Obama on Israel

If anybody needs any proof that Barack Obama is pretty much an empty suit when it comes to certain issues, this article is a pretty nice read. Obama spoke to the Jewish Telegraph Agency and gave his views on the Middle East. Like a Newsday editorial, he came off as comically uninformed, repeating most of the politically correct platitudes regardless of the amount of cognitive dissonance required to reconcile some of them.

Consider the very first thing Obama says: "My belief is that Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East, one of our strongest allies anywhere in the world." Okay. But then:

"The U.S. role 'requires listening to both sides and talking to both sides," Obama said. "That requires that we don't dismiss out of hand the concerns of the Palestinians because there's no way we can move forward in those negotiations without at least understanding their perspective.'"

Sorry, Barack, this is nonsensical. If you're in an alliance with somebody, and that person has a dispute with a third party, you support your ally in that dispute. That's what being in an alliance involves. You don't "talk to both sides" and/or mediate. This is one thing the Arabs are absolutely right about. The US can't deem itself an "honest broker" or neutral mediator while at the same time lauding its strong alliance with Israel. That's trying to have it both ways, and the failure of most US politicians and diplomats to understand this basic concept has led us to the joke of a failure that has been the so-called "Peace Process."

Now, in fairness, it's been a long-held belief of mine that there's no such thing as an "honest broker" when it comes to this conflict. The Arab/Israeli conflict has emotional implications for the majority of the world. And those emotions undoubtedly inform the opinions people have (and of course this is especially true for somebody like me). Anybody who claims to be "neutral" or "objective", for the most part, is either deluded or lying. Even people who honestly try to be objective are ultimately picking one side or the other based purely on the vocabulary they use to describe the conflict, but THAT is a topic for another Note.

Of course, Barack Obama does not understand any of that. He's in the "common sense camp," you see. I always chuckle when I read things like that because of the immense amount of arrogance inherent in such statements. Obama's views are so obviously right (or "Wright", get it? Ha!!!) that anybody who disagrees with him is obviously not using common sense. I give my opinions and do my best to provide factual support for them. At the end of the day, you either agree or disagree. But if I say something as ludicrous as "I'm in the common sense camp," somebody please slap me. (I will, however, not waiver in my belief that anybody who thinks that what Israel does is equivalent to the Holocaust is clinically bonkers.)

Of course, Obama's statements seem to betray a lack of common sense, or at the very least, a lack of information.

"For a settlement to be reached, Obama said, Palestinians must make great strides in recognizing Israel's security needs and abandon the goal of an unfettered right of return for Palestinians that would undermine Israel's existence as a Jewish state."

As I have pointed out, Abbas EXPLICITLY stated that the Arabs would NEVER recognize Israel as a Jewish state. So what, exactly, is the point of negotiating with them and making concessions to them? In that same Note, I also touched on why the Arabs were unlikely to give up the so-called "Right of Return."

What Obama is implicitly recognizing when he says the above-quoted statement is that at present, the Arabs want to destroy Israel, or at least want to destroy Israel as it currently exists with Jews in the majority and in control of the government. Yet, he clearly makes no attempt to understand WHY that's the case and treats that desire as nothing more than a bargaining chip that can be traded away in a negotiation (like Israel dismantling outposts on hills).

It's immensely comical that somebody who prides himself on being so willing to "listen[] to both sides" has so little understanding of where the Arabs are coming from and what motivates them.

So yeah, empty suit. But, hey, it's all about "Hope" and "Change", right?