Thursday, July 23, 2009

Obama Is Angry Over Racist Arrest Of Gates--But Imposes Segregation On Israel (Updated)

Jules Crittendon notes how the situation has played out in the case of the policeman who arrested Henry Gates:

The Cambridge cop accused of a racist arrest on Harvard Prof Henry Louis Gates Jr says he’s no racist and he won’t apologize. Gates has called James Crowley a “rogue cop,” though it’s not clear whether he knows much about this cop or his history. Meanwhile, the president of the United States, while acknowledging that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, calls the Cambridge cop “stupid” on national TV.
Read the whole thing--especially the history of the accused racist cop, James Crowley, who gave mouth-to-mouth recussitation to Celtics star Reggie Lewis 16 years ago in an attempt to save his life.

Is this so different from Obama's own racism?

Jeff Jacoby writes:

LATE LAST WEEK, the Obama administration demanded that the Israeli government pull the plug on a planned housing development near the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. The project, a 20-unit apartment complex, is indisputably legal. The property to be developed - a defunct hotel - was purchased in 1985, and the developer has obtained all the necessary municipal permits.

Why, then, does the administration want the development killed? Because Sheikh Jarrah is in a largely Arab section of Jerusalem, and the developers of the planned apartments are Jews. Think about that for a moment. Six months after Barack Obama became the first black man to move into the previously all-white residential facility at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, he is fighting to prevent integration in Jerusalem.

It is impossible to imagine the opposite scenario: The administration would never demand that Israel prevent Arabs from moving into a Jewish neighborhood. And the Obama Justice Department would unleash seven kinds of hell on anyone who tried to impose racial, ethnic, or religious redlining in an American city. In the 21st century, segregation is unthinkable - except, it seems, when it comes to housing Jews in Jerusalem.

Obama's accusation of racism at his press conference was convenient--Andy McCarthy wonders whether the question, the last one asked, was pre-arranged. But the point is that accusing a cop of racism while admitting he does not have all the facts while simultaneously imposing segregation on Israel neighborhoods--about whose history he is apparently equally ignorant--does nothing for the issue of racism that Obama claims to be concerned about.

One more statement that seems to ring false.

UPDATE: As if to emphasize Jacoby's point, we have this:

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Jordanian government of King Abdullah is stripping Palestinians of their citizenship in order "to avoid a situation in which they would be 'resettled' permanently in the kingdom." The Jordanians claim they are acting "to prevent Israel from emptying the Palestinian territories of their original inhabitants," but the effect is to threaten both the Israeli government and the Palestinian authority with a massive influx of Palestinian refugees from Jordan. The move is what Barack Obama might call unhelpful. Yet there there isn't any noise from the "pro-peace" left. Most of the bloggers whom we typically rely on to highlighting the plight of the Palestinian people have yet to weigh in.

...Despite everything, the president and his supporters remain focused on Israeli action and inaction, on settlements and checkpoints. These are the impediments to peace. And if Israel started stripping Arabs of their citizenship, there would be outrage -- as there rightly was at Avigdor Lieberman's suggestion of loyalty oaths for Israeli Arabs. But here the Arabs have done precisely what Lieberman threatened to do. So why is the response from the left so muted now?

Read the whole thing.

Business as usual for the Arab world...and the White House.

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