The question remains: is terrorism strengthened by the Obama administration’s silence amid anti-Israel incitement and veneration of terrorists?
In six years leading the United States, President Obama’s silence has often proven even more deafening than his speeches. During moments of outrage, grief, and anger for Israel, while Hamas and the Palestinian Authority celebrate each fatal terrorist attack, Obama seems to issue staff-wide gag orders.
Obama ignores plea to stop incitement
After the brutal massacre of five members of the Fogel family in 2011, and anti-Israel propaganda immortalizing the attackers, over two dozen Democratic and Republican senators demanded that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton identify the steps the nation was prepared to take to end Palestinian incitement against Jews and Israel. They declared:
“The Itamar massacre was a sobering reminder that words matter, and that Palestinian incitement against Jews and Israel can lead to violence and terror. … We urge you to redouble your efforts to impress upon the Palestinian leadership that continuing to condone incitement is not tolerable.”
Despite this impassioned plea, the Obama administration has never issued a plan of action to fight Palestinian incitement.
Obama silent on kidnapping of 3 Israeli Teens
This past summer, just after the declaration of a unity government between Hamas and Fatah, two terrorists kidnapped three Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrah and Gil-Ad Shaer. While the public remained uncertain of their fate for 18 days, there was no doubt as to the lack of response from Obama’s international podium.
Despite widespread criticism of his radio silence, Obama ignored requests that he condemn the kidnappings. Only after the bodies of the three boys were discovered did the White House offer condolences in a two-line press release. In the same breath, the dispatch urged “restraint” on Israel’s part, as the IDF continued to arrest suspects in the case.
Obama’s sparse response communicated to Hamas, Fatah, and other Islamic terror groups that the US would not come to Israel’s defense in the event of a kidnapping, and prefers to offer condolences rather than preventing them. Such a policy only serves to further erode the image of the US as an ally of Israel, and only bolsters an invitation to her enemies to repeat their offenses.
As terrorism continues, still no sound
Now, as terror attacks have spiked in Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to paint the attackers as holy martyrs and heroes while Obama’s lips remain sealed.
Jeff Robbins, former US delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHCR), notes this trend in an op-ed in the Boston Herald on Obama’s disturbing, continued indifference to the incitement. In recent weeks, the PA’s official TV channel honored the terrorists who perpetrated the massacre at a synagogue in Jerusalem, killing five, while Abbas himself praised the Palestinian terrorists shot dead while firing on Israeli forces. The PA also posted an antisemitic cartoon depicting an Israeli raping an Arab woman symbolic of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount.
As Robbins notes, above and beyond his silence, Obama’s mistreatment of Israel and its leadership also sends a dangerous message to her neighbors:
“The administration’s scornful treatment of Israel has registered deeply with Israel’s enemies, who have been encouraged to believe that America’s ally is being cut loose. And it has registered with particular force in the Middle East, where the intensity of antisemitic incitement has grown steadily.”
By offering no fiscal or political repercussions for these senseless murders, and their glorification as “holy martyrdom,” anything Obama does say will ring hollow. Regardless of intention, by keeping quiet on Palestinian incitement, the current US administration is inevitably giving free reign to terrorism in Israel.
Stop the Flow of US Tax Dollars to Abbas and the PA
American taxpayers shell out over $500 million a year to the Palestinian Authority, yet Obama makes no demands on Mahmoud Abbas to end terror education and incitement against Israel. Send a clear message that US and EU funding of the Palestinian Authority has to stop. Click here to sign our petition now and cut off funding to the PA.