Another Tack: Be a Good Bully

Sarah Honig
JPost
30 July 09

Dear President Obama,

Your objection to Jews remodeling an inconsequential erstwhile Jerusalem hotel has become the talk of the country here. Everyone knows of your keen involvement in the paltriest details of our everyday existence. Nothing is too remote, trivial or petty for you. So long as it's in Israel, you make it your business. To resort to a somewhat archaic American idiom, bully for you!

You sure aren't too haughty to immerse yourself in our minutia. You're not detached from the internal affairs of your most avid democratic ally. There's just nothing which concerns us that doesn't also concern you.

Therefore, mindful of your unstinting commitment to keep Israelis on their absolute best behavior and out of all reckless mischief, I appeal to you to turn your benevolent, ever-wise sights to my neighborhood too. It's in sore need of your intervention. Please put order in my own local habitat.

I know it's not prime real estate from your vantage point. You obviously prefer locations beyond the so-called Green Line. Said shoddy Jerusalem ex-hotel lies outside that line and hence you feel obliged to severely rap the Jerusalem Municipality's knuckles for even considering Jewish tenancy where you deem no Jews ought to be.

YOU LIKEWISE sternly reprimand same troublesome metropolitan administration for so much as looking askance on recent-vintage Arab construction within the Emek Hamelech (King's Valley or Silwan) archeological site. So what if the ancient relics which lie below are from a First Temple royal enclave - perhaps King David's own? So what if the Arab structures were provocatively erected without permit and only lately? You are willing to overlook illegal construction beyond the Green Line if it's by Arabs. Only pesky Jews must be taught their places.

Besides, since you are so responsive to Islamist sensitivities, you must take into account the fact that Muslims - after their current fashion - now assert there never was a City of David or any Temple in Jerusalem. Jews, they aver, have no connection to the city they had put on the world's map.

Being a confirmed postmodern moral-relativist, it doesn't bother you that Christianity is based on the very Jewish tradition which Muslims have chosen to demonstratively rebuff. Your brand of Christianity, after all, hails from Rev. Jeremiah Wright's liberation theology, which anyway despises all Jewish bonds. So it's clear you're not overly burdened by the enormity of the historical importance that Jerusalem constitutes for Jews.

You can hence approach the issue of illegal Arab construction with an enlightened, unencumbered vision. You can easily see that insufferable strife is ignited exclusively by Jewish construction.
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