Holocaust Remembrance Day and Obama

UDPDATE, April 23, 2009: Transcript, Obama's remarks at the Holocaust remembrance ceremony, Capitol rotunda.

Obama, the Holocaust, and Darfur
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In Israel, Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoah, began Monday after sundown.

From the Jerusalem Post:

The State of Israel paused on Monday night at 8 p.m. to remember the six million Jews who perished from 1933-1945, as the nation marked the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The state ceremony ushering-in the 24-hour commemoration began after sunset at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in the capital.

The solemn hour-and-a-quarter opening event, broadcast live on television and radio, was attended by President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Tel Aviv Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, a Buchenwald survivor and the chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, as well as scores of ambassadors and dignitaries from around the world.

In his speech, Peres said that the appearance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Geneva Durban review conference hours earlier was "a deplorable disgrace."

"The conference opening today in Geneva constitutes an acceptance of racism, rather than the fight against it, and its main speaker is Ahmadinejad, who calls for the annihilation of Israel and denies the Holocaust," Peres said.

"Criticism of the Jewish state is also tinged with chilling anti-Semitism. Among those who collaborated with the Nazis, and those who stood by and let the Holocaust happen, there are those who criticize the one state that rose to grant refuge to Holocaust survivors. The one state that will prevent another Holocaust.

"Anti-Semitism is not a Jewish disease, and its cure is incumbent upon those who perpetrate it," the president said.

"We have learned that our spiritual heritage is dependent on physical security. A people which lost a third of its members, a third of its children to the Holocaust, does not forget, and must not be caught off-guard," Peres said.

Netanyahu, speaking after Peres, also mentioned the Geneva conference, lamenting that "there are those who chose to participate in the display of hate."

The prime minister directed a question at Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz, who met with Ahmadinejad in Geneva on Sunday. "I turn to you, the Swiss president, and ask you: How can you meet someone who denies the Holocaust and wishes for a new holocaust to occur?"

Netanyahu poses a good question to Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz: "How can you meet someone who denies the Holocaust and wishes for a new holocaust to occur?"

Where does discussion begin when you're talking with someone who denies historical facts and calls for the annihilation of Israel and the Jewish people?

Given the threatening actions and ugly rhetoric of Ahmadinejad and Iran, how does Obama expect to engage the warmongering Ahmadinejad and Iran?

Netanyahu praised "important countries" that chose to distance themselves from the conference, mentioning the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Australia and New Zealand.

"We will not let the Holocaust deniers perpetrate another holocaust on the Jewish people," he said. "This is the highest responsibility of the State of Israel and of myself as prime minister."

...Recalling his experiences as an orphan in the Buchenwald concentration camp, Lau cited "another child sitting in the dark, Gilad Schalit," who has been held in the Gaza Strip since June 2006.

"Yad Vashem decided to dedicate this year's ceremony to children in the Holocaust, so that Israel's children might appreciate what we have: A national home. A state. Freedom. Sovereignty. Pride. Backbone.

"We can and should kiss this country's ground, which enables to live a full life with a Jewish identity in our home," the rabbi said.

Some 1.5 million Jewish children were killed by the Nazis.

During the ceremony, which included speeches and somber musical interludes, six torches were lit by survivors in memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The chief rabbis of Israel, Shlomo Amar and Yona Metzger, recited Psalms and the Kaddish mourning prayer.

Read about twin sisters Lia Huber and Iudit Barnea, born in 1937.

In May 1944, after the German conquest of Hungary, Iudit, Lia and their mother, Miriam-Rachel, were interned in a ghetto. Later, they were deported to Auschwitz, where the twins suffered the infamous medical experiments of Josef Mengele. One day, as Mengele was experimenting on the girls, Miriam-Rachel burst into the shack and begged him to stop. In response, she was injected with a concoction that nearly killed her, causing permanent deafness.

In January 1945, the girls and their mother were liberated by the Red Army, and in August were reunited with their father. In 1960, the family immigrated to Israel. Both girls married: Lia and her husband, Jean, have two children and seven grandchildren; Iudit and her husband, Moshe, have three children and five grandchildren.

Children subjected to medical experiments in Auschwitz

I don't understand Obama.

Even after what Ahmadinejad said yesterday at the UN conference on racism, the Obama administration is still as eager as ever to talk with him. Where's the outrage? And I mean real outrage.

Obama seems to have no sense of history. This is probably news to him, but time did not begin when he was inaugurated.

It's important for him to consider the past, but he doesn't want any part of it. That's irresponsible. He has no choice but to carry the burden of history, just as every president had to do before him.

It's troubling on this day of remembrance that Obama's pathetic attempts to wipe the slate clean are so in play.

At the Summit of the Americas, Obama willingly sat through a anti-American rant by Daniel Ortega. He was probably thinking the U.S. deserved the criticism.

Ortega stepped up and introduced himself to Obama, U.S. officials said. But a short time later, Ortega delivered a blistering 50-minute speech that denounced capitalism and U.S. imperialism as the root of much hemispheric mischief. The address even recalled the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, though Ortega said the new U.S. president could not be held to account for that.

"I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old," Obama said, to laughter and applause from the other leaders.

That's such a lame response. Is Obama trying to be voted "Miss Congeniality"?

He shouldn't dismiss what Ortega said with a joke. He should defend his country.
The point is Obama can't brush off history simply by saying he was a baby or wasn't born when stuff happened.

When it comes to the Holocaust, Obama doesn't have to go back to before he was born, to the Nazi death camps, to understand the plight of the Jewish people. Their very existence was threatened by Ahmadinejad again just yesterday.

Nonetheless, Obama wants to be everyone's friend. That's not wise. That's not a mature goal. He needs to speak out against Ahmadinejad and other nuts like Ortega and Hugo Chavez. He shouldn't be condoning the words and actions of those thugs or providing them with anti-American propaganda opportunities.

On Thursday, Obama will deliver an address commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day.

From The Hill:

President Obama will deliver a keynote address on Thursday at a ceremony remembering the millions of Jews that were killed in the Holocaust.

Obama's remarks will take place at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Days of Remembrance ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda at 11 A.M., according to the museum.

Tuesday is Yom HaShoah, the Jewish holiday commemorating the death of Jews in the Holocaust. It is a national holiday in Israel.

In a statement, Fred S. Zeidman, the chairman of the museum welcomed the president to the ceremony.

"We are honored that President Obama will participate in our Days of Remembrance ceremony," he said. "At this critical moment, with hatred and antisemitism on the rise in so many parts of the world, and genocide still a reality, we are reminded of the continued relevance of the Holocaust and the urgency of its lessons."

As the nation's president, of course it's appropriate for Obama to speak. But this is sort of awkward.

I don't think Obama has been particularly strong in expressing that the U.S. won't stand for the sort of hatred and anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust -- the millions and millions of murders, the horrors, the suffering.

Earlier this month, Joe Biden warned Israel to back off Iran.

Reporting from Washington -- Vice President Joe Biden issued a high-level admonishment to Israel's new government Tuesday that it would be "ill advised" to launch a military strike against Iran.

Biden said in a CNN interview that he does not believe newly installed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would take such a step. Even so, his comment underscored a gap between the conservative new Israeli government and the Obama White House on a series of questions, including the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Iran.

While the Obama administration has made a series of recent overtures to Tehran, the Israelis have grown more confrontational out of concern that the Islamic Republic's increasing nuclear know-how could one day become an existential threat.

Netanyahu signaled several times during his election campaign that he would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. "I promise that if I am elected, Iran will not acquire nuclear arms," he said in one appearance, "and this implies everything necessary to carry this out."

In addition to Obama and his administration failing to strongly advocate for Israel and showing signs of appeasing Iran, there has been a lack of urgency in dealing with the genocide in Darfur. Obama is weak on potential genocide as well as ongoing genocide.

There's also the uncomfortable reality that Obama spent 20 years as a member of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church. This is the church that honored anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.

Do you recall Rashid Khalidi?

Remember the matter of the Los Angeles Times refusing to release the tape of Obama honoring Khalidi?

Why is the Los Angeles Times sitting on a videotape of the 2003 farewell bash in Chicago at which Barack Obama lavished praise on the guest of honor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat?

At the time Khalidi, a PLO adviser turned University of Chicago professor, was headed east to Columbia. There he would take over the University’s Middle East-studies program (which he has since maintained as a bubbling cauldron of anti-Semitism) and assume the professorship endowed in honor of Edward Sayyid, another notorious terror apologist.

The party featured encomiums by many of Khalidi’s allies, colleagues, and friends, including Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, and Bill Ayers, the terrorist turned education professor. It was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), which had been founded by Khalidi and his wife, Mona, formerly a top English translator for Arafat’s press agency.

Is there just a teeny-weenie chance that this was an evening of Israel-bashing Obama would find very difficult to explain? Could it be that the Times, a pillar of the Obamedia, is covering for its guy?

Bottom line: In terms of being a friend and staunch ally of Israel, Obama doesn't walk the walk.

In some cases, he doesn't talk the talk.