December 29th 2008
Is Obama Back Then Obama Soon?
Since the start of the Israeli campaign against Hamas (and the propaganda blasts from Hamas that followed), the emergent administration’s only comment has come from Obama’s chief national security spokesperson Brooke Anderson, who said, “President-elect Obama is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time.”
Jake Tapper of ABC/Political Punch presents today a summary of Obama’s discussions of Hamas during the campaign: In his visit to Israel last July, Obama was asked about Hamas and replied in part:
“[I]f somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing. In terms of negotiations with Hamas, it is very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation state, does not recognize your right to exist, has consistently used terror as a weapon, and is deeply influenced by other countries.”
He went on to urge Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist, which of course would be nice. The real question is how he will respond when they don’t.
This March, Obama reiterated the theme:
“The violence in Gaza is the result of Hamas’ decision to launch rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and Israel has a right to defend itself,” then-Sen. Obama said. “I remain very concerned about the fate of civilians and urge Israel to do all it can to avoid civilian deaths and to keep its focus on Hamas, which bears responsibility for these events.”
That’s all Tapper chose to share with us and it is reassuring. A Jeffrey Goldberg interview with Obama in Atlantic went a lot deeper on the subject and included this from the PEOTUS:
“When I visited Ramallah, among a group of Palestinian students, one of the things that I said to those students was: “Look, I am sympathetic to you and the need for you guys to have a country that can function, but understand this: if you’re waiting for America to distance itself from Israel, you are delusional. Because my commitment, our commitment, to Israel’s security is non-negotiable.” I’ve said this in front of audiences where, if there were any doubts about my position, that’d be a place where you’d hear it.”
Of course that was Obama’s paraphrase of the statement, given during an interview targeted at Florida Jewish voters concerned about Obama’s position. In the interview, he also says this:
JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?
BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that, and some of the tensions that might arise between me and some of the more hawkish elements in the Jewish community in the United States might stem from the fact that I’m not going to blindly adhere to whatever the most hawkish position is just because that’s the safest ground politically.
I want to solve the problem, and so my job in being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth and say if Israel is building settlements without any regard to the effects that this has on the peace process, then we’re going to be stuck in the same status quo that we’ve been stuck in for decades now ….
I wrote yesterday in Sunday Scan that the Israel/Hamas problem is shaping up to be that test Joe Biden said would come in the early days of the Obama administration. If it is still going on then, it will be the first test not just of Obama’s position on Israel, but also on whether we can trust what he said on the campaign trail about Israel.
Posted in Obama Drama | No Comments yet » | |
Leave a Reply
[The "Comment Box" is WYSIWYG except that you have to double space between paragraphs!
Type it the way you want it to look -- Just remember to double up those line spaces.]
You must be logged in to post a comment.
