Not long after the news broke that three kidnapped Jewish teens, including one who held American citizenship, were found murdered, Ben Shapiro, whose hysterics never cease to amaze, decided that President Obama’s reaction to the news could best be explained by his hatred of Jews:
Presumably Frenkel did not look enough like Barack Obama’s imaginary son for him to give a damn. Or perhaps Frenkel hadn’t deserted his duty in the American military, and therefore his parents didn’t deserve a White House press conference. Maybe Michelle Obama was too busy worrying about children’s fat thighs to spend a moment tweeting out a selfie to raise awareness.
Or maybe, just maybe, the Obama administration didn’t care about Frenkel because he was a Jew.
Jewish blood is cheap to this administration.
The whole piece is, of course, the hottest of hot messes.
His wild claim isn’t based on any facts … unless you think Shapiro’s insistence that everything Obama has or hasn’t done in the Middle East happened with hatred of Jews in mind counts as a fact.
And then Shapiro went on Fox News and repeated it, at which point Fox News host Megyn Kelly took to Twitter to distance herself from his ridiculous claim.
But, if you (like so many people in my Facebook news feed this week) think Ben Shapiro is on to something and that, in fact, Americans need a leader who doesn’t hate Jews since our current leader so obviously does, here’s the conclusion from an editorial in Haaretz by Eliyahu Fink, an Orthodox rabbi from California:
Jewish tradition places great emphasis on hakarat hatov - gratitude. Politics comes after religious obligation and ethics. Our sages teach us that God commanded Moses to strike the Nile in order to commence the plague of blood. Moses delegated this duty to his brother Aaron because of his gratitude to the Nile for saving his life when his mother placed him inside a floating cradle in the river. The water saved Moses’ life and so he refused to strike the water. President Obama is saving Jewish lives in Israel. Not just one life. He’s saving many lives. For that, the Jewish response is to say thank you. So on behalf of less appreciative Orthodox Jewish brethren, I say thank you Mr. President. Your support and tangible assistance are greatly appreciated.
Calling Obama anti-Israel and borderline anti-Jewish is more anti-Jewish than anything Obama has ever done. It is not just striking the Nile that saved us once. It is striking the Nile repeatedly after it saved us innumerable times. A cornerstone of Judaism is gratitude. The people of Israel and Jews all over the world should be thanking President Obama, not slandering the president with rank speculation and dismissive cynicism.
The editorial is mostly about Obama’s personal request to Congress for funding the Iron Dome missile defense system in 2010, but Rabbi Fink also notes that Shapiro’s claims about how monstrous it was for Obama to ask the Israeli government to use restraint in its response is precisely the language used by such noted non-Jew-haters as Presidents Bush and President Clinton.
In short, never listen to Ben Shapiro and if you find yourself about to put forward a position previously espoused by Ben Shapiro, even by accident, rethink that position.