Obama’s Post-Newtown Release of Child-Murderers from Israeli Prisons

Edward Smith

{Editor's note - This is an exceedingly interesting piece written by a thoughtful reader. It's launched through a discussion of the Newtown massacre. As it happens, I was raised right around the corner from Newtown in Connecticut. I heard about this terrible thing while on a bus in Oakland. The driver was talking to some passenger about what happened in my old state, so my ears pricked up and I asked, "What town? Do you know?" When she said Newtown I practically fell through the floor. Oh, and as always, the writer's opinions are his own. - ML}

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Early in 2013, when the nation was still in shock over the December 14, 2012 Newtown massacre, President Obama decided that one of his administration’s top priorities would be to pressure Israel to release scores of convicted terrorists, including the killers of children. The result would turn out to be a grotesque foreign-policy “success” that the media virtually ignored.

While political leaders, including presidents, are expected to flip-flop occasionally, this might be the first administration in history to flip-flop on the issue of child massacres. The first anniversary of the Newtown killings was preceded by two other noteworthy anniversaries of child murders that the Obama administration reacted to in chillingly conflicting ways, apparently based on the victims’ nationality and religion.

To observe the 50^th anniversary of the 1963 firebombing murders of four African-American girls in Birmingham, President Obama solemnly paid tribute to the victims, who were also posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for “major achievement in the recipient's field.”

One month later, Israel marked a similar tragic milestone—the 25th anniversary of the firebombing murders of the nine-months pregnant Rachel Weiss, a 26-year-old second-grade teacher, and her sons—Netanel, 4; Rafael, 2; and Ephraim, 21 months. Israeli soldier David Delorosa also died in a heroic attempt to save them. Israel considered imposing the death penalty for the first time since Adolf Eichmann was put to death in 1962.

Unfortunately, the Weiss brothers did not look like Obama’s own imagined sons; and unfortunately, they and their mother (a victim of a real war on women) were citizens of the nation Obama’s mentor Jeremiah Wright referred to as “that dirty word.” And so, using Secretary of State John Kerry as his point man, Obama began pushing for the release of their killers, along with scores of other terrorists convicted of murder or attempted murder.

The two perpetrators of the 1988 bus firebombing and their fellow terrorists were apparently freed simply because Palestinian officials requested it—reportedly the same reason Obama’s Internal Revenue Service began persecuting pro-Israel organizations.

It was early April of 2013 when Kerry began his mission to free the terrorists, only to be abruptly interrupted when, within days, Islamic terrorists struck Boston, killing an 8-year-old boy and two adults, and wounding 264 others. Kerry got choked up as he spoke stirringly of a “direct confrontation with evil,” vowed the perpetrators would be brought to justice, and expressed his horror that some victims were so young: “It defies words to hear of children killed and horribly maimed on the streets of my city. It is sickening to see my home turned into a place of carnage…” (He also equated the Boston victims with the armed Gaza terror flotilla jihadists and likened the two Boston bombers to Israeli commandos who had acted in self-defense.) Then Kerry quickly resumed pressuring Israel and by late April obtained an agreement for the mass release of prisoners with innocent blood on their hands.

Fast-forward to early August of that year, and another horrific, stranger-than fiction coincidence which, like the timing of the Boston Marathon bombing, looked a lot like instant karma for the Obama administration. Israel was two days away from obeying the State Department’s request to free the first 26 Palestinian terrorists, when the news broke that Mexico had released the drug lord convicted in the heinous slaying of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent. The Obama administration denounced the injustice:  

“We are deeply concerned by the release of Rafael Caro Quintero from prison in Mexico,” said National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden…”We remain as committed today in seeing Quintero and others involved in this crime face justice…”

In addition, the Associated Press reported, “The U.S. Department of Justice said it found the court’s decision ‘deeply troubling.’…The Association of Former Federal Narcotics Agents in the United States said it was ‘outraged’ by Caro Quintero’s early release…”

So American lives have value. But what about the case of former U.S. Marine Steven Rosenfeld, a dual U.S.-Israel citizen who was stabbed to death by a terrorist in the West Bank Israeli city of Ariel? Evaluating the worth of his life by Obama standards gets us into a gray area. His murderer was freed, although the administration expressed concern over the release after learning the victim was an American.

At the same time the Obama team was facilitating the release of perpetrators of hate-crime murders of Jewish children, they zealously prosecuted and sentenced an Amish man to 15 years in prison for the “hate crime” of forcibly cutting hair. Meanwhile, the administration advocated the immediate release of attorney Lynne Stewart, sentenced to 10 years for assisting terror plots, after having served 3 years. This breathtaking double standard regarding Muslim terrorists and their collaborators on the one hand, and Christians and Jews on the other, was ignored by the media.

Then there’s the barely noted issue of whether Obama had the right to nullify the verdicts of the judiciary of a sovereign foreign nation, and whether Netanyahu was legally permitted to obey. Is overruling another nation’s judiciary through coercion an impeachable offense? Professor Louis Rene Beres arguedthat the administration was “in violation not only of international law but also the law of the United States,” and that Israel has no legal right “to free terrorists as a ‘goodwill gesture.’”

Far from bringing peace closer, the prisoner release further inflamed the passions of a Palestinian culture whose support for serial killing always was, and remains, the chief obstacle to peace. It was predictable that the freed killers would be praised as heroes and financially rewarded, and that Obama would have no complaints.

Obama's demands on Israel contrasted dramatically with his pledge that he “does not meddle in Iran's internal affairs” and regards a Fatah-Hamas unity deal as “an internal matter” (rather than, say, an obstacle to peace). In his celebrated Cairo speech, he similarly assured the entire Muslim world that “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.”

In no area do we tread more cautiously than in our consideration of what is best for the bereaved. It’s the reason most Americans opposed the building of a mosque at Ground Zero. It’s the reason Sandy Hook Elementary School was demolished, and the house where three women were abused in Cleveland was torn down. The feelings of the grieving loved ones and their community rightfully trump all else, especially when it is children who are being mourned. The callous infliction of additional anguish on grieving Israelis, who perhaps had finally found some closure when the murderers of their loved ones were convicted and imprisoned, appears to be the sole exception to the rule.

The same year the president was overseeing the release of child-murderers, he revealed his blind spot yet again in an astonishing joint press conference with Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan, a fervent anti-Semite and financer of Hamas’ efforts to carry out Newtown-like massacres and Birmingham-type atrocities. He’s also the dear friend Obama turns to for parenting advice.

Obama stated, “as always, among the topics where I appreciate your advice is close to our hearts, and that's how to raise our daughters well.” Then Erdogan spoke, declaring his commitment to Hamas. The White House press corps simply looked on, finding none of this to be bizarre or the least bit newsworthy. Few dare say there’s something terribly chilling about what the president says would be good for his daughters, and something alarming about a foreign policy that stems from the same moral blindness, embracing and empowering jihadist enemies while tormenting allies.

The gratuitous punishment of the bereaved and the traumatized of a close allied nation by obtaining the release of the murderers of its children possibly has no precedent in history. To anyone paying attention, it signaled the inevitability of the next act in the nightmare Obama and his enablers inflicted on Israel, the nuclear appeasement of Iran.