Why Obama So Dislikes Netanyahu
Tuesday, Mar 3, 2015
Thereis no question about whether President Obama — along with Secretary of
State John Kerry and the editorial pages of many newspapers — has a
particular dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But there is another question: Why?
And the answer is due to an important rule of life that too few people are aware of:
Those who do not confront evil resent those who do.
Take the case at hand. The prime minister of Israel is at the
forefront of the greatest battle against evil in our time — the battle
against violent Muslims. No country other than Israel is threatened with
extinction, and it is Iran and the many Islamic terror organizations
that pose that threat.
It only makes sense, then, that no other country feels the need to
warn the world about Iran and Islamic terror as much as Israel. That’s
why when Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the United Nations about the
threat Iran poses to his country’s survival and about the metastasizing
cancer of Islamist violence, he, unfortunately, stands alone.
Virtually everyone listening knows he is telling the truth. And most dislike him for it.
Appeasers hate those who confront evil.
Given that this president is the least likely of any president in
American history to confront evil — or even identify it — while Benjamin
Netanyahu is particularly vocal and eloquent about both identifying and
confronting evil, it is inevitable that the former will resent the
latter.
The negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons program are
today’s quintessential example. Those who will not confront a tyranny
engaged in terror from Argentina to the Middle East, and which is
committed to annihilating another country, will deeply resent Israel and
its leader.
For those who doubt the truth of this rule of life, there are plenty of other examples.
Take the Cold War.
Those who lived through it well recall that those who refused to
confront communism vilified those who did. Indeed, they vilified anyone
who merely labeled communism evil. When President Ronald Reagan declared
the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” he was excoriated by those who
refused to do so. Yet, if the words “evil” and “empire” have any
meaning, they perfectly applied to the Soviet Union.
But to those who opposed Reagan, these words could not be applied to the Soviet Union.
New York Times columnists lambasted the president for using such
language. The newspaper’s most prestigious columnist at the time, James
Reston, condemned Reagan for his “violent criticism of Russians as an
evil society.”
Anthony Lewis accused Reagan of using “simplistic theology.” Reagan
was using “a black and white standard to something that is much more
complex.”
Tom Wicker wrote that “the greater danger” than the spread of
communism “lies in Mr. Reagan’s vision of the superpower relationship as
Good versus Evil.”
Columnist Russell Baker added his contempt for Reagan’s
characterization of the Soviet Union. And, in a long Times article under
the headline, “Reagan’s Gaffe,” an unnamed “strategist” for former
Vice-President Walter Mondale told the newspaper that “Mr. Reagan had
undercut diplomatic efforts of recent months” — exactly as the Times and
the Obama administration now describe Benjamin Netanyahu doing to the
negotiations with Iran.
(For a detailed description of the reactions to Ronald Reagan’s anti-communism, see Ann Coulter’s book, “Treason.”)
Some 20 years later, when President George W. Bush characterized the
regimes of North Korea, Iraq and Iran as an “Axis of Evil,” he was
likewise lampooned — as if those mass murderous tyrannies were not evil.
In short, those who refused to characterize the Soviet Union as evil
loathed Ronald Reagan and other anti-communists for doing so; and those
who objected to the “Axis of Evil” label placed on North Korea, Iran,
and Iraq loathed George W. Bush and his supporters. The loathing of
Benjamin Netanyahu is simply the latest example of the rule that those
who will not confront evil will instead confront those who do. (It’s
much safer, after all.)
Since the end of World War II, there has been a name for the people
who refuse to confront evil and who resent those who do: leftists.
