Anne Bayefsky: Obama's Cairo Speech an Insult to Jews, Israel and Human Rights Victims in the Arab and Muslim Worlds

Our readers may have noticed the absence of analysis on my part of President Obama's Cairo speech to the Muslim world. I frankly was biding my time, waiting for columnists who would write about it better than I could. I have already posted one such column, by my friend Jay Shapiro, in the previous entry.

Now I have come across another such column, this one by Anne Bayefsky, entitled "Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people," which appears in Jewish World Review. I urge you to read the entire article.

However, I do have one quibble with Ms. Bayefsky's column. While she does not state that President Obama bears any ill will toward Israel, one might draw that inference from her litany of objections to the speech. Call me naive if you will, but I do not ascribe to President Obama any malevolent intent toward Israel. Indeed, it took considerable courage to tell a predominantly Moslem audience in Egypt that the Holocaust occurred and any attempt to deny it discredits Israel's critics. Would that he had said the same thing regarding the historical ties of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel!