What Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t say during his speech before Congress last Tuesday was profound. A speech of this importance is particularly scrutinized not so much after it’s delivered as it is by those crafting it beforehand. Every word is measured, punctuation adjusted for effect, and pauses analyzed with reference to the dramatic. The doltish mainstream media pounced, predictably, on Netanyahu’s speech calling it hawkish, premature, and without novelty; but the left missed the most delicious aspect of Netanyahu’s repudiation of Obama because it was skillfully nuanced and robed in silence.
Prime Minister Netanyahu took pains to point out how the Obama administration has delivered some measured forms of assistance to Israel, and meted out praise to Congress for assisting Israel with its Iron Dome anti-missile defense systems. In doing so, he deftly stroked the egos of the preening dandies of both parties and gave a sop to Obama’s insatiable vortex of narcissism. The rhetorical pat on the head also served to cast subsequent critics in the pallid light of adolescent tantrum. Nancy Pelosi seemed exceptionally shrill and withered when dutifully delivering her rambling screed through the severity of her stretched face, with her eyes boggling desperately for purchase in their sockets. If the eyes are truly windows to the soul, what monstrosity of pure politics must shamble with desiccated form within? Netanyahu was also kind to Harry Reid, who recently suffered from some buffoonish self-inflicted battery resulting in Reid appearing at the speech with an eye patch. Netanyahu quipped, “Harry, it’s good to see you back on your feet. I guess it’s true what they say, you can’t keep a good man down.” Coming from a rugged man of action, a warrior, a statesman, compliments like that make the unworthy recipient seem all the more diminutive. What masterful irony.
War is upon us. Much of what the Prime Minister had to say proves that point. Common sense proves that point. A cursory survey of the nightly news proves that point. However, all of this escapes the collective intellect of the liberal media, the TMZ crowd, and the Democratic Party. Iran is the state sponsor of terrorism. As such its influence spreads through a conduit of training and finance that leads directly to overt organizations such as Hamas, and undergirds efforts to destabilize Syria and Iraq. And, the struggle in Iraq between forces backed by Iran, not so covertly, and ISIS, is merely a struggle between two monsters vying for dominance. As Netanyahu so eloquently put it, “When it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy.”
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Only fools characterize Netanyahu’s speech as warmongering and deny the asymmetrical nature of the threat. Netanyahu isn’t just warning the free world about the actuality of Iran possessing nuclear weapons, but warns also about its current practice of terroristic warfare. It seems the Iranians are more clever than their left-wing dupes, as they prosecute a war of destabilization and terror as effective as any conventional invasion. The twin towers fell at the hands of Islamo-facists motivated by same genocidal and antisemitic doctrines that the Ayatollah preaches from his Twitter account. Despite the mewing from pacifists in the Democrat party and the inanities propagated by Obama’s State Department, the war exists and is being fought in cities like Boston and New York. Fort Hood and Benghazi are reminders that we are at war with terrorism, its surrogates, and with the States that sponsor this barbarity.
It’s no coincidence that the Democrat President Jimmy Carter was responsible for deposing the Shah of Iran and ushered in the apocalyptic Ayatollah Khomeini, and that another incompetent and doctrinaire Democrat, Barack Hussein Obama, should usher in an era of nuclear terrorism by the application of the same failed foreign policy. Jimmy Carter brought us the humiliation of the Iranian hostage crisis and Barack Obama has doubled down on national disgrace by snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in the Middle East, and by providing ISIS with the perfect power vacuum in which to grow. Though many on both sides of the aisle disagree on how President Bush and his administration managed the post war aspects of Iraq, one thing is clear—Bush attempted to establish a democracy next door to the greatest threat to Middle East destabilization, the Islamo-facist stronghold of Iran. It was a nearly successful attempt to alter the balance of power in the region, providing a buffer for Israel and the opportunity for primitive democracy in Iraq. Barack Obama, the Democrat party, and the American left have betrayed democracy in the Middle East, have betrayed our Israeli ally in the region, and are on the cusp of allowing the forces of tyranny to gain the advantage of the doomsday weapon.
The intention of Iran’s leadership is clearly genocidal, and Netanyahu made it abundantly clear that Israel will not assume passivity in the face of extermination. The Prime Minister acknowledged the Nobel Prize winner and Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel, the “messenger to mankind,” who was seated in the House gallery. In doing so, Netanyahu clearly linked the genocidal intentions of Iran with Nazi Germany’s Holocaust. Just as Hitler’s National Socialists were profoundly evil, so is the brand of Islam promoted by Iran’s Ayatollah. And, the hatred of the Islamo-facists is as intractable as the hatred of the Nazis. How would it have sounded to the community of nations in the 1940’s if America had suggested that we let the Nazis have the atomic bomb and hope that they’d be good enough not to use it? How would history be different today? As ridiculous as this sounds, this is precisely the argument that the Obama administration makes concerning Iran and The Bomb.
Netanyahu clearly gave voice to his support for the imposition of effective sanctions and negotiating for an effective agreement that would ensure a non-nuclear Iran. However, the left, stupefied by its own dazzling naiveté, supposes that Iran is just as “deserving” of nuclear capabilities as other nations are, even though they have demonstrated their ruthless disregard for life and international convention.
Netanyahu closed his Reaganesque speech by thanking America for standing with Israel. He thanked those present in the House chamber for standing with Israel. But, this is where Netanyahu’s silence becomes most profound. He did not single out President Barack Hussein Obama as standing with Israel. This omission could only be purposeful in a speech crafted with such meticulous care. In the end, the Prime Minister did propose something new. He proposed that Obama actively oppose the Iranians in their quest for the bomb, and that Obama join him in leading the free world in the Middle East. Obama has shifted the balance of influence in the region to favor the Iranian regime of Islamic tyranny. Netanyahu knows that Obama is not interested in actively promoting democracy in the Middle East, so he said plainly that Israel would go it alone if necessary. It seems that on Tuesday, the world was introduced to the new leader of the free world—Benjamin Netanyahu. As America was adrift in a malaise during the Carter administration, so America is now adrift and absent during the Obama administration. But, Netanyahu leads with the elegance of clarity and with the forcefulness of conviction.
In closing, Netanyahu pointed to the portrait of Moses, whose visage adorns the center of the wall above the House gallery. In doing so, he exalted the common heritage of Jews and Christians and reminds us that our strength is in our faith. He recited the words of Moses in Hebrew, “Be strong and resolute, neither fear nor dread them.” (Deuteronomy 31:6) Netanyahu reveres what Obama mocks and is strong, whereas Obama is weak. Hopefully, there are more of us standing with Netanyahu than those who cower with Obama.
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