President Obama's Cairo speech

President Obama delivered an important speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009. I believe that the naivete, wishful thinking, and distortions in his speech are beyond breathtaking. They are frightening. That we have a President who believes what he believes about the Arab/Muslim world, the history of the Jewish people, and world politics is cause for tremendous alarm. I urge you to read his speech deliberately, and then read the analysis articles which follow. Additionally, I have included excerpts from the speech, as well as my brief comments which follow. Anyone who cares about the security of the United States and the State of Israel should read his speech carefully, as this man chooses his words carefully. I look forward to reading your comments.

President Obama's speech
Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post
Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post
Anne Bayefsky in National Review
• Prime Minister Netanyahu's response at Bar-Ilan
  

...tension has been fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims... - Of course, it is not Muslims' fault, it is the West's fault. Muslims need not be held accountable for their actions; they are victims. How does the President explain the fact that 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, a country that was never colonized? How does he explain India, freed from British colonization, which did not resort to terrorism against its former colonizers? (Thanks to Dennis Prager for pointing this out.)
Violent extremists have exploited these tensions... - He never ONCE uses the term "terror" or "terrorism." Does that not give anyone pause? How can one's major policy speech to the "Muslim world" be taken seriously without mentioning "terrorism" once?
...throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality. - I am left speechless. On which planet, Mr. President?
...I also know civilization's debt to Islam. - Aside from suicide bombings and airplane hijackings, what has the Islamic world contributed over the past 500 years?
...Islam has always been a part of America's story. - Pure fiction, plain and simple. Aside from sports converts and Keith Ellison, can anyone name one famous Muslim-American who has "served in government...stood for civil rights...won Nobel Prizes"? Islam has never been part of America's story. Christianity and Judaism have.
...the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. - This is crucial, a smoking gun. He has bought into the Arab propaganda. Israel was founded because of the Holocaust. No mention of the fact that there were two independent Jewish states there, and not one independent Arab/Muslim state. President Obama endorsed the Arab world's claim that if Europe committed the Holocaust, why should the Arabs be punished for it? And after hearing this line, they have every reason to believe he agrees with them.

Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. - Important and relevant point.
1. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. - It is good that the President said this. It is a bit disturbing, however, that in the 21st-century, a President needs to make this point. It says frightening things about his audience, representatives of a group with whom we are supposed to make peace.
On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. - Here comes the moral equivalence. Never mind that the Jews suffered from without, while the Palestinians' suffering was due to their leaders' intransigence to any sized Jewish state and their people's greater desire to murder Jews than to have a state of their own. A second point - why mention Christians? Have there been any Palestinian Christian suicide bombers? No. Why? Because something is rotten in the state of the Muslim world.
2. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small... - Whose fault are the "daily humiliations"? The Israelis', for not wanting to get blown up? And what of the humiliations Israelis must endure, being searched when they enter a mall or restaurant, and having to assure invited guests that the wedding reception with have security present? (Thanks to Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg of San Antonio for this point.)
For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive. - A "stalemate"?! What does one call the offer of total withdrawal after the Six Day War in exchange for peace? What of the complete withdrawal from Sinai? What if the complete withdrawal from Gaza? What of the offers of more than 90% of Judea and Samaria, a portion of Jerusalem for a Palestinian capital, and a partial return of refugees? What more would he have liked Israel to do? And he calls it a "stalemate"? Additionally, he equates the Jewish- and Palestinian "painful history." But one "painful history" was other-inflicted, while the other was self-inflicted.

3. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. - Really? How, exactly, did the Palestinians get to the position they are on the world stage? By lying down in front of Israeli tanks, Tienanmen Square-style? Or was it by hijacking planes, slaughtering innocents at the Olympics, in an airport arrivals hall, and in a school? The Palestinians have shown that violence succeeds indeed! (Hence, nobody cares about Tibetan independence. They do not murder innocent Chinese, or any Chinese, for that matter.) And why did he add, "...and does not succeed"? If it did, would it then be acceptable?
For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip... - So now the Palestinian cause is as righteous as the Black cause for integration and equal rights? Simply breathtaking.
It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered. - Two powerful lines, but he had already undermined them with his previous moral equivalency statements. These lines had nothing to stand on.
4. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. - All previous understandings between the American and Israeli governments be damned. This is a tremendous policy shift. No President has ever been so blunt.
...I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons. - Yes, Mr. President, and in Utopia, that might be possible. But on Earth, where I live, I would prefer the United States to have bigger guns than the bad people. Just like in my cities, I want the police to have bigger guns than the bad people, not ask the bad people to turn in their weapons.