How Barack Obama Learned to Love Israel
by Ali Abunimah
This article originally appeared in The
Electronic Intifada.
"Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel."
I first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack
Obama almost ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state
senate, he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as
progressive, intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking "if
only a man of this calibre could become president one day."
On Friday, March 2, Obama gave a speech
to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Chicago. It had been
much anticipated in American Jewish political circles which buzzed about his
intensive efforts to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign donors who up to now have
generally leaned towards his main rival Senator Hillary Clinton.
Reviewing the speech, Ha'aretz Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner concluded
that Obama "sounded as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly
as Giuliani. At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have
wanted him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period."
Israel is "our strongest ally in the region and its only established
democracy," Obama said, assuring his audience that "we must preserve
our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully
funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related
missile defense programs." Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems, he
asserted, would help Israel "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran
and as close as Gaza." As if the starved, besieged and traumatized
population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless
settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for
millions of Palestinians.
"Obama said nothing about the exponentially more lethal threat
Israelis present to Palestinians."
There was no comfort for the hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza who live
in the dark, or the patients who cannot get dialysis, because of what Israeli
human rights group B'Tselem termed "one cold, calculated decision, made by
Israel's prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief of staff" last
summer to bomb the only power plant in Gaza," a decision that "had
nothing to do with the attempts to achieve [the] release [of a captured
soldier] nor any other military need." It was a gratuitous war crime, one
of many condemned by human rights organizations, against an occupied civilian
population who under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel is obligated to
protect.
While constantly emphasizing his concern about the threat Israelis face from
Palestinians, Obama said nothing about the exponentially more lethal threat
Israelis present to Palestinians. In 2006, according to B'Tselem, Israeli
occupation forces killed 660 Palestinians of whom 141 were children - triple
the death toll for 2005. In the same period, 23 Israelis were killed by
Palestinians, half the number of 2005 (by contrast, 500 Israelis die each year
in road accidents).
But Obama was not entirely insensitive to ordinary lives. He recalled a January
2006 visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona that resembled an ordinary
American suburb where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at
"joyful play just like my own daughters." He saw a home the Israelis
told him was damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the
incident).
Six months later, Obama said, "Hizbullah launched four thousand rocket
attacks just like the one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona, and
kidnapped Israeli service members."
Obama's phrasing suggests that Hizbullah launched thousands of rockets in an
unprovoked attack, but it's a complete distortion. Throughout his speech he
showed a worrying propensity to present discredited propaganda as fact. As
anyone who checks the chronology of last summer's Lebanon war will easily
discover, Hizbullah only launched lethal barrages of rockets against Israeli
towns and cities after Israel had heavily bombed civilian neighborhoods in
Lebanon killing hundreds of civilians, many fleeing the Israeli onslaught.
Obama excoriated Hizbullah for using "innocent people as shields."
Indeed, after dozens of civilians were massacred in an Israeli air attack on
Qana on July 30, Israel "initially claimed that the military targeted the
house because Hezbollah fighters had fired rockets from the area,"
according to an August 2 statement from Human Rights Watch.
The statement added: "Human Rights Watch researchers who visited Qana on
July 31, the day after the attack, did not find any destroyed military
equipment in or near the home. Similarly, none of the dozens of international
journalists, rescue workers and international observers who visited Qana on
July 30 and 31 reported seeing any evidence of Hezbollah military presence in
or around the home. Rescue workers recovered no bodies of apparent Hezbollah
fighters from inside or near the building." The Israelis subsequently
changed their story, and neither in Qana, nor anywhere else did Israel ever
present, or international investigators ever find evidence to support the claim
Hizbullah had a policy of using civilians as human shields.
In total, forty-three Israeli civilians were killed by Hizbullah rockets during
the thirty-four day war. For every Israeli civilian who died, over twenty-five
Lebanese civilians were killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing - over one
thousand in total, a third of them children. Even the Bush administration
recently criticized Israel's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians.
But Obama defended Israel's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its
"legitimate right to defend itself."
Obama called Iran ‘one of the greatest threats to the United
States, to Israel, and world peace.'"
There was absolutely nothing in Obama's speech that deviated from the hardline
consensus underpinning US policy in the region. Echoing the sort of
exaggeration and alarmism that got the United States into the Iraq war, he
called Iran "one of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel,
and world peace." While advocating "tough" diplomacy with Iran
he confirmed that "we should take no option, including military action,
off the table." He opposed a Palestinian unity government between Hamas
and Fatah and insisted "we must maintain the isolation of Hamas"
until it meets the Quartet's one-sided conditions. He said Hizbullah, which
represents millions of Lebanon's disenfranchised and excluded, "threatened
the fledgling movement for democracy" and blamed it for "engulf[ing]
that entire nation in violence and conflict."
Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen
times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago
including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote
speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak
at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that
occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his
call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in
Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to
secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now
occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.
As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He
responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more
about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when
things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism,
including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical
of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"
But Obama's gradual shift into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he
planned his move from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In
2003, Forward reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel
constituency." He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code
allowing the state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among
his early backers was Penny Pritzker - now his national campaign finance chair
- scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns the Hyatt hotel
chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was built on land forcibly
expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in
1967). He has also appointed several prominent pro-Israel advisors.
"Obama's about-face is not
surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to get elected."
If disappointing, given his historically close relations to
Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face is not surprising. He is merely doing
what he thinks is necessary to get elected and he will continue doing it as
long as it keeps him in power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position
as civil libertarians who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the
USA Patriot Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted
in favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile fence
on the border with Mexico.
Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and
organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any
hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is
at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the
growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable
for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.