There is one thing Old Joe Biden is good at: seizing every opportunity to get things wrong. His speech to the nation on Thursday night was just the latest in a long list of public remarks in which this senescent corruptocrat takes a bad situation and makes it exponentially worse.
After Hamas’ bloody massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, the alleged president made his way to Israel and announced that he was sending $100 million to Gaza, which will almost certainly be seized by Hamas and go for more jihad attacks upon Israel. While there, he warned Israelis not to give in to an “an all-consuming rage.” He took the opportunity to criticize his own country and to issue an implicit warning to Israel not to be too tough on the murderous jihadis: “While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”
Biden also claimed in that same address that “the vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.” This is, however, just wishful thinking, if it isn’t outright deceit. The Washington Institute reported on Oct. 10 that “overall, 57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas.” Those who would be quick to assume that the remainder are “moderates,” however, would do well to ponder the fact that “it is organizations like Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Lion’s Den that receive the most widespread popular support in Gaza. About three-quarters of Gazans express support for both groups.” These are both jihad groups that are even more bloodthirsty than Hamas.
Then on Thursday, Old Joe took the opportunity not only to cheerlead for yet more taxpayer money to go for the war in Ukraine, but also to wag his finger at Americans and warn them against “Islamophobia,” or “Islamicphobia,” as he called it. “You know,” said homespun ol’ Lunchbucket Joe, “and here at home, we have to be honest with ourselves. In recent years, too much hate has been given too much oxygen, fueling racism, a rise in antisemitism and Islamicphobia [sic] right here in America.”
Now, anti-Semitism is a genuine phenomenon, and it is indeed rising in America today, particularly among Old Joe’s leftist allies and the people who protect themselves from criticism by charging their critics with “Islamophobia.” The hatred of Jews simply for being Jewish is an ancient phenomenon that is experiencing yet another ugly recrudescence in our own age. Biden, however, equates it with “Islamophobia,” which is an entirely different matter.
“Islamophobia,” in contrast to anti-Semitism, is relatively new as a concept, and is much more often used than it is defined. It is so seldom defined because it is actually a trick, a sleight of hand, consisting of an illegitimate conflation of two distinct phenomena: vigilante attacks against innocent Muslims, which are never justified, and honest analysis of the motivating ideology of jihad terror, which is always necessary.
The goal of this conflation is to silence that analysis by falsely claiming that it leads to or causes those attacks. No one, or vanishingly few people, hates Muslims for being Muslims; what is all too often termed “Islamophobia” is a suspicion of Islam based on its teachings regarding the necessity for warfare against unbelievers, the subjugation of women, and the hatred of Jews.
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Old Joe was playing this game in a big way on Thursday evening, declaring: “You know, I know many of you in the Muslim American community or the Arab American community, the Palestinian American community, and so many others are outraged and hurting, saying to yourselves, ‘Here we go again,’ with Islamophobia and distrust we saw after 9/11.” So apparently the real victims of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel were Muslims, just as we saw the establishment media claim so often after 9/11 that Muslims were the real victims of those attacks as well.
No innocent people should be attacked under any circumstances, anywhere. Old Joe, however, in equating anti-Semitism, which is all too real, with “Islamophobia,” which is all too often little more than a tool for censorship, once again shifts the focus away from where it should be. Israelis, not Muslims, were brutally attacked on Oct. 7. This is not the time to play politics or hand out victimhood prizes among favored leftist victim groups. Old Joe Biden doesn’t even have the decency to stand unequivocally with a staunch American ally in its greatest moment of crisis.
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