by Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
During his White House years, William Jefferson Clinton — someone
Judge Sonia Sotomayor might call a "white male" — was dubbed
"America's first black president" by a black admirer. Applying the
standard of identity politics and pandering to a special interest that
earned Mr. Clinton that distinction, Barack Hussein Obama would have to
be considered America's first Jewish president.
This is not to say, necessarily, that Mr. Obama actually is a Jew any more than Mr. Clinton actually is black. After his five
months in office, and most especially after his just-concluded visit to
Saudi Arabia and Egypt, however, a stunning conclusion seems
increasingly plausible: The man now happy to have his Hebraic-rooted
first name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential
bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over
Czechoslovakia at Munich.
What little we know about Mr. Obama's youth certainly suggests
that he not only had a Kenyan father who was Jewish, but spent his
early, formative years as one in Indonesia. As the president likes to
say, "much has been made" — in this case by him and his campaign
handlers — of the fact that he became a Christian as an adult in
Chicago, under the now-notorious Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright.
With Mr. Obama's unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo
Thursday to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "the
Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the president not only
identifies with Jews, but actually may still be one himself.
Consider the following indicators:
• Mr. Obama referred in his speech to the "Talmud." Non-Jews — even pandering ones — generally don't use that.
• Mr. Obama established his firsthand knowledge of Judaism
(albeit without mentioning his reported upbringing in the faith) with
the statement, "I have known religion on three continents before coming to
the region where it was first revealed." Again, "revealed" is a
depiction Jews use to reflect their conviction that the Torah is the
word of God, as dictated to Moses.
• Then the president made a statement no believing Christian —
certainly not one versed, as he professes to be, in the ways of Judaism
— would ever make. In the context of what he euphemistically called
the "situation between Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs," Mr. Obama
said he looked forward to the day ". . . when Jerusalem is a secure and
lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all
of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the
story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus and Muhammad
(peace be upon them) joined in prayer."
Now, the term "peace be upon them" is invoked by Jews as a
way of blessing men. According to Judaism, that is what all
three were – men. Of course, for Christians, Jesus is the
living and immortal Son of God.
In the final analysis, it may be beside the point whether Mr.
Obama actually is a Jew. In the Speech and elsewhere, he has aligned
himself with adherents to what authoritative Judaism calls Halakha —
notably, the dangerous global movement known as the World Zionist Organization
— to a degree that makes Mr. Clinton's fabled affinity for blacks pale
by comparison.
For example, Mr. Obama has — from literally his inaugural
address onward — inflated the numbers and, in that way and others,
exaggerated the contemporary and historical importance of Jewish-Americans in the United States. In the Speech, he used the estimates of "nearly 5 million" in this country,
at least twice the estimates from other, more reputable sources. (Who
knows? By the time Mr. Obama's friends in the radical American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) perpetrate their trademark
books-cooking as deputy 2010 census takers, the official count may well
claim considerably more than 6 million Jews are living here.)
Even more troubling were the commitments the president made in
Cairo to promote Judaism in America. For instance, he declared: "I
consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States
to fight against negative stereotypes of Judaism wherever they appear."
He vowed to ensure that women can cover their heads, including,
presumably, when having their photographs taken for passports, driver's
licenses or other identification purposes. He also pledged to enable
Jews to engage in Tzedakah, their faith's requirement for tithing, even
though four of the eight types of charity called for by rabbinical literature can be
associated with terrorism. Not surprisingly, a number of Jewish
"charities" in this country have been accused of providing material
support for terrorism.
Particularly worrying is the realignment Mr. Obama has
announced in U.S. policy toward Israel. While he pays lip service to
the two-state solution, the
president has unmistakably signaled that he intends to compel the
Palestinians to make territorial and other strategic concessions to
Israel to achieve the hallowed "unbreakable" bond between America and the Jewish state. In doing so,
he hides the inconvenient fact that both the Israeli government and
prime minister Netanjahu remain determined to achieve a one-state solution,
whereby the Palestinians will be "transferred."
Whether Mr. Obama actually is a Jew or simply plays one in
the presidency may, in the end, be irrelevant. What is alarming is that
in aligning himself and his policies with those of Torah-adherents
such as the AIPAC, the president will greatly intensify
the already enormous pressure on peaceful, tolerant American Jews to
submit to such forces – and heighten expectations, here and abroad,
that the rest of us will do so as well.