06:58 pm
Obama’s Speech I: Israel-Palestine
I didn’t have the opportunity to do so while at work today, so I’m just now getting around to listening to (and digesting) Obama’s speech in Cairo today, and reading some of the analysis. My favorite so far comes from an unlikely source — The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg:
An African-American President with Muslim roots stands before the Muslim world and defends the right of Jews to a nation of their own in their ancestral homeland, and then denounces in vociferous terms the evil of Holocaust denial, and right-wing Israelis go forth and complain that the President is unsympathetic to the housing needs of settlers. Incredible, just incredible.
Unsurprisingly, it’s not just right-wing Israelis who can’t see the forest for the trees. Via Time Magazine’s Joe Klein (h/t):
About an hour after Barack Obama’s excellent Cairo speech, I met with Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, at his office here to talk about the speech and the Israel-Palestine conflict. . . .
“Undoubtedly Obama speaks a new language,” he told me. “His speech was cleverly designed… The essence of the speech was to improve the U.S. image and to placate the Muslims. We don’t mind either objective, but we are looking for more than just mere words. If the United States wishes to open a new page, we definitely would welcome this. We are keen to contribute to this. But we [believe that can not happen] merely with words. It must be with deeds, by changing the policy on the ground.” . . .
“Palestinian actions are reactions. What Palestinians do is to resist the occupation,” he said. “It is self-defense. Why did the Americans support the Mujaheddin against the Soviets in Afghanistan? Why did the British support the French agains the Nazis? Why did you have a revolution against the British? Self-defense.”
I made the obvious point about the difference between self-defense and targeting civilians. “But civilians die in wars,” one of Meshal’s aides pitched in. “You call it collateral damage.”
And so it goes.
More on the speech to come.
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