Czechoslovakia Redux

Amidst concern over Sunday’s international conference in Paris and the ensuing meeting of the United Nations on Tuesday, there is an increasing fear the leading powers will again take action against Israel. That the U.N. Security Council’s recent passage of Resolution 2334 undermines Israel’s international standing and security is manifestly clear; that the move portends grave threats to the United States and the rest of the free world has been largely overlooked.

Bolstered by Secretary of State Kerry’s malicious rant against Israel, the U.N.’s move echoes world leaders’ capitulation to Hitler in 1938. Just as world leaders then refused to act decisively to defeat the metastasizing evil of the Third Reich and instead acceded to Hitler in a morally bankrupt and reality-blind bid for “peace in our time,” the Security Council — with the assent of the United States — are now offering up Israel as the sacrificial lamb in a futile attempt appease the modern-day scourge of evil — radical Islamism.
And just as the Munich Agreement green-lighted Hitler’s maniacal aggressions, the world’s sellout of Israel today empowers the malevolence of Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism, which feeds the beasts of Islamism. Israel, the civilized world’s outpost of freedom and democracy in a tinderbox of terrorism and tyranny, is but a speed bump on the blitzkrieg of Islamists racing to gain geopolitical power.
If the Western powers abandon Israel, they will be clearing the way for terror organizations like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah — all clients of Iran and all with American blood on their hands — to launch the intifada of intifadas against Israel, yielding up the spoils of that proxy war to an evermore unstoppable Iran bent on taking over the Mideast. Far from bringing the Israelis and Palestinians closer together on peaceful co-existence, this resolution has lent legitimacy to and incited terrorists sworn to the destroy Israel. Starting nearly a half-century ago, the rewarding of terrorism has only sown the seeds of savage attacks we now see around the world.
This administration’s record of assailing Israel while going soft on Palestinian intransigence, terrorism, and incitement to violence is no secret. It is also no secret that they have reached out to leading exponents of radical Islamism, including the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
During the Green Revolution in 2009 when freedom-seeking Iranians were taking to the streets and being summarily mowed down or hauled off to prison, Obama declared that his failure to support a democratic uprising was because “[t]he United States does not meddle in Iran’s internal affairs.”
Yet President Obama and his administration showed no compunction about meddling in the internal affairs of the one and only democracy in the Middle East, repeatedly dressing down the Israeli government, dismissing its generous, often painful concessions for peace, and snubbing its prime minister. Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer claimed that Kerry and National Security Adviser Susan Rice coordinated with the Palestinian Authority on the resolution delegitimizing Israel. A U.S. Senate report also demonstrates that U.S. money and aid was channeled in an effort — ultimately unsuccessful — to unseat Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Many other examples, show, too, that Mr. Obama’s justification for not supporting the overthrow of the Iranian regime was a pretext, an Arafat-esque linguistic subterfuge to divert attention away from foreign policy interventions, or lack thereof, which have weakened Western interests and aided Islamist gains. Mr. Obama’s decisions on Iraq, Libya, Egypt and Syria are but a notable few. The failure of the Obama Administration to intervene in Syria and to take down ISIS when it was an incipient threat (even before Mr. Obama dismissed ISIS as a “JV team”) has been nothing less than catastrophic, causing untold human suffering, death and displacement. The growing power, wealth and reach of ISIS has been aided and abetted by Team Obama. The anti-Israel resolution would be yet one more case of a U.S.-facilitated weakening of an ally to propel Islamists, here, Palestinian terror affiliates.
Surely, the crowning achievement of Mr. Obama’s Orwellian foreign policy has been the Iran deal, a surrender of the U.S. and the West to the evil of our time. The mullahs of Iran are laughing all the way to the bank as they pocket billions upon billions of dollars and gold, and gain access to international markets, all the while continuing their diabolic sponsorship of global terrorism and acquisition of advanced weapons systems and know-how, material, planes, etc. to further their quest of regional and ultimately, global Islamist hegemony. The true closing costs of the Iran nuclear deal are yet unknown. The regime, it is clear, has not moderated; it is more belligerent. Iran’s violations of the ‘deal’ and provocations continue to escalate; their calls for the destruction of Israel and U.S. go unabated.
Recent blood-soaked history should disabuse any clear-thinking realist of the fiction that rewarding or appeasing terrorism will make it go away. U.N. resolutions that undercut Israel will never achieve peace. On the contrary, the delusion of a two-state solution will fast give way to a one-state solution, one ruled by murderous Hamas. And just as Czechoslovakia was not the end-game for Hitler, Israel is not really the target here. Israel is a proxy for a free and democratic society fighting back against the onslaught of Islamism.
Let us hope the new year heralds a new era of bold world leaders willing to confront and defeat the menace of our time. Let us hope we are on the threshold of a new age of Winston Churchill’s who understand the fatal folly of appeasement. “An appeaser,” Churchill famously said, “is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”
It bodes well that President-elect Trump will return to the White House the bust of Churchill removed by Obama.

Originally published at The Washington Times: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/15/czechoslovakia-redux/
• Linda Stulberg is a member of the executive board of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET). Sarah N. Stern is the founder and president of EMET.