It’s the same old same old. Lefti on the News has direct quotes from Obama interspersed with humorous, biting commentary.
“There are those who would lay all of the problems of the Middle East at the doorstep of Israel and its supporters, as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of all trouble in the region.”
Yeah, what a wacky idea.
There can not be peace in the Middle East until Palestinians have a place to call home. Seems simple enough to me. Until then they will be used as pawns by multiple governments (including Arab) for multiple ends and fanatics on all sides will continue to slaughter each other. Really, folks, what’s going on there now clearly isn’t working. If you want peace, all the players have to be at the table. Period.
Let me give my perspective on this. I am a Palestinian, born in the Galilee in “Israel,” forced with my family to leave the farm we had owned for five centuries (since we came to Palestine as refugees from the loss of Al-Andaus to Castilian Spain), and declared absentees who had no right to live there (this happened in 1965, when I was eight).
I totally support Obama for president, even though I also believe he means what he says and will be as blindly pro-Zionist as he sounds. That is because it is an iron law of American politics that to be elected, your position on Palestine has to be awful. There is no one that can be taken seriously in American politics who is not awful on Palestine. Even the post-presidential, well-meaning Jimmy Carter, who does not need to worry about elections anymore, is only tolerable.
I want an American president who does well on all the other topics he or she must deal with– and I pray only that he or she will shut up and get out of the way and let the rest of the world work out Palestine, since it is political suicide for an American politician to do the right thing. We don’t need “honest broker” America. That is not possible. Ideally, the American government would develop amnesia about the Middle East and just do nothing at all there– for or against anyone. Just shut up and get out of the way.