Three-Pronged Dilemma

The Obama Team of 2s never misses an opportunity to participate in a "international conference" that is anti-Israel. Last week, John Kerry attended yet another "peace" conference sponsored by France's socialist President François Hollande. Caroline Glick comments:

France hosted yet another anti-Israel diplomatic pile-on. Hollande had hoped to show that France was stepping into the void left by the US’s abandonment of its position as world leader. But all the confab served to do was show how irrational and self-destructive France – and Western Europe – has become.

Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives were present at the conference which aimed to dictate Israel’s final borders. Their absence made the event seem like a throwback to the era of European colonialism. It was as if Hollande wanted to reenact France’s glory days in Syria and Algeria.

In his opening remarks, Hollande recycled the tired claim that the way to defeat jihad is by forcing Israel to give Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Islamic terrorists. The document the French Foreign Ministry circulated among participants ahead of the conference recommended setting a timetable for forcing Israel to give the PLO Judea, Samaria and large swaths of Jerusalem, for the benefit of global security.

The French planned their event before the mobs in Ramallah, Hebron, Jerusalem and Gaza publicly celebrated the cold-blooded massacre of Israeli diners at Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market on Wednesday night. But the latest massacre wasn’t necessary to show the absurdity of France’s plan to defeat jihad by empowering jihadists at Israel’s expense.

After all, Israel surrendered Gaza to the Palestinians 11 years ago. Far from ameliorating the problem of jihad – in Europe and throughout the world – the scourge of Islamic war has grown geometrically in the past decade.

France’s own recent experience shows that Hollande’s “peace” plan was a delusional.

In 2000, Muslims comprised 10 percent of the population of France.

That year, the state-owned France 2 television network invented the contemporary blood libel of Jews as baby killers with the release and dissemination of its deceptive film which purported to show IDF troops deliberately murdering Muhammad al-Dura.

The Dura libel unleashed the forces of Islamic Jew-hatred in France and throughout Europe. It paved the way for the rise in anti-Jewish violence unseen since the Holocaust. This violence in turn is causing the current exodus of Jews from France and from Western Europe as a whole.

But assaulting Jews didn’t satisfy the jihadists.

As last year’s events made clear, the state authorities’ desire to deflect Islamic extremism onto Jews – in Israel and in France – backfired.

Fifteen years after the Dura blood libel, Muslims now comprise at least 15% of France’s population, and 40% of the population of Marseilles.

And today, the same extremists who have terrorized France’s Jews for a decade and a half, have turned their guns on French society as a whole.

Last year’s Islamic killing spree, from Charlie Hebdo and Super Cacher to Bataclan made clear that as far as the jihadists are concerned, the French Jew-baiters are no different than the Jews.

The Left refuses to abandon the fantasy that forcing Israel to commit national suicide (and make no mistake—that is exactly what the Left wants) will somehow cause Islamists to make nicey-nice. The harsh reality is that Islamic terrorism worldwide has little, if anything, to do with the palestinians. And since that reality runs counter to the left's fantasy narrative, politicians like Holland, and Obama, and Kerry simply disregard reality and participate in meaningless "conferences" that accomplish nothing. The big question, assuming that Hillary wins election over Donald Trump, is whether Obama's third term will be any different than his first two with respect to Israel.

Watch the Democratic party very carefully in the run-up to the Democratic National Convention, during the convention itself, and after it. As the Dem party veers left, will it follow the lead of the Barack Obama and institute policy positions that are blatantly anti-Israel? Because Bernie Sanders and his hard-left base must be appeased, the Dems are faced with a three-pronged dilemma. Do they accede to the anti-Israel rhetoric of Sanders' appointees to the platform committee and risk alienating many Jewish supporters and donors? Do they cynically tone down the anti-Israel rhetoric to mollify the few remaining members of the Dem party who reject its new anti-Israel bent? Or do they reject the anti-Israel platform altogether?