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Dr. Gerstenfeld’s latest article points out that there are two issues which got little or no attention in discussing the motivations behind Obama’s abstaining on the UN Security Council motion. This was originally published in INN, and republished here with the author’s consent.

Obama, the Security Council, Muslims and Alinsky

Manfred Gerstenfeld

In the many reactions about President Obama’s decision for the U.S to abstain on anti-Israeli Resolution 2334 at the UN Security Council, two key aspects of his attitude have hardly been mentioned.¹ The first one concerns a major motivation for the decision, the second his tactics.

The Obama presidency throughout was characterized by frequent whitewashing of terrorism coming out of parts of the Muslim world. During his first trip abroad in 2009, he said in Cairo that he would forge a relationship with Muslims around the world “based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”² This statement was too vague for anyone to yet understand that for Obama mutual respect included looking away from Islam-related terrorism in parts of the Muslim world. During that trip he visited two non-democratic Muslim states, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but did not visit Israel, the one democratic country in the area, a long-time ally of the US.

Daniel Pipes points out that Hussein, as a middle name is exclusively given to Muslim babies. Pipes also mentions that Obama lived for four years in a fully Muslim Indonesian milieu under the auspices of his Muslim Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.³ Those who knew Obama in Indonesia, considered him a Muslim. He was also registered as such in grade school.⁴ Even though he later converted to Christianity there are many signs of his unwillingness to face up to the ideological violence coming out of several Islamic societies.

In 2011, Obama moved away from decades of support for American ally, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, thus facilitating the rise of a fanatic Muslim group, the Muslim Brotherhood.⁵ The Washington Times claimed in 2015 that the administration’s policy of backing the Muslim Brotherhood for reform in the Middle East and North Africa is outlined in a classified document titled Presidential Study Directive -11.⁶ A White House National Security Council spokeswoman declined to comment. The Muslim Brotherhood was labeled a terrorist organization in 2014 by the governments of the American allies, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United American Emirates.⁷

Obama banned the terms, ‘Islam,’ ‘jihad,’ ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ and ‘radical Islam’ from US security documents.⁸ He even de-Islamized the Islamic State Movement saying, “ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents.”⁹ The judgment of what is in line with Islam or not at any given moment belongs to Muslim theologians, but not to a Christian American president.

Obama’s attitude toward Palestinian terrorism has been largely in line with his whitewashing of ideological violence coming out of parts of Islam worldwide. He did not speak about the fact that in the only Palestinian parliamentary elections, in 2006, Hamas obtained the majority of the seats. This party promotes in its charter the genocide of all Jews. The most Obama could bring himself to say in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic was that the Palestinians are not an “easy partner.”¹⁰ This is a Democratic president speaking about people refraining from mass-murder only because they are not able to succeed in their genocidal goal.

As to the tactics of the abstention: Obama was for a number of years a community organizer in Chicago. The organization he worked for, the Developing Communities Project, was influenced by the thinking of the Chicago radical, Saul Alinsky.¹¹ The latter’s approach was an almost business-like one. He was looking for the most efficient ways to attack corrupt local government, discriminating corporations and slum lords.

The recent U.S. abstention on UNSC Resolution 2334 fits Alinsky’s attitude of minimum effort and maximum damage to the other side. The difference is that while Alinsky applied his often extremist methods against corrupt institutions and exploiters, Obama did so against a democratic ally.

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