Don’t let the Holocaust museum fall into Obama’s echo chamber

In his final days as president, not only did Barack Obama grant the terrorist-funding Palestinian Authority $221 million, he appointed Ben Rhodes, the chief Iran nuclear deal messenger, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council — a brazen act of contempt for the Jewish and pro-Israel community.

According to The New York Times, as the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, Rhodes wrote the president’s speeches, planned his trips abroad and developed the White House communications strategy. He was “the single most influential voice shaping American foreign policy aside from Potus himself.” His influence, the article said, was a function of his “mind meld” with Obama.

{mosads}Translated, this means Rhodes shares accountability for the disastrous foreign policies of the administration.

The most damaging policy Rhodes supported was the catastrophic nuclear deal with Iran: it has allowed the Iranians to blackmail the United States; to act with impunity in pursuing its hegemonic goals in the Middle East; to expand its support for global terrorism; to finance and arm Hezbollah and Hamas for a future conflict with Israel; to develop ballistic missiles designed to carry nuclear warheads; and to allow Iran to build nuclear weapons when the deal expires, if not before. 

The Times profile highlighted “Rhodes’s innovative campaign to sell the Iran deal.” He presented the agreement as a way to take advantage of a “new political reality in Iran, which came about because of elections that brought moderates to power in that country.” This was patently false — the argument was “manufactured for the purpose for selling the deal,” and “even where the particulars of that story are true, the implications that readers and viewers are encouraged to take away from those particulars are often misleading or false.” Rhodes, like others in the Obama administration, exemplified the definition for diplomacy as the patriotic art of lying for one’s country.

“We created an echo chamber,” he told the Times, when asked to explain how he organized experts to endorse the deal. “They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.” The tactics were effective, and Rhodes proudly said he drove the deal’s critics crazy.

“Rhodes is not bragging about being a master of political spin,” Jeff Dunetz observed in a blog for The Lid. “He is bragging about being a ventriloquist for the media. What he writes comes out of the mouths of ‘the columnists and reporters.’”

Rhodes also mounted a campaign to demean Israel’s concerns about the nuclear deal. A senior administration official, now widely believed to be Rhodes, suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings about Israel resorting to military force to stop the Iranians were mere bluster. The official told Jeffrey Goldberg, “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit” — an ironic comment from someone representing an American leader who never served in the military about a man who served in Israel’s Special Forces in two wars.

The official went on to intimate that relations with Israel would get worse after the midterm elections and that the administration might withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations. It did not happen in 2014, when such a betrayal of Israel would have cost Obama and the Democrats votes; instead, he waited until after the 2016 election, when he no longer was running and Hillary Clinton had already lost.

In defending Obama’s vote at the United Nations, Rhodes blatantly lied to Judy Woodruff when he claimed that Israel has built “thousands of new settlements.” First, the total number of settlements, according to Peace Now, is 228, including “illegal” outposts. No new settlements have been built in years. Rhodes’s tendency toward the use of alt-facts to feed the echo chamber is why Israeli ambassador Ron Dermer called him “a master of fiction.”

Israel to defy U.N., build thousands of new settlements: https://t.co/5IVSVWoyeD pic.twitter.com/OI0RP3Spgi

— The Hill (@thehill) December 27, 2016

Rhodes’s credibility was further called into question when reports recently surfaced that the FBI denied, or was going to deny, Rhodes an interim security clearance during Obama’s transition. If true, Rhodes had no business taking part in sensitive discussions about issues such as Iran.

Membership on the board of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council carries with it a weighty responsibility of honoring the memory of the victims of the Holocaust and speaking out against modern-day genocides. Rhodes is a man whose disrespect for the truth and the homeland of the Jewish people, and excuses for Iran’s genocidal threats against Israel, mirrors the callousness of State Department officials who sought to prevent European Jews from escaping Hitler and later sought to sabotage the establishment of Israel.

Rhodes undermined Israeli concerns about Iran’s threat of destroying Israel, insulted Israel’s prime minister, and used the “echo chamber” to lie to the American people about the nuclear deal and justify the reversal of decades of U.S. policy supporting Israel at the U.N.

The gravest sin he committed, however, which disqualifies him for any association with the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is his complicity in the genocide in Syria.

Like Nero, Obama has figuratively fiddled while Syria burned. After stating that Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons against his opponents would cross a “red line” that would trigger a U.S. military response, Obama failed to back up his threat. This cowardly act was universally viewed by friends and foes alike in the Middle East as a sign of weakness, and left allies, including Israel, questioning whether they could depend on the United States to protect their interests. Fortunately for Obama, he had Rhodes to manipulate the “echo chamber” and sell the amoral narrative that America could not act to stop war crimes and genocide in Syria because it would jeopardize nuclear talks with Iran. 

Obama should have used the military in Syria when Assad crossed the red line, says former Asst. Secretary of State Philip Gordon #ObamaYears pic.twitter.com/dhm1DdESV8

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) January 13, 2017

A bystander to genocide has no business in a position of honor or responsibility at an institution devoted to documenting past genocides and preventing future ones. Rhodes was worse than a bystander, however — he was an active participant in the decision not to act to prevent the slaughter.

President Trump should call for Rhodes’s immediate resignation. In addition, a campaign should be conducted through the echo chamber calling on the chairman and the rest of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council to remove Rhodes forthwith, to prevent his presence from tarnishing the reputation and mission of this vital institution.

Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” whom the Washington Post calls “the most famous Rabbi in America,” has just published “The Israel Warrior: Standing Up for the Jewish State from Campus to Street Corner.” Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.

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