Open Letter To President Barack Obama During His Visit To Germany
by Jerry Waxman
To the Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States of America
Dear Mr. President:
Yesterday you visited a concentration camp alongside Elie Wiesel, who had lived in that camp in his youth. I’m sure you didn’t need to visit a concentration camp to appreciate the struggle of the Jewish people throughout history. But I appreciate your commitment to history in insisting on actually visiting the place of so much suffering. As some historians have done, you tied the Holocaust to the birth of the State of Israel. This may or not be a true cause and effect, but there is a correlation.
I won’t elaborate on other correlations in history, just point them out as a matter of interest. From the time of the ancient Greeks up to modern times, any empire or nation that singled out the Jews for persecution soon lost the power they once had, and never fully regained it. The ancient Greeks took over Jerusalem, and soon afterward lost their empire. The same with the Romans. In 15th century Spain, the Inquisition targeted Jews, and Spain has never again enjoyed the status it had prior to that event. And in 20th century Germany — well, no need to elaborate.
The question, then, is where does America fit in? America’s revolt against the King of England was financed largely by a Jew. And Jewish men and women , since America’s earliest history, have enjoyed more or less equal standing with other citizens. America allowed Jews to immigrate when other countries were making life harder for them. And America has had the strongest friendly relationship with Israel since its early days as a Jewish state. I’d like to think that America’s rise as a world power, and its prosperity as a nation have something to do with its treatment of Jews and its relationship with Israel.
Today, encouraged by your speech in Cairo, America is expressing a more anti-Israel leaning than it has expressed in the past. Hopefully, you personally do not share the biases of those in the media and the public servants, past and present, who publicly point to Israel as the cause of problems in the middle east while overlooking historical facts showing Israel as the only nation in the region which has made any concrete efforts to attain peace.
After your visit to Buchenwald, journalists asked you questions, and your answers were encouraging, at least to me. They asked if the Jewish experience in the Holocaust should be instructive to Israelis in their treatment of Palestinians. You correctly brushed off the question and said there was no parallel. When asked about Israel’s commitments to the “road map”, you pointed out that everyone is focusing on Israel, while you also mentioned Palestinian commitments. And to another journalist you said you have no patience for those who would deny history.
Mr. President, are you aware that the president of the Palestinian Authority wrote a doctoral dissertation claiming that the Zionist movement inflated the tragedy of the Holocaust? Are you also aware that Mahmoud Abbas has never shown remorse for his involvement in terrorism, including the murders of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics?
Are you aware, Mr. President, that no Palestinian leader has ever shown sorrow or remorse when an Israeli is killed in a terrorist attack? In fact, Mahmoud Abbas continues to praise and celebrate the acts of violence against Israel. While, in the Palestinian Authority families of suicide bombers are given stipends, any Palestinian who helps Israelis to thwart terrorist attacks faces the death penalty, the same as a Palestinian who sells property to a Jew.
The Palestinian people are deserving of better lives, but they continue to appoint leaders who support violence against Israel. Furthermore, to indicate that the “intolerable” conditions under which the Palestinians live today are caused by Israel is to deny fact. The fighting between the different factions within the Palestinian community has caused greater damage and more frequent casualties than Israel’s army has.
In your speech in Cairo, you encouraged building up of Muslim people, their women, their children, their rights to education and pursuit of prosperity. And while you recognized the legitimacy of a Palestinian state, you said the United States does not recognize the legitimacy of Israeli settlements. You spoke of prior commitments to the roadmap.
You said nothing of how Israel has already made sacrifices beyond comprehension while the Palestinian Authority has done nothing. Isn’t this a sort of denial of history, Mr President? Isn’t recognition of a Palestinian state – which has never existed – and the denial of the Jews to build in their homeland, a reversal of truth?
Also in your speech, and again while you were in Germany, you spoke of not clinging to the past. Mistakes were made, and now we need to move on. While you spoke of America’s involvement in Iran and Iraq in this regard, the significance of your presence at a concentration camp alongside the Chancellor of Germany was not lost on me.
Ms. Merkel could finally say the same thing to the Jews of the world as you said to the Muslims about moving on from the past. And while the Holocaust and all the causes that led up to it must never be forgotten, the German Chancellor could now publicly join the call for the Jews to stop building in their homeland to make way for a state for the Palestinians – whose past and present leaders were and are admirers of Germany’s Fuehrer of the Third Reich.
Mr. President, one of the greatest mistakes of the last 16 years has been the attempted implementation of the road map to peace. It has not worked. It has resulted in escalated numbers of Palestinian casualties, and of Jewish casualties. Today, it is not realistic to believe that the Palestinian leaders will do what is needed for the roadmap to work. Mr. President, it is time to put the roadmap away and move on.
Peaceful relations between Israel and the Arab states may not come about in the foreseeable future. But Israel does have people and leaders who can, with support from friendly nations, implement solutions that will benefit all the people in the immediate region, Muslim, Christian, and Jew.
As president of the United States, you have a unique opportunity to help correct the wrongs that have been done in this region. It will take courage, and it will take reassessing some of the policies you have stated so far. But America’s interests are best served when it helps Israel to attain peace and prosperity for all the people within its borders.
Wishing you much success
Sincerely,
Jerry Waxman
Sderot, Israel
P.S. Your trip to Normandy is much appreciated in my family. Like your great uncle and your grandparents, my father and his brothers and sister served in the United States Armed Forces during World War II. As American Jews, they were especially motivated to serve America at that time.
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