[The following, by Daniel Greenfield, is crossposted from Sultan Knish.]

When Obama attacked Israel for building housing on Jewish owned land in Jerusalem, he was doing more than just pandering to his Muslim hosts with an obligatory dose of Israel bashing. He was diving once again into the ugly pool of bigotry, that first surfaced when he used Joe Biden as a proxy to launch a hate campaign against Israel over the same issue back in March.

And what it comes down to is Apartheid. Plain and simple.

Obama does not object to Arab Muslims living in Jerusalem. He objects only to Jews living in Jerusalem. The issue is not about "Israelis", as the media likes to present it, because Jerusalem Arabs and Jews are all citizens of Israel. What distinguishes them is race and religion.

The media and the administration only attack the municipal authorities of Jerusalem and the Israeli government for providing housing for its citizens-- when those citizens happen to be Jewish. If they are Arab and Muslim, then there's no problem. If they're Jewish on the other hand, then the alarm bells go off and the politicians and the press denounce them as enemies of peace. How does one describe that as other than "Apartheid"? What else is it, other than the belief that one group of people should be segregated by race and religion. Forbidden from living in places that are deemed to be the sole property of their Muslim conquerors.

Mohammed's last act was to ethnically cleanse Jews and Christians from lands under his control. That is why you will find a shortage of synagogues and churches in Mecca and Medina. Today there are hardly any Jews left in territories under Muslim rule, and the number of Christians is dwindling year by year. In 1948, Jordanian forces invaded and ethnically cleansed all Jews from the parts of Jerusalem under their control. In 1967, Israel reclaimed the entire city, but now Obama and his media backers would like to turn the clock back to 1948.

According to Obama and the media, Muslims have a right to build a mosque near Ground Zero, but Jews don't have the right to live in apartments in their own city. How do you reconcile the two? Easy. Apartheid. Muslims can do anything they want, anywhere they want. If Muslims are offended by the odor of pork from a nearby restaurant, then the restaurant has to comply. If Muslims want exclusive use of municipal swimming pools, then they get them. If Muslims don't want a city that they conquered and ethnically cleansed to be filled with "dirty Jews", then Obama insists that they should get what they want.

And if they don't, it's an obstacle to peace. "Peace" being the condition in which Muslims finally stop blowing people up in the name of Allah. Anything that might serve as a justification for them to keep blowing people up, is an "obstacle to peace".

But this is not peace. It's bloody blackmail. It's an open invitation for Muslims to impose their hateful and bigoted demands on the rest of the world. And where exactly does it end? When the Jordanian conquered half of Jerusalem is as ethnically cleansed of Jews, as the villages and towns of Hamas ruled Gaza. And where next? Muslim persecution of minorities, including Jews, has gone on for over a thousand years. Surrendering to it will not bring "peace", only temporary hudnas, truces under which Muslims will agree to temporarily tolerate the Jews, before something makes them fly off the handle in a murderous rage again.

And among people who seriously believe that Israel laces chewing gum with aphrodisiacs, that it releases snakes and "super-rats" to terrorize them, or trains migrating eagles to spy on them, drops poisoned candies in front of schools or uses strippers in riot control-- just about any imaginary thing will set them off. And the victims will be held the blame.

Because there's no point in pandering to the victims. You always pander to the murderers. They're the ones with the real power. Even when they're on the wrong side of a technological and military disparity, their willingness to commit senseless acts of violence puts them in the driver's seat. The willingness to kill means power. Particularly when employed against those who are unwilling to kill.

In a nutshell, that is what Obama's trip is really about. Why are we so desperate to improve relations with the Muslim world? For all the nonsense about Islam being a "Religion of Peace", or rather the "Religion of Submit and We'll Stop Killing You"... it all comes down to a plea for mercy. Here, we'll give you a bunch of scholarships, some trade deals, foreign aid and praise for your insane book consisting of the 7th century homicidal fantasies of a megalomaniac-- and in return, maybe you'll stop killing us. Or at least kill us less.

In 1957, Golda Meir spoke at the National Press Club and opined that, "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us." But such a form of love contradicts the expressed will of the Koran, that Muslims put Jihad above their own families. As long as Muslims continue to follow the Koran, there can be no peace. Because the need to subjugate non-Muslims will always be important than their own welfare and prosperity. That is the fullest measure of Islam.

But the lies continue. Newspaper stories now routinely describe Jerusalem as a "settlement", a thoroughly Orwellian appellation for one of the oldest cities in the world. To describe the Har Homa neighborhood in Jerusalem as a settlement, is akin to calling the Bronx a settlement.

The Administration predictably cloaks its bigotry in talk of "creating facts on the ground", but when Arab Muslims occupy and demolish Jewish holy sites, there is no concern about creating facts on the ground. When Western leftists, from groups such as Rabbis for Human Rights, arrive to help Arab Muslims terrorize Jewish farmers in order to drive them off their land, again nothing to be seen here. When the Qatari government, which funds Hamas and Al Qaeda, underwrites an entire new city for Arab Muslims-- the same international community which goes into a slavering fit over an Israeli house, applauds the project.

The term "Settlements" has now become completely meaningless, because it is being applied to housing in one of the oldest cities in the world. There can be no reasonable standard under which housing in Jerusalem is a settlement, and housing in Tel Aviv is not. After all Jerusalem is an ancient city whose very name comes from Hebrew. Tel Aviv is a fairly modern city. But in a twist of Orwellian logic, "settlement" is now a generic term for any place that Jews aren't supposed to be living. It has become a more genteel way to say "ethnic cleansing", to confine Jewish Israelis to a new Pale of Settlement, under a new Czar, in their own land.

What does one call a situation in which one race is permitted to build houses, but another is not? What else but Apartheid. Obama and the EU are not making this distinction based on citizenship. They are making it based on race and religion. While accusing Israel of doing the same.

We exist now in a land beyond history. A state of being adrift from fact and reason, governed not by historical events or realities, but hate and fear. By the Muslim hatred of the Jews. And civilization's fear of Islam. In the face of that hate and fear, words have lost their meanings and laws have lost their force. There is only the panicked imperative to appease the murderers of one's own country, with the land and freedom of others. To satiate the crocodile with another's flesh.

This is not about peace. It is not about fair negotiations. It is not about being an equal partner. It is about the same thing as in the UK or Australia or Canada or India. It is about giving Muslims what they want, at the expense of non-Muslims in the hopes of preventing Muslim violence. It's about Apartheid.