Will Obama Condemn the Jihad Against the Jews?

Mike L.

{Originally published at the Times of Israel.}

I wouldn't count on it.

President Barack Obama recently stood up before the United Nations and declared:

The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.

And, yet, somehow president Obama does not seem to have much problem with the fact that high level Muslim Brotherhood officials call for the slaughter of Jews. Barack Obama helped usher the Brotherhood into power in Egypt, yet the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1920s Cairo, has a very long history of genocidal anti-Semitism. As anyone who reads Matthias Küntzel or Paul Berman or Jeffrey Herf knows, the Brotherhood is grounded in hatred toward modernity, hatred toward western proponents of modernity, and thus hatred towards those agents of modernity, the Jewish people.

Just recently the Simon Wiesenthal Center reports that a Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohammed Badie, has some words for us:

In a speech reported Thursday in al Ahram, Badie said, "The Jews have...spread corruption on earth, spilled the blood of believers and in their actions profane holy places, including their own." Badie called on Arabs to confront Israel "through Holy Jihad, high sacrifices and all forms of resistance", adding, "Zionists only understand the language of force and will not relent without duress."

"Badie's rant confirms our long held view that Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is the most dangerous anti-Semitic organization in the world today," said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, founder and dean and associate dean, of the leading Jewish human rights NGO.

Coming directly on the heals of this report we further learn, from the Times of Israel, that Islamist Egyptian president Morsi mouths ‘Amen’ as Egyptian preacher urges ‘Allah, destroy the Jews.’

One would think, if, as we are incessantly told, that president Obama is such a fine friend to the Jewish people and to the Jewish State of Israel, that he might consider objecting to the genocidal noises of his buddies in the Brotherhood. The Wiesenthal Center, therefore, is "calling on President Obama to publicly condemn the anti-Semitic call for Jihad against Israel by the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide, Mohammed Badie and to order the cutoff of all contacts with the organization until the threat is withdrawn."

The Muslim Brotherhood is now denying that Badie made any such statements, yet al Ahram published it as his words and we constantly hear these kinds of threats coming out of Brotherhood officials and the proponents of political Islam, more generally. Not a day passes where somewhere in the Middle East Muslim leaders don't screech to the heavens about the religious necessity of killing Jews. This is, of course, nothing new. Year after year, decade after decade, century after century, since the Jews rejected Mohammed's demand that they submit to him as the Prophet of Allah in the 7th century, and thereby cease to exist as Jews, we have heard the blood-curdling screech for our slaughter. Millions of Muslims throughout the Middle East, and elsewhere, quite literally believe that Allah wants nothing so much as a violent Jihad against the Jewish people and against the state of Israel.

So, will president Barack Obama condemn these calls for violent Jihad against the Jews? The Wiesenthal Center issued their request to Obama ten days ago and so far the president has remained entirely silent. I find this rather odd, don't you? Barack Obama, and his administration, strongly condemned that stupid youtube video clip, which they claimed was responsible for the recent rash of riots and murder and rape in places like Benghazi, Libya and Tahrir Square in Cairo, yet they cannot bring themselves to speak out against the never-ending genocidal incitement toward the Jews in the Middle East.

It should be noted, by the way, that blaming Muslim violence on that video is as racist as racist gets. When the Obama administration initially blamed the riots, and the murder of the American diplomatic team in Libya, on that video they were implying that Muslims in the Middle East are something akin to mindless savages who have no moral agency. The clear implication of the Obama administration's stance is that those people cannot really be held responsible for their own behavior.  To even imply that the video caused the violent response is to suggest that those people are somehow untermenschen.

It is, sadly, one of the ironies of this political moment that the progressive-left, the political movement that most strenuously claims to be opposed to racism is, in fact, just riddled with what Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld has dubbed "humanitarian racism."

But I digress.  The question is this.  Will the Obama administration, or will it not, heed the request of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to explicitly condemn the genocidal anti-Jewish hate speech coming out of the Muslim Brotherhood?  Will this administration, which claims to be such a good friend to the Jewish people, sever ties with the Muslim Brotherhood so long as the Brotherhood continues to incite hatred toward us?

My bet is that they will not.

And, yet, American Jews will still vote for this guy.

Sad, but true.