Work Not Finished at Buchenwald?

I've waited a week to write this column. Sometimes when you're really hot about something, it's best to sleep on it. That's what my wife tells me anyway.

Well, I've slept on Barack Obama's Buchenwald speech for a solid week, and I'm as amazed at its insensitivity and disingenuousness as I was the day I heard it.

There was a line in that address that deserves some special attention. I haven't seen anyone else point it out yet. To understand its impropriety you have to remember where it was delivered. And you have to appreciate that this was a prepared speech. Presidential speeches, especially those delivered on foreign soil, are scrupulously vetted, revised, rewritten, edited and carefully scripted for the teleprompter in chief. At least I assumed they were.

The speech was delivered at Buchenwald, one of the most notorious concentration camps operated by Nazis, a place where some 56,000 people, mostly Jews, were murdered in what Adolf Hitler hoped would be the "final solution" to the "Jewish problem."

This is the shockingly unbelievable line that struck my attention — one that was in such poor taste that it couldn't possibly have survived scrutiny by competent speechwriters and editors, unless there was some intention behind it: "We are here today because we know this work is not yet finished."

Now, don't tell me I am taking this line out of context. I know I am. I understand the context — the fight continues against those who deny the Holocaust. Nevertheless, given the context of Buchenwald itself — the hideous "work" that was performed there, this sentence should never have made the final draft.

There's also context to the Obama administration that cannot be ignored. This is a president who, days earlier, suggested Iran, a country whose top officials deny the Holocaust and remain loyal to Hitler's notion of a final solution to the Jewish problem, have the absolute right to nuclear power. Iran is one of the great oil powers of the world. It needs nuclear power for its energy needs like Eskimos need refrigerators.

Iran has sought nuclear power for one reason only — to hold a sword of Damocles over the head of the Jewish state of Israel.

While affirming Iran's right to nuclear power, and inevitably nuclear weapons, Obama also snubbed Israel on his trip to the Middle East. But even worse is the decidedly anti-Israel policies the Obama administration has followed since he took office Jan. 20.

The context here is that Obama seeks to divide Jerusalem, tell Jews where they can live in their own country, carve up the smallest and freest of all the states in the Middle East, and give aid and comfort to Israel's enemies in ways that would be almost unimaginable, even during the dread regime of bona fide Jew-hater Jimmy Carter.

The latest disgrace involved the appointment of Kareem Shora to the official advisory council for Janet Napolitano, Obama's Department of Homeland Security secretary. Shora is the head of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, whose officials have labeled deadly jihadists as "heroes" and denied Hamas as a terrorist organization.

But it gets worse. In his major address to the Muslim world last week, Obama seemed to be speaking in code, whether he or his speechwriters knew it.

He said: "As the Holy Quran tells us, 'Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.'" On the surface, this seems innocent enough. But those of us who understand Islam, have studied it, reported on it and analyzed it, also understand context.

Obama was reading from chapter 9, verse 119 of the Quran. The very next passage continues: "Neither the dwellers of the city, nor the Arabs around them, shall seek to stay behind the messenger of Allah [when he mobilizes for war]. Nor shall they give priority to their own affairs over supporting him. This is because they do not suffer any thirst, or any effort, or hunger in the cause of Allah, or take a single step that enrages the disbelievers, or inflict any hardship upon the enemy, without having it written down for them as a credit. Allah never fails to recompense those who work righteousness."

That is the context of this seemingly innocuous quotation that is actually revered by jihadists worldwide. So, I ask you, am I really taking Obama's words at Buchenwald out of context? Or am I the only one seeing them in context?

To find out more about Joseph Farah and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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