By Dennis Prager
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
There is no question about whether President Obama —
along with Secretary of State John Kerry and the editorial pages of many
newspapers — has a particular dislike of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu.
But there is another question: Why? And the answer is due
to an important rule of life that too few people are aware of:
Those who do not confront evil resent those who do.
Take the case at hand. The prime minister of Israel is at
the forefront of the greatest battle against evil in our time — the battle
against violent Muslims. No country other than Israel is threatened with
extinction, and it is Iran and the many Islamic terror organizations that pose
that threat.
It only makes sense, then, that no other country feels
the need to warn the world about Iran and Islamic terror as much as does
Israel. That’s why when Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the United Nations about
the threat Iran poses to his country’s survival and about the metastasizing
cancer of Islamist violence, he, unfortunately, stands alone.
Virtually everyone listening knows he is telling the
truth. And most dislike him for it. Appeasers hate those who confront evil.
Given that this president is the least likely of any
president in American history to confront evil — or even identify it — while
Benjamin Netanyahu is particularly vocal and eloquent about both identifying
and confronting evil, it is inevitable that the former will resent the latter.
The negotiations with Iran over its nuclear weapons
program are today’s quintessential example. Those who will not confront a
tyranny engaged in terror from Argentina to the Middle East, and which is
committed to annihilating another country, will deeply resent Israel and its
leader.
For those who doubt the truth of this Rule of Life, there
are plenty of other examples.
Take the Cold War. Those who lived through it will recall
that those who refused to confront Communism vilified those who did. Indeed,
they vilified anyone who merely labeled Communism evil. When President Ronald
Reagan declared the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” he was excoriated by those
who refused to do so. Yet, if the words “evil” and “empire” have any meaning,
they perfectly applied to the Soviet Union. But to those who opposed Reagan,
these words could not be applied to the Soviet Union.
New York Times columnists lambasted the president for
using such language. The newspaper’s most prestigious columnist at the time,
James Reston, condemned Reagan for his “violent criticism of Russians as an
evil society.”
Anthony Lewis accused Reagan of using “simplistic
theology.” Reagan was using “a black and white standard to something that is
much more complex.”
Tom Wicker wrote that “the greater danger” than the
spread of Communism “lies in Mr. Reagan’s vision of the superpower relationship
as Good versus Evil.”
Columnist Russell Baker added his contempt for Reagan’s
characterization of the Soviet Union. And, in a long Times article under the
headline, “Reagan’s Gaffe,” an unnamed “strategist” for former vice president
Walter Mondale told the newspaper that “Mr. Reagan had undercut diplomatic
efforts of recent months” — exactly as the Times and the Obama administration
now describe Benjamin Netanyahu doing to the negotiations with Iran.
(For a detailed description of the reactions to Ronald
Reagan’s anti-Communism, see Ann Coulter’s book Treason.)
Some 20 years later, when President George W. Bush
characterized the regimes of North Korea, Iraq, and Iran as an “Axis of Evil,”
he was likewise lampooned — as if those mass-murderous tyrannies were not evil.
In short, those who refused to characterize the Soviet
Union as evil loathed Ronald Reagan and other anti-Communists for doing so; and
those who objected to the “Axis of Evil” label placed on North Korea, Iran, and
Iraq loathed George W. Bush and his supporters. The loathing of Benjamin
Netanyahu is simply the latest example of the rule that those who will not
confront evil will instead confront those who do. (It’s much safer, after all.)
Since the end of World War II, there has been a name for
the people who refuse to confront evil and who resent those who do: Leftists.
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