By Noam A. Rotem, Saturday October 18, 2014, Tel Aviv, Israel
Last week, John Kerry said the following:
"As I went around and met with people in the course of our discussions about the ISIL (Islamic State) coalition, the truth is, we – there wasn't a leader I met with in the region who didn't raise with me spontaneously the need to try to get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of recruitment and of street anger and agitation that they felt, and I see a lot of heads nodding, they had to respond to. And people need to understand the connection of that, and it has something to do humiliation and denial and absence of dignity..."making a fraudulent and deceptive linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the barbaric bloodletting going on in the Mideast, which many would correctly argue, is the direct result of a failed US foreign policy, which at every step of the way during the Obama administration, provided a tailwind to radical Muslim extremists. From the power vacuum it left in Iraq, to the supporting of the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt. And from its reluctance to label the attacks at Benghazi and Fort Hood, as radical Islamic terrorist attacks, to its impotence to stop the rampant killings in Syria and Iraq.
There is not one liberal democratic, country in the Mideast outside of the State of Israel. Moreover most all Mideast countries surrounding Israel, have a virulent anti-Israel agenda, with many of those countries practicing outright anti-Semitism.
Last but not least, all of these countries have abominable human rights records. Subjugation of women, lack of free speech, persecution of Christians and minority religions, ethnic cleansing, political persecutions, suicide bombings, public hangings and executions, to mention just a few.
So when John Kerry says "there wasn't a leader I met with in the region", he's referring to these very same oppressive regimes, practicing hostile anti-Israel diplomacy.
Accepting their words at face value about Israel and the Mideast turmoil, demonstrates not just utter lack of critical thinking, but also a lack of moral clarity. It shows how dangerous he and the US Mideast policy is, and worse, it undermines the only liberal democratic country in the region that shares fundamental human rights values, with America and the west.
