Morton A.Klein, president of the Zionist Organization issued the following statement:

President Obama hypocritically used his remarks at a “Righteous Among Nations” award ceremony on Tuesday evening (January 27, 2016) to try to cover up his own alarming recent anti-Israel, anti-Semitic actions.  In addition, in his speech, the President equated Muslims, Palestinians and impossible-to-vet, ISIS-infiltrated Muslim immigrants who endanger Americans (especially American Jews) to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. 

Duplicitously, the President quoted the Talmud and spoke of the “scourge of anti-Semitism” at the awards ceremony – at the very same time when the Obama administration is taking actions that escalate worldwide anti-Semitism and endanger every Jew.   During the past week, the Obama administration stated that it supports the EU’s anti-Semitic labeling requirements for products produced by Jews over the 1949 Armistice Lines; and backed the EU’s Jan. 18, 2016 anti-Semitic resolution declaring legal Israeli “settlements” to be illegal and an “obstacle to peace,” and declaring that EU agreements with Israel will no longer apply over the 1949 Armistice lines (the non-binding lines marking where the fighting stopped after seven Arab nations invaded Israel in 1948-1949).

And on January 23 (four days before the President’s speech), the Obama administration’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection department issued “West Bank country of origin marking requirements” similar to the EU’s anti-Semitic labeling regulations, indicating the administration’s plan to enforce requirements to remove the word “Israel” from the labels of Israeli products produced over the 1949 Armistice lines, and require the use of the term “West Bank” or “West Bank/Gaza” instead.   The U.S. Customs January 23 statement said:

“Per Treasury Decisions 95-25 and 97-16 . . . , unless excepted by statute (19 U.S.C. §1304) or regulation (19 C.F.R. §134), goods produced in the West Bank or Gaza Strip shall be marked as originating from ‘West Bank,’ ‘‘Gaza,’’ ‘‘Gaza Strip,’’ ‘‘West Bank/Gaza,’’ ‘‘West Bank/Gaza Strip,’’ ‘‘West Bank and Gaza,’’ or ‘West Bank and Gaza Strip.’  It is not acceptable to mark the aforementioned goods with the words ‘Israel,’ ‘made in Israel,’ ‘Occupied Territories-Israel,’ or any variation thereof.  Goods that are erroneously marked as products of Israel will be subject to an enforcement action carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Goods entering the United States must conform to the U.S. marking statute and regulations promulgated thereunder.”

The Obama administration’s enforcement of such labeling promotes the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement whose goal is to demonize, economically harm and destroy Israel.  (Requiring products to be labeled “West Bank” also appears to violate the law and regulations requiring labels to state the country of origin.   There is no country called “West Bank” or “Gaza.”)

It is the epitome of anti-Semitism to discriminate against products produced by Jews, and to declare that it is “illegal” for Jews to live on land to which Jews have the strongest legal, moral, religious and historical claim.  Ironically, some of the authors of the Talmud quoted by Obama lived in the very same areas (including the old city of Jerusalem) that the Obama administration now declares to be “illegal” for Jews to live in. 

And one has to marvel at how Obama could state during his “Righteous Among Nations” speech that America’s commitment to “Israel’s security remains, now and forever, unshakeable” and that “it would be a fundamental moral failing if America broke that bond” when on January 16, 2016, the Obama administration agreed to the release of billions of dollars to an Iranian regime bent on perpetrating another Holocaust, while leaving behind in Iran a Jewish-American intelligence officer, Bob Levinson, who dedicated his life to America’s safety.

In his speech, Obama also “universalized” the “lessons of the Holocaust” – urging “common cause” with, among others, immigrants, and Palestinians. (Obama stated that the lessons of the Holocaust” require us “to make common cause with the outsider, the minority, whether that minority is Christian or Jew, whether it is Hindu or Muslim, or a nonbeliever; whether that minority is native born or immigrant; whether they’re Israeli or Palestinian.”)   It is despicable to equate Palestinians to the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, especially when the Palestinian Arabs have been perpetrating daily murderous knife, car-ramming and shooting attacks on innocent Jewish civilians.

In addition, despite the fact that the President’s speech topic was supposedly the “scourge of anti-Semitism,” the President did not utter a single word about Muslim/Arab/Palestinian anti-Semitic collaboration with the Nazis to murder Jews in WW II (including the pogroms in which Arabs murdered hundreds of Jews in Jerusalem, incited by Hitler’s collaborator, the Grand Mufti Haj Amin Husseini); or the pogroms in which Arabs murdered thousands of Jews in virtually every Arab nation in 1948-1951 and at numerous other times in history. 

Incredibly, instead of telling the real story of how the Nazis’ Arab collaborators murdered Jews, President Obama portrayed Muslims as saviors, saying: “We know that there were Muslims — from Albanians to Arabs  — who protected Jews from Nazis.”   

The President also never mentioned the present-day wave of Palestinian Arab terror against innocent Israeli Jews, or the fact that the Palestinian Authority leaders are inciting these murderous anti-Semitic attacks.  From September 13, 2015 to the date of the President’s “anti-Semitism” speech, Palestinian Arabs perpetrated 113 stabbing attacks, 39 shooting attacks and 22 car ramming attacks, murdering 30 innocent Israelis, and injuring 291 Israelis.  Since 2000, Palestinian Arabs murdered over 1300 and wounded almost 10,000 innocent Israelis in suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks.

Instead of acknowledging or mentioning any of this, Obama tried to equate the Palestinian Arab attackers to Jewish defenders and victims, saying:  “In Israel, President Rivlin has spoken eloquently about the need for tolerance and acceptance among all Israelis — Jewish and Arab.”