Obama Praises Israel, Criticizes Palestinians; Right Wing Goes Bonkers
Oh, that Barack Obama. He made a speech in Cairo. Did he praise Israel effusively enough? Not according to Ira Stoll. But of course, that's not possible:
Even when Obama was trying to be nice to Israel, he was tone deaf: “America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied,” he said. The missing words were those usually present in such passages about shared democratic values and strategic interests.The horror! The horror!
And not only did he fail to praise Israel effusively enough, he also -- gulp! -- acknowledged that the Palestinians may have legitimate grievances:
The sections about the Palestinian Arabs were even weaker. He said of the Palestinians: “For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation.” This buys into the claim that it was 1948, not 1967, that was the original tragedy for the Palestinian Arabs, and feeds the idea that the Palestinian Arabs have a claim to all of Israel, not just the West Bank and Gaza.
So Obama should have told the Palestinians it's all their fault and they should get over it?
Brilliant.
And who would hear this speech and decide that Obama was saying that the Palestinians had a legitimate claim to "all of Israel"? Besides Ira Stoll, I mean?
Then he said, “Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and does not succeed. For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America’s founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia. It’s a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end.”
This places the Palestinian Arabs as the victims, equating their plight to that of enslaved American blacks, Poles subjected to Communist tyranny, or blacks under apartheid.
Many conservative commentators have been taking this line - deriding Obama's speech as exhibiting "moral equivalence" -- how can Obama say that the grievances of the Palestinians have as much weight as the Holocaust? How can he say that the Palestinian situation is morally equivalent to slavery, or communist oppresion?
The short answer is, he isn't saying that. What he's doing here is acknowledging that the Palestinians also have grievances, and that they also might be legitimate. It isn't necessary that you think those grievances are morally equivalent to the Holocaust or slavery. Trust me, the Palestinians see it that way. You may think it's absurd or foolish -- I certainly do. But that's how they feel.
Acknowledging their frustration and their pain costs you nothing, and it opens the possibility that they will actually listen to what comes next. Which was this:
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.
And that statement goes hand-in-hand with another thought: throughout history, oppressed groups that have sought to have their grievances addressed through violent means always fail. However, oppressed groups that make their demands peacefully are far more likely to succeed. So Obama is really offering two reasons for the Palestinians to abandon violent tactics -- one moral, and one practical.
I don't know if the Palestinians have considered this before. It may be the first time, and it may take a while before they consider it seriously.
This is a long game Obama is playing. It probably will not bear fruit during his administration. But sooner or later - if we're patient enough - it will.
