Thursday, July 3, 2014

Ari Lieberman is an attorney and former prosecutor.

On June 12, three unsuspecting Israeli teens, one of whom had U.S. citizenship, were kidnapped and cold-bloodedly murdered minutes later by two Arabs affiliated with the Hamas terrorist organization. Eighteen days later, their lifeless bodies were found partly buried in a field in southern Judea.
Three days after the kidnapping, Secretary of State John Kerry belatedly condemned the criminal action and referred to it as a “despicable terrorist act.” The Secretary however, qualified his statement and was careful not to point fingers and lay blame at any specific entity though it was abundantly clear that Hamas was culpable.

The White House’s response to the abduction was even more deplorable. There simply was none. Despite strong bipartisan congressional condemnation of the kidnapping, the President maintained his cold silence on the issue as if to convey his disdain for the Jewish State. The President’s posture stands in marked contrast to his reaction to the abduction of Nigerian school girls by the Boko Haram terrorist group when he expressed instant outrage.

As if to add insult to injury, the White House issued an immediate condemnation of the killing of an Arab youth, 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, in Jerusalem on July 2, calling it “heinous” while Kerry announced that, “There are no words to convey adequately our condolences to the Palestinian people.”

The obvious disparity and manner in which Obama chose to address the two incidents speaks volumes about the visceral dislike this President maintains for Israel. As Israel’s closest ally, one would have expected an immediate condemnation of the snatching of three teens and expression of sympathy and solidarity. Instead, Israel was treated to vacillation from the Secretary of State and stone-cold silence from the White House. It took Obama eighteen long days to break his silence on the matter and even then, the White House statement was accompanied by calls for “restraint” as if the issuance of a condemnation was an afterthought.

What is even more astounding is the fact that the motive for the killing of the Arab teen is uncertain and there is speculation that his murder may have been carried out by his own kinsmen. Israeli police are still investigating but there is some indication that the teen’s alleged sexual orientation may have been the motive for his killing by disapproving Muslims. A senior Israeli police official noted that the police are well acquainted with the teen’s family and would not discount the possibility that he was kidnapped and murdered by rival Arab clans, an all-too often occurrence in the Arab world.

Both theories – Arab murder where sexuality is the underlying factor or inter-Arab clan killing – are certainly equally if not more plausible than the so-called “revenge killing” theory, which posits that the killing was carried out in retaliation for the abduction and murder of the three Israeli youths. Arab clan killing is an everyday occurrence in the Mideast and there’s perhaps nothing that drives an Islamist crazier than the mere mention of homosexuality, except perhaps for the presence of Jews or “Crusaders” in “Muslim lands.”

“President” Abbas, the unelected Palestinian strongman, wishing to steal the narrative and deflect attention away from the murderous nature of his regime, immediately blamed “Israeli settlers” for the atrocity despite the fact that there is not a shred of evidence to support such a convoluted theory.
But to Abbas and his White House cronies, facts are irrelevant. Evidence is irrelevant. Investigations which point to a motive harmful to the Palestinian narrative are irrelevant.

Abbas’s reaction to the killing of Abu Khdeir is nothing if not predictable. His goal is to lie, cheat and obfuscate in an attempt to stoke the flames of hate and confuse an uninformed and naive Western audience. But the White House’s immediate condemnation, without adequately assessing the facts, represents the epitome of irresponsibility. It bolsters Abbas and leads to excited Arab street violence. A cynic would say that this is precisely what the White House desires. In fact, one need not be a cynic to draw this conclusion.

The administration’s underhanded attempts to foment unrest among West Bank Palestinians are not without precedent. In March 2010, the administration’s public condemnation and rebuke of Prime Minister Netanyahu over land development in consensus areas was the impetus behind scattered protests among Palestinians in East Jerusalem and other areas administered by Israel. Then again in November 2013, Kerry warned of Israel’s impending isolation and the prospect of Arab violence and unrest in Judea and Samaria if the “peace talks” failed and repeated those absurd assertions in the hope that those harmful statements against a loyal ally would materialize into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Indeed, following Kerry’s comments, a firebomb was lobbed by Arabs at a car carrying civilian passengers resulting in injury to its occupants.

The Palestinian on the street takes his que from the Palestinian leadership who in turn, take their que from the prevailing winds of Washington, which are invariably hostile to Israel these days. The disparate treatment and manner in which the administration handled – or rather mishandled – the kidnapping-murder of three innocent kids, simply because they were Jews and the alacrity of the administration’s condemnation of an Arab youth killed under mysterious and yet to be determined circumstances, speaks volumes about President Obama’s nefarious agenda when it comes to Israel, the Mideast’s only stable, vibrant and thriving democracy.