Obama: Remember What You See Here

Obama: Remember What You See Here

By: Paula R. Stern

This was the wise advice someone called out to Barack Obama during a visit to Yad Vashem recently. Remember what you see here. What did Obama see while in Israel? The answer, sadly, is what he thought American Jews wanted him to see in order to capture their vote. He met with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and to hedge his bets, he met with Opposition Leader Binyamin Netanyahu. He had dinner with Shimon Peres and met with the deservedly-beleaguered prime minister.

Beyond that, he reportedly went to three sites: the Western Wall, the National Holocaust Museum (Yad VaShem) and Sderot. Perhaps an amazing accomplishment for the whirlwind tour of about 36 hours, but a visit filled with messages sent and received, nonetheless.

Do these three sites represent Israel? Certainly, that would be a message he’d want to send back to American Jews, no? Perhaps he is correct as far as the American voter is concerned, but isn’t it interesting that all three sites essentially symbolize our weakness more than our strength?

The Western Wall has been called our holiest site, and no doubt this is the way Obama’s advisors presented it to him. A must-see and must-be-seen-at location, they’d have told him. But did anyone tell him that our holiest site is actually beyond reach; hidden just behind the Wall?

It is there, just above the Wall, the Temple Mount, buried in ruins below three Arab mosques. “The Temple Mount is in our hands,” Colonel Motta Gur announced over army radio in 1967. An elated country knew this was the symbol of our victory, our greatest success – the Temple Mount, not the Western Wall.

It was an amazing moment in our history. After 2000 years, the Temple Mount was finally back in our hands, and then, as we have seen too often in Israel, the Israeli government caved into international pressure and surrendered. What great idiocy allowed Moshe Dayan to simply hand the keys and the area back to the Arabs after we had recaptured it, we will never understand.

The Western Wall, the last remnant of what was, is holy and special and ours, but it is not, as so many claim, our holiest site. Today, the Temple Mount is all but denied to us. Our people are arrested if they dare move their lips silently in prayer during the short time we might be allowed to visit. Days will go by when we are banned from entering and much of the world still idiotically believes that the Second Intifada was birthed in a seemingly immaculate conception after Ariel Sharon briefly visited the site in 2000. The Western Wall is a symbol of what we have lost, more than it is a symbol of what we are. Remember what you saw, Obama, and what you did not.

Yad Vashem, another Obama photo op, is a very important site in Israel. We drag all our international visitors there as regularly as the clock ticks and the sun rises. There amid cameras and solemn faces, they lay a wreath and mouth platitudes of shock and shame. Sadly, it is doubtful that Obama or any of these visitors actually gain any real understanding of the Holocaust during these short visits. It’s another must-be-seen-at place.

By my best estimates, Barack Obama could not have spent more than an hour there, including the requisite dance of the wreath. The last time I visited, I spent almost three hours wandering through each exhibit, watching the videotaped stories, the horrible films shot during the Nazi era, the collection of pictures and personal items that remain long after the people were murdered.

I have been to Auschwitz and Maidanek, Chelmno and Treblinka. I have stood in a gas chamber, faced the crematoria. I’ve walked the streets of the ghettos and touched the graves and still, three hours wasn’t enough, though it was all I could stand. But Obama didn’t have to understand the Holocaust and its significance. All he had to do was stand and have his picture taken as he gently bowed towards the eternal flames and then on with his busy itinerary. Lunch and a visit with the president, more comments and pictures.

Next stop, Sderot. Another calculated miscalculation. Sderot is not a symbol of our strength, but of our ongoing shame. From the inside, it is a story of resistance and determination, but that honor goes only to those who live there. They deserve our praise for withstanding thousands of rockets and mortars, for living despite the fear. But, for the rest of Israel and the world, Sderot is about our failure to protect, our refusal to stop the rockets. It is about our ignoring the agony and danger of the people who live there because of world pressure. Sderot is about our ongoing delusion that peace can be achieved if you simply ignore reality.

Remember, Obama, what you saw in Israel. But perhaps more important, remember what you didn’t see. In your brief visit here, what you failed to see, essentially, was the very country you came to visit. Next time, if you wish to see Israel, ask us, not your advisors and perhaps not even the American Jews.

You didn’t see Masada, symbol of our commitment to stay in this land at all costs. You didn’t see my son’s army base, where he and others train and protect our land. You didn’t see the great universities, like the one my daughter attends or the one where my mother teaches. You didn’t see our new Supreme Court building or the Knesset, where democracy lives in our country. You didn’t see the hustling hi-tech areas in Haifa, Gush Dan, Jerusalem and elsewhere. This is where Israelis develop amazing inventions and technologies  that astound the world and save lives.

You didn’t go to the Golan Heights to understand how it towers above northern Israel, protecting almost a quarter of our people or see the tanks and planes with which we defend Israel. You didn’t visit any of our hospitals, where Jew and Arab are treated equally by some of the best doctors in the world and where Palestinian children such as Doa'a Ayad and Farah Bacher were treated despite ongoing rocket fire and hostilities.

Obama didn’t go to Theodore Herzl’s grave or Ben Gurion’s – both great symbols of Israel’s Zionist beginnings and he didn’t shake the hand of Ya'akov Asahel, a 53-year-old father of eight and grandfather of six who bravely faced and shot the second bulldozer terrorist in Jerusalem in recent weeks. The attack took place only hours before Obama arrived, and only minutes from the hotel where he would stay.

Barack Obama shook the hand of Abu Mazen, who was convicted of planning the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro, during which a wheelchair-bound American Jewish man, Leon Klinghoffer was thrown into the sea. Obama shook the hand of several Israeli politicians, why not shake the hand of a Ya’akov Asahel, a man who represented bravery and honor?

Masada, the Golan Heights, our hospitals and hi-tech stars all didn’t rate a visit. In the end, three places did, and each in some way represents our weakness and our defeat. One could ask Barack Obama why flying over Sderot was more important than flying over the Golan; why shaking Olmert’s hand was more important than shaking Asahel’s hand.

Why did Barack Obama and his advisors think that American Jews wanted to see Israel’s weakness and not its strength? I don’t know what Obama will remember of his trip here, but the greater message may well be his affinity with the sites that show our weakness. Perhaps the best legacy of the Obama visit should be to remember what he chose to see and where he chose to be seen.