The Last Stop: Obama’s Infatuation with Israel

An update to what we have observed yesterday from a growing upward graph in the American politics towards supporting, adopting, embracing and being increasingly biased towards Israel. Even the many of those who have the conviction that there will be no president closer to Israel than president Bush and the conservative right Zionist decision makers in his administration, can conclude that Bush’s drive in serving the Zionist (Israeli) Project is just a stage in the development of America’s support to Israel in the last 60 years. Since every administration was adding a stone into building the American Israeli relationship and every administration expressed that in its own way by adding some type of support to Israel.

It may be a true assessment which brought consensus in the world today, including people in our region, that Bush’s administration is the worst and most evil in Americas’ history. And it may be true that president-elect Obama’s moral and humanitarian proposals carry the promise of good change within America, firstly as the country got as much damage as the rest of the world due to Bush’s politics and secondly after the financial collapse that shook America and the rest of the world. Also, all of what Obama announces about leaving the polar unilateralism, then leaning more towards partnership and pluralism in International politics and stopping war bleeding represents difference in policy from George Bush Junior.

But the truth is that Barak Obama’s politics towards the Palestinian cause will be worse than Bush’s politics, and I hope that I am not understood as being narrow minded and just hanging on to my opinion and theory that every new administration in the history of America is worse than the previous one, and that every new president invents new type of criminal policies to continue on dissolving the Palestinian cause.

Some have the right to ask not to jump to conclusions and would argue the necessity of waiting to identify the type of politics the new coming administration will implement concerning Palestine which might actually be true if it was not for the fact that Obama’s politics and direction were clearly and frankly announced to be completely biased towards Israel. And this still does not prevent us from hoping that he will not implement every thing he says and believes about Israel.

As for us here, it is realistic, rational and wise of us to read with scrutiny his thoughts, and standing towards the Palestinian cause, and for that I am listing some specific and frank statements made by him without any comments or arguments.

Obama says: ”I always joke that my intellectual formation was through Jewish scholars and writers, even though I didn’t know it at the time. Whether it was theologians or Philip Roth who helped shape my sensibility, or some of the more popular writers like Leon Uris. So when I became more politically conscious, my starting point when I think about the Middle East is this enormous emotional attachment and sympathy for Israel, mindful of its history, mindful of the hardship and pain and suffering that the Jewish people have undergone, but also mindful of the incredible opportunity that is presented when people finally return to a land and are able to try to excavate their best traditions and their best selves. And obviously it’s something that has great resonance with the African-American experience.

I think the idea of Israel and the reality of Israel is one that I find important to me personally. Because it speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus, it describes the history of overcoming great odds and a courage and a commitment to carving out a democracy and prosperity in the midst of hardscrabble land. One of the things I loved about Israel when I went there is that the land itself is a metaphor for rebirth, for what’s been accomplished. What I also love about Israel is the fact that people argue about these issues, and that they’re asking themselves moral questions.

My staff teases me sometimes about anguishing over moral questions. I think I learned that partly from Jewish thought, that your actions have consequences and that they matter and that we have moral imperatives. The point is, if you look at my writings and my history, my commitment to Israel and the Jewish people is more than skin-deep and it’s more than political expediency. When it comes to the gut issue, I have such ardent defenders among my Jewish friends in Chicago. I don’t think people have noticed how fiercely they defend me, and how central they are to my success, because they’ve interacted with me long enough to know that I’ve got it in my gut. During the Wright episode, they didn’t flinch for a minute, because they know me and trust me, and they’ve seen me operate in difficult political situations.

The other irony in this whole process is that in my early political life in Chicago, one of the raps against me in the black community is that I was too close to the Jews. When I ran against Bobby Rush [for Congress], the perception was that I was Hyde Park, I’m University of Chicago, I’ve got all these Jewish friends. When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I’ve been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends, so when I find on the national level my commitment being questioned, it’s curious. “

I don’t want to go on to testify with any more verbatim scripts from Obama’s statements that demonstrate Obama’s Infatuation and absolute bias towards Israel, and I will leave a lot of the rest of his words to be able to use them in my future coming articles because I don’t want to “ruin it for you any more on your holiday morning“ and I want to leave space to say to you “Happy Holiday.”