This is not a presidency known for its reactive speed. After British Petroleum's oil rig sprung a leak in the Gulf of Mexico, it took more than a week for the Obama administration to mobilize; it has been well over a month, and the administration still has no coherent strategy to plug the leak. After Iranian protesters took to the streets in 2009, risking life and limb to defy the terroristic Ahmadinejad regime, President Barack Obama futzed around for days before weakly condemning the regime's crackdown.
But this week, when Israel rightly stopped a Turkish ship carrying terrorist supporters from breaking the naval blockade surrounding the Gaza Strip, Obama responded within hours. "The United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained," intoned White House spokesman William Burton. The Obama administration also embraced a United Nations Security Council resolution "deeply regret(ting) the loss of life and injuries resulting from the use of force during the Israeli military operation in international waters against the convoy sailing to Gaza."
This is language the White House normally reserves for actual terrorists. For example, when Britain released Pan Am bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the White House released a statement that it "deeply regrets the decision." For the Obama administration, legitimate Israeli self-defense is now on par with the release of a mass murderer.
And this was clearly self-defense. The so-called "activists" aboard the Turkish flotilla aimed at the Gaza Strip were caught on tape lynching Israeli soldiers -- and declaring their intention to do so the day before the incident. These weren't members of Greenpeace. They were members and friends of the IHH, a Turkish-sponsored terrorist organization with links to al-Qaida and Hamas. Weeks in advance of the flotilla's launch, organizers were declaring their intent to break the Gaza blockade -- an act aimed directly at funneling weapons to Hamas, because Israel already sends millions of tons of aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip.
But that didn't stop Obama from inserting his large proboscis into yet another situation where it does not belong. Of course, we're used to that by now. On virtually every foreign policy crisis of his presidency, this pathetic poseur has been wrong (Honduras, North Korea, Russia, Greece, Afghanistan and Iran, among others). This situation is no exception.
What is exceptional is Obama's swiftness. He didn't pause for one instant to consider supporting Israel. He immediately leapt to the "nonpartisan" position, eschewing an American ally and attempting to placate the anti-Semitic international community. He drew moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. He even went so far as to call up Islamist Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to give his condolences for those who died trying to provide support to terrorists in Gaza. Not only that, he informed members of the international community that he would be working to secure the release of captured terrorist supporters from the Israeli government. How's that for quick action?
This is just another indicator of Obama's anti-Semitism. How else are we to interpret his lightning-fast, knee-jerk anti-Israel response? When an obviously Muslim man hopped onto a table at Fort Hood and shot to death 12 American military personnel and one civilian while shouting "Allahu akbar," Obama responded by cautioning Americans not to jump "to conclusions until we have all the facts." When an obviously Muslim Times Square bomber attempted to blow up an SUV during the matinee of "Next to Normal," Obama's allies were kind enough to remind us not to react too quickly to the obvious hypothesis.
But when Jews defend themselves from mobs hitting them with clubs and stabbing them with shivs, the president's on it like white on rice. He's there to allow anti-Israel resolutions through the U.N. He's there to comfort terrorist backers, such as Erdogan and Hamas, from the brutality of Israeli commandos armed with paintball guns. (Yes, you read that right; they were carrying paintball guns.)
There's only one world leader who was faster than Obama to the microphone: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And it wasn't by much. It didn't really matter, of course; no matter who got to the microphone first, an anti-Semite was going to issue the first statement. Obama may not be on Ahmadinejad's genocidal level, but he clearly is willing to let those who would perpetrate genocide grab the upper hand in the Middle East.