How Many Can Imagine Unthinkable Evil ?

David Pakter
Guest Post
12 July '11

(David is both a regular reader, as well as poster of very well-written comments, on Love of the Land. This is his contribution in response to Omri Ceren's article, found in the link immediately below.)

Re: What It Means to Engage Hezbollah by Omri Ceren

Omri Ceren ends his important and ultimately heartbreaking article regarding the bloodthirsty terrorist organization, Hezbollah, with the words:

"What is the White House possibly thinking?"

I remember once reading an article when President Obama was still a candidate in which the author interviewed former classmates of Obama from Harvard.

I recall that one former classmate, a black female expressed great anger towards Obama which she said was shared by many of her friends. The anger was based on the fact that Obama apparently, on a continual basis, reached out to some of Harvard's most conservative groups and I seem to recall, the former classmate stated Obama all but joined one particular campus organization known to be quite unfriendly to minority Harvard students. The black classmate stated that she and many other minority students felt Obama's reaching out to student groups that many minority students perceived as "the enemy"- was a type of "betrayal" in their minds.

Let me state here that it was quite some time ago that I read this article and the details are not all one hundred per cent clear in my memory. Nevertheless, I believe I have roughly conveyed the gist of this former Harvard student's statements. It would seem to me that this idea President Obama has that people are never as far apart as things may seem at first glance and on the surface goes far back into his personal history and how he perceives the world.

I vividly recall the night Obama, when still a Senator, made the nationally televised speech which many people now believe, put him for the first time on the long road to the White House.

All readers, surely recall his rousing words, referring to the two major political parties in the US, Democrat and Republican, Obama stating that:

"There are no "blue" Americans or "red" Americans but only - Americans".

His words of healing and American "oneness" brought thousands of galvanized listeners to their feet in a rousing ovation and many had tears in their eyes, myself included.

He is no doubt well familiar with the best selling and memorable literary masterpiece about the life of President Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet titled "Team of Rivals". It is apparently deeply engrained in President Obama's makeup that in this greatly troubled world, with sufficient effort, even the deepest gulfs can be bridged and that by some mystical grace of G-d the Lion can be made to lie down with the Lamb.

President Obama is, if nothing else, an Idealist in the truest sense of the word. I for one always wanted to see the best in him and think only the best motives were at work regarding his every decision, both great and small.

I have written previously, and this website once published, my "Letter to the White House", in which I later stated my total disappointment at discovering what I believe represents, and surely is, on the part of the present White House, a "total disconnect" in terms of historical factual truths when it comes to the Middle East in general and the rebirth of modern Israel in particular. (See: "Letter to the White House")

It saddens me to state here that though I campaigned for and generously supported Obama in his run for the White House my dream that he might be able to further the cause of Peace in the Middle East is long gone.

But truth be told- the problem is not President Obama.

The problem is that Israel faces enemies whose degree of Evil, whose capability to perpetrate acts of Evil, are all beyond the limits of an idealist such as President Obama, not to mention the tens of thousands of Jewish critics of Israel, to comprehend.



Before one criticizes President Obama, in all fairness to both him, as well as the basic concept of intellectual honesty, one must surely first ask the question: "How is it that so many Jews, many of whom grew up among Holocaust Survivors, with numbers on their arms, still believe, and believe with all their heart, that those people with whom Israel and President Obama must both contend, can be trusted to eventually cease planning, hoping and dreaming of Israel's destruction".

When Omri Ceren chose to end his quite powerful article with the words:

"What is the White House possibly thinking?"

Is it not just as fair to pose the same question to our own Tribe- especially Jews born in Israel who have seen and fought and shed their precious blood in so many wars.

How is it that even in Israel, one witnesses so many Jews who condemn the government for not rushing to assist and agree with the so-called "Two State Solution" ? As if this event would magically make all the other problems in the Middle East just go away. How do we account for all the Jews who supported the Flotilla and see Israel almost as if a Nazi State in its alleged cruel treatment of the 'Palestinians' ?

Reading Omri Ceren's article it would seem there are degrees of Evil around us and at times even among us, that for some people is something that is simply too much to bear, too far beyond normal human comprehension to believe possible.

How many of the doomed waited until it was too late to escape, as the Nazi noose tightened all around them, believing to the very end- some even in the cattle cars- "But surely they will not kill us".

Thus, so it has been throughout the history of our people. Hope has always been the badge of all our Tribe. To forever try to think well of people- to believe in the innate goodness of people. To never give up hoping.

So if so many Jews cannot bear to believe, cannot bring themselves to believe, that yet another Holocaust is something that is still a thought and a goal and a dream amongst the people Omri Ceren writes about, then how can anyone be surprised that a man like President Obama, who I really believe does have a streak of idealism hard wired into his genetic structure- how can we be surprised by anything this present White House can possibly be thinking ?

Those who comprise the current "Caretakers" of Israel, not the White House- must do "the thinking"- and I have not one doubt in this world- under G-d's Heaven, that they will do that more than well.

David Pakter
New York City
12 July 2011

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