As Anti-Semitism Makes a Comeback, Obama Remains Ignorant
By Wesley Pruden
WashingtonTimes.com
We’re well into the new century, moving swiftly
through the second decade of the new millennium, at
ease in an era of science, modern medicine and
wondrous electronics that our grandparents could not
have imagined. (Even our parents don’t understand
most of it.)
So why does 2015 smell like Munich in 1938, reeking
of denial, blindness, cant and cowardice in the year
that would introduce monstrous tyranny and
barbarism, an assault on the very idea of
civilization? Comparisons may be odious but only the
weak and foolish look and do not see.
A gunman invades the sanctity of a synagogue in
Copenhagen, where Jews at worship imagined they
were safe, and kills the man guarding the door. This
followed by a day an attempted massacre at a seminar
on free speech in another part of
Copenhagen, where a gunman shouting the familiar
Muslim cry of worship — “Allahhu Akbar,” or “God is
great” — shot and killed one of the participants.
Hoodlums routinely desecrate the graves of Jews in
France; in Germany the authorities call off a
peaceful parade through the streets because they’re
afraid it will attract terrorists. Jews visiting
Denmark from Israel are warned not to wear kippahs
or any sign they are Jews. Across Europe, and even
in the United States, the ancient curse of
anti-Semitism seeps from under the rocks and the
toxic swamps where it had taken refuge.
The Islamic State, or ISIS, with its dreams of a
worldwide caliphate ruled by Islam from the Dark
Ages, videotapes the beheading of 21 Coptic
Christians in Libya, puts their severed heads on
display atop their bodies like cherries on a row of
ice-cream sodas, and uploads it to the Internet for
the world to see the work of the faithful. The
Nazis, as if shamed in their own eyes, tried to hide
their most evil deeds.
Where does such runaway evil go next? The civilized
world of 1938 had to wait for Winston Churchill for
rescue, and then for Franklin D. Roosevelt to make
up his mind whether to follow. There’s neither a
Churchill nor a FDR in sight. The events in
Copenhagen underscores what The Wall Street
Journal calls Europe’s new terrorist normal.
“Homegrown or immigrant Muslim terrorists targeting
innocents and the Western way of life are becoming a
feature of Continental life.”
The West in 2015, like the West in 1938, invites by
default the approaching storm. America has always
led the way against the destroyers of the civilized
life, but President Obama either can’t or won’t see
the threat of radical Islam. Mr. Obama is proud of
his education (he knows all about the Crusades), his
Harvard law degree and the adoration of the
intellectual elites, but he’s the last man in the
West who can’t see the terrorists for who they are.
He wants Congress to give him a bigger gun to shoot
ISIS, but Congress can’t be sure he knows which is
the business end of a gun, and how and where to aim
it.
The hostility of the intellectual elites to Israel
encourages these terrorists as they plot further
evil. The men of evil understand that only the
Americans stand in their way of realizing the dream
of the worldwide caliphate, and when the leader of
the Americans isn’t even sure who the enemy is they
rightly figure they have little to worry about.
The 8,000 Jews in Denmark deal with anti-Semitism
every day, and the Danish government, full of the
usual Scandinavian piety about its wonderfulness,
grants millions of kroner to activists who disguise
their hatred of Jews, and lecture the Israelis about
how they deal with the real-world threats to Israeli
survival.
The good news is that France, which has had a habit
of sleepwalking through history, seems to have
pinched itself awake. Since the Charlie Hebdo and
kosher supermarket attacks even the densest
Frenchman can see that the Islamic radicals have him
in their gunsights along with everyone else who
doesn’t bow to Allah in the way of the 9th century.
Prime Minister Manuel Valls has ordered the
isolation of Muslim jihadis in prisons, increased
spending on intelligence agencies and according
security forces greater authority to monitor
terrorist suspects on the Internet.
Mr. Obama wants more authority, too, but nobody in
Congress can figure out why. He already has more
authority than he’s willing to use. He could take to
heart the admonition of Theodore Roosevelt: “I have
a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by
deeds.” So do we all.
• Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The
Washington Times.