It feels like this feigned outrage will be used as yet another excuse to refuse to sympathize with the Palestinians at the peace table. This intransigent attitude adds to the perception that the Holocaust is being abused as an all-purpose excuse to deflect responsibility for any of Israel's actions and to engage in aggressive war and other crimes. This further drags down Israel's image in the US and the world as an intransigent and unreasonable nation-state. It saddens me but it also tests my patience. And I am not alone.

I really encourage all readers of this column to read the postings a little more carefully. Not because there is anything so special in the column. But it almost certainly will reduce the number of aggravating responses like the one preceding. First, no paranoia here. That implies a fear of something. Regarding the moral equivalency in the speech, I didn't imply it, others did...I even dismissed it later in the post. I was getting to a different kind of equivalency...the sense that everything could be balanced with some other thing to keep everyone as happy as possible with us. I certainly did not mock the visit to Buchenwald. I questioned its timing and the motives of the spin doctors who cooked up the schedule. As for the Palestinians...huh? What are you saying? Because I am Jewish that somehow my opinion influences the process of the Mideast peace talks? I wish you were right. But the outcome would be different because I am an all two-state solution, stop the settlements, negotiate now kind of guy. Wonder why you jumped to another conclusion? As for the abuse of the Holocaust...my concern is precisely yours. I don't think it should be abused...or used...by anyone. Israel's actions are, however, not justified by the Holocaust. They are justified by the legitimate right to self-defense that any country surrounded by those who deny their right to exist would consider a priority. As for you being saddened and your patience being tested, surely that's a sign of something but I am not sure what. Given your tendency to misread, distort, impute motives that don't exist, etc...does this mean Israel is alientating the intellectually careless and biased? I don't minimize that, it's a big audience. But I'm not sure it's one I seek out for this blog.

I almost remember some russian short story we had to read in high school. Checkhov maybe? This guy at a party accidentally said something that might be taken the wrong way, and he worried that people would spread bad rumors about him for it. So he went around to everybody at the party denying it. And the next day he found out that everybody had heard the rumor, and he wondered what enemy had been spreading it....

Here's this equivalence allegation that Obama etc deny that they implied, and all these zionists are busy denying it. Who's putting that idea in people's heads? Who's giving it a great big platform?

If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it. But if the shoe does almost fit, but it doesn't quite feel comfortable to wear it, don't argue about whether it fits -- just don't wear it still.

David, thank you for another great post.

I think as Jews, we have an advantage over people. We have a perspective on history in a moral context. This is the value we bring to America, as America's Jews.

Of course, we are not the only ones - many immigrants, and many American's with years of service to this country, have a similar experience. But I'd still say, that the Torah is above all a Moral journey, and so there is no shame in admitting, that we are more sensitive to a moral history, than others can possibly be, unless they themselves maintain some continuity in their moral system (maybe Parsis, or Bahais, or Armenians).

Obama made a big mistake, going to Dresden on the same day as Buchenwald. He is a poor speaker when not with a teleprompters, and I don't like Elie Wiesel. Finkelstein called him a clown of the Holocaust circuit, and he had a point.

The point is that you get Obama and Wiesel in Buchenwald, adn it is a circus - and a bad one at that. Obama is clueless on European History - he's never had the slightest interest in his entire life. He has never felt any empathy or anything personal. In fact his biography shows sympathy to extreme bigots, with histories of anti-semitism.

What we know about Hussein - since we can now call him that with his royal approval - is that the man who liberated a part of the Buchenwald complex was himself rather surprised to hear Obama mention him in a speech (remember the "my uncle liberated Auschwitz).

Now this uncle was surprised, because he had never met Obama in person, and because he had never heard of any interest in his life from Obama.

I'd guess he was also surprised, because Obama clearly didn't have a clue where Auschwitz is, and what Army had actually liberated it, and what part of Europe our army liberated. You understand me David?

The point here - Obama tries to be everythign to everyone - and that's not leadership, that's clowning around. That's why he poses with Wiesel, and then goes to Dresden, lights a candel, adn mentions the victims of an air-raid.

THis man marks the end of our culture as we know it. He has trivialised everythign beyond a point of no return. What he is doing, was previously unthinkable. There would have been limits on how much you could play the game. People had solid identities, and they wouldn't let you cross the lines. The veterans, the dignitaries, the FSA people.

Now its all in his hands, because a whole establishemtn has been swept away. With it comes the stupidity and inexperience, of Obama.

The record of this man is clear - he is a divider. Under the pretense of unity, he uses his ignorance to knit together some disconnected paliative verbiage, and instead of unifying us, divides us further. This was clear in the acrimony of the Democratic primary, it was clear with McCain, and the polarisation of the vote, and it is clear with his brainless idae to speak to the Islamic world.

In this one speech - he has implicitly acknowledge that America is
1) dealing not with Iraq and Afghanistan and terrorism but
2) with Islam
3) hence Islam is a problem (implicitly)
4) and America's treatment of Islam, is the problem (implicitly) .

Obama and Mr. Axelrod think they are smart, when they term "contingency operations" instaed of "war on terror" and when they speak from Stanbul and Cairo - instead, they have now taken the battle from the marginal extremists to the core of the Muslim world.

This is divisive, it is an admission of civilisational divide, and knowing how Obama bowed to Abudalh - we know, with three mentions of the Hijab in his speech, and no mention of political rights for women, and cultural rights, and social rights, where this man stands.

not on our sides.

So in a way, he isn't a moral equivalentist - he is using equivalence, to downplay our culture and civilsiation, and bring it down to the level of the Saudis.

He isn't on our side, and he doesnt' represent my nation.