Idleness on Syrian Genocide Raises Questions about Samantha Power’s Fitness for Honor - The Observer

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Idleness on Syrian Genocide Raises Questions about Samantha Power’s Fitness for Honor
America's UN Ambassador should not deliver the Elie Wiesel Memorial if she won't forcefully protest Obama's inaction
By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach • 11/15/16 1:00pm

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Samantha Power made her reputation in the world of human rights by following in Elie’s footsteps and criticizing bystanders to the genocide in places such as Rwanda. That is why I was honored to stand by her when she was nominated to be Ambassador to the UN and was criticized by many in the Jewish community because of an interview in Berkeley in 2002 where she insinuated that Israel was capable of genocide against the Palestinians. After meeting with her at the White House, I was reassured that she had no animus toward Israel and would be the voice we needed at the UN to oppose genocide.

During her confirmation in 2013, when she asked me for public support, I did not hesitate. I chided her Jewish critics for not supporting one of the world’s foremost voices against genocide. Foreign Policy subsequently wrote that I made her acceptable for American Jews and smoothed the way for her appointment. Power invited me to her Senate confirmation hearings and we all went out for a celebratory drink afterward, suitably in an Irish bar.

At first blush, Power seems a fitting honoree to be the first to be invited to give the Elie Wiesel Memorial Lecture. America has just been through a very tough election. It’s time to unite the country. Samantha will be shortly leaving office. I have no intention of criticizing her in these last weeks of her Ambassadorship. But given that I personally took her to meet Elie during her confirmation hearings and then arranged for Power to speak alongside me, Elie, and Prof. Noah Feldman at Cooper Union in November, 2014, I feel a personal responsibility to make one last appeal to her to prove worthy of delivering a memorial lecture honoring the man who became the living face of the holocaust. How so? By filling in the glaring gaps of her tenure by coming out strongly against the genocide of Arabs in Syria, condemning Iran for its repeated genocidal threats against Israel, and finally recognizing the Armenian genocide before leaving office. Not to do so would prove unworthy of Elie Wiesel’s legacy.

Power’s inaction in the face of appalling mass slaughter during her tenure in the Obama administration is incongruent with her life’s work of exposing those who did nothing while innocents were murdered.  For so many years she did not have the power to stop the genocide she witnessed. She could only criticize the inaction of others.

That was all supposed to change when Power joined the government. Once she became one of the administration’s principal spokespersons on human rights and implementers of foreign policy, however, she has turned into the same type of bystander she vociferously denounced. I understand that she does not make policy and that as a member of the administration she is responsible for carrying out the wishes of the president. Nevertheless, one cannot escape the conclusion that, having made her reputation demanding that officials in American Administrations who take no action while mass slaughter surrounds them must do something or, if prevented, resign rather than be “bystanders to genocide,” Samantha’s actions seem deeply hypocritical.

Throughout her tenure as UN Ambassador Iranians have threatened to destroy Israel. For example, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said in 2015, “God willing, there will not be something named the Zionist regime in the next 25 years.” A few weeks earlier, he said, “Israel will grow less safe day by day whether there is a nuclear deal or not. Bear this in mind that Israel will never be secure….”

The Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was even more explicit in August 2015 when he declared, “We shall proceed with the jihad, resistance and martyrdom until Jerusalem is liberated and the Zionist regime, that stigma among Islamic peoples, is erased.” Through all these declarations, Power, along with John Kerry, was in negotiation with Iran without a single public demand that they stop promising a second holocaust. The Iranian incitement to genocide is in direct violation of the UN’s own 1948 Anti-Genocide convention. Still, Power remained silent lest she scupper President Obama’s catastrophic deal.

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Read More At: http://observer.com/2016/11/idleness-on-syrian-genocide-renders-samantha-power-unfit-for-elie-wiesel-memorial/

I think the Rabbi expects too too much.