Obama and the OWS Protesters

While it is not surprising that Barack Obama has come out in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is quite disturbing that the president has remained silent as the anti-Semitic protesters' offensive howls grow louder and more consistent.  On Tuesday, Obama repeated his support for the group by empathetically stating, "I understand the frustrations being expressed in those protests."

Unfortunately, Obama completely failed to condemn the ever-growing anti-Semitic statements of frustration, including:

Jews Control Wall Street

You're a bum, Jew

There is a small Jewish ethnic population in this country. They have a firm grip on America's media, finances...

You got the money, Jew

Go back to Israel

I think that the Zionist Jews, who are running these big banks and our Federal Reserve, which is not run by the federal government... they need to be run out of this country.

But after all, this is the man who sat for 20 years in the pews of Israel-bashing Jeremiah "God damn America" Wright and who spoke glowingly of his dear friend Rashid "Israel is basically an apartheid system" Khalidi.

Once elevated to the greatest office in the land, all of the hopey-changey Obama supporters expected a post-partisan, post-racial unifier to occupy the White House.  And why not?  In a speech delivered in Ohio just prior to his election, Obama promised the following:

In one week, we can choose hope over fear, unity over division, the promise of change over the power of the status quo, ... In one week, we can come together as one nation, and one people, and once more choose our better history. That's what's at stake.

Or perhaps more memorable was Obama's infamous speech in defense of his close familial relationship with his anti-Semitic pastor.  In that speech, we heard all sorts of platitudes, from recognition of Israel's moral superiority to promises of healing ideological divides:

But the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm...expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country...a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam. ...

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. ... Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time."

So who exactly is occupying the White House these days?  Is it the great unifier, healer of the world's woes, and savior of the planet?  Or is it the man behind the mask who existed all along -- the Alinsky-trained community organizer who hung out with Israel-bashing Khalidi and Weather Underground domestic terrorist Bill Ayers?  It is becoming abundantly clear that the White House is occupied by no less than a left-wing anti-Semite who decided that he needed to expand his own occupation to that of Wall Street to ensure his own survival and to perpetuate his anti-American ideologies currently tearing the country apart.

Earlier this month, Obama joined the distinguished left-wing loony club of OWS supporters Nancy Pelosi, Elliot Spitzer, Steve Israel, and other Democrats by chiming in with his view that the angry messages, lawlessness, public defecation, and civil disobedience "express the frustrations of the American people."  Well I have a different message for Mr. Obama, and that is that the garbage being spewed by the protesters down in Zuccotti Park and elsewhere across the globe do not express my frustrations, nor do they represent the views of "99%" of Americans in general.

And if the leader of the free world does not differentiate between people expressing genuine concerns about the economy from those who have resorted to age-old anti-Semitic stereotypes scapegoating Jews, we may not be far away from watching history repeat itself.  If the president does not condemn the anti-Semitism expressed by those who he claims are representative of a vast majority of this country, he will be remembered in the history books as supporting the same venom disseminated by Hitler, Mussolini, and Ahmadinejad.

To be clear, while those fascist dictators personally stoked the anti-Semitic fears and biases of their populations, Barack Obama need only support a group of angry American radicals who will do the dirty work in the face of his silence and disregard.  While Obama may not stand before his mighty teleprompters quoting from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, his wink and nod at the efforts of those who spew words of incitement against Jews is no better than tyrants who affirmatively stoke the hate that ultimately leads to violence directed at Jewish people.

Obama's vociferous support for the message of the Occupy Wall Streeters despite their consistent anti-Semitic pronouncements is consistent with his silence in the face of Columbia University's latest anti-Israel event.  Home of Rashid Khalidi, Noam Chomsky, and other blatant anti-Semites, Columbia is undoubtedly the most prestigious anti-Zionist university in the country, openly hosting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad year after year under the guise of free speech and other liberal distortions of the actual intent of the framers[1].

This past weekend, Students for Justice in Palestine held a three-day event at Columbia in order to train students across the nation in advance of "Israel Apartheid Week."  One of the scheduled speakers of the weekend was rapper "Immortal Technique," who is known for his anti-American and Israeli vitriol and incitement to violence.  How does this pertain to President Barack Obama, one of Columbia's most prestigious graduates?  In the face of Obama's calls for civility after the tragic Tucson shootings early this year, Obama stated:

At a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized - at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who think differently than we do - it's important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds. ...

The words flow so beautifully from the minds of Obama's speechwriters and screens of his stable of teleprompters.  However, if the orator-in-chief actually lived by his words, he would have called out his alma mater (and called its President Bollinger), and he would call on civility from the self-entitled stoners and defecators trashing New York City as they protest against Jewish bankers and businessmen.

In response to OWS's anti-Semitic messages, the Emergency Committee for Israel produced a video advertisement asking, "Why are our leaders turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic, anti-Israel attacks?"  Why indeed.  Where are Obama's calls for civility as those whose frustrations he understands so well make accusations more reminiscent of Nazis than Americans?  Unfortunately, Obama has proven that he will speak up against racism and Islamaphobia -- real or imagined -- but he has moved anti-Semitism to the back of the bus in favor of occupiers and ideologues aligned with historic catastrophes.

[1] I am quite confident that hosting America's enemies was not something that Thomas Jefferson and his fellow patriots intended when drafting the First Amendment.