‘the bodacity of hope’ is Philip Weiss’ cynical play on the title of Obama’s book, the Audacity of Hope, because there is apparently much less boldness left in Obama after one year’s experience facing off with Israel in the Middle East. We know he just gave the Republicans a licking in Maryland, but at a Tampa, FL town hall meeting one day after the SOTU address, “everyone is talking about Obama’s meltdown..,” as Philip Weiss put it somewhat disgustingly, but it was done by a college student when she asked Obama about Palestinian human rights.
Last night in your State of the Union address, you spoke of America’s support for human rights. Then, why have we not condemned Israel and Egypt’s human rights violations against the occupied Palestinian people and yet we continue to support financially with billions of dollars coming from our tax dollars?
Philip Weiss described Obama’s response:
There is the president’s inane temporizing as he tried to collect his thoughts-turning to another youth and asking if he had gotten those beads in New Orleans-and then a phrase that George W. Bush could have come up with, “The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries…” Till finally Obama had mentally assembled a few hollow phrases that did not answer Laila Abdelaziz’s question. Adam Horowitz says that it is the first real gotcha moment he has seen with Obama, and it came at the hands of a young Arab-American.
This follows the State of the Union speech in which Obama never talked about Israel/Palestine, thereby walking away from the Cairo promise of last June. As well as the solidification of his neoliberal braintrust around essentially the same policy that the neoconservative braintrust of his predecessor had: we support the Israeli occupation.
I try to be optimistic, and the answer to the Establishment’s political collapse is stirring all around us. In the nonviolent movement inside the West Bank, in Judge Goldstone’s championing of Palestinian dignity, in the BDS movement on college campuses (which I keep saying that even “liberal Zionists” will have to sign on to in some way), in the Nation’s description of the West Bank as “apartheid,” in the rise of firm realist opposition to Obama’s policy, and also in this 54-member Congressional letter to Obama demanding an end to “the de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip.” Collective punishment! 54 members of Congress finally spoke of collective punishment of Palestinians (bold added).
Yes these are all just stirrings. But the political diversity of this gathering, of those who regard the Israeli occupation as brutal and central, is remarkable. In the words of William James that Pete Seeger has painted on his barn, that’s how movements work: “I am… with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of mans pride, if you give them time.”
Here is Huffington Post’s report of the incident, which also apparently ticked off Arianna whose coverage was provided through the confrontational title, Obama Asked Why US Doesn’t Condemn Israeli Human Rights Abuses.
Obama’s response was recorded by CNN (below). It is not pretty, containing much of the same ol’ worn out cliches probably used in the past by Clinton and Bush. The worst one was that he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or something like that.
UPDATE:
Here’s a further note on Obama’s timidity in the face of the towering Netanyahu, who apparently is now running the foreign policy show for America, at least in the Middle East. We know that he stuck it to Obama on the settlements issue (refusal to stop building), but now he is twisting the knife.
From Phil Weiss:
I’m sorry, you can say anything you please but Walt & Mearsheimer nailed it. This is about the Israel lobby
Posted: 30 Jan 2010
LinkRobert Fisk, in the Independent:
When Obamas elderly envoy George Mitchell headed home in humiliation this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated his departure by
planting trees in two of the three largest Israeli colonies around Jerusalem. With these trees at Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumim, he said, he was sending “a clear message that we are here. We will stay here. We are planning and we are building.” These two huge settlements, along with that of Ariel to the north of Jerusalem, were an “indisputable part of Israel forever.”It was Netanyahu’s victory celebration over the upstart American President who had dared to challenge Israel’s power not only in the Middle East but in America itself.
Related posts: Mearsheimer: Walt and I welcome a debate on the lobby with the director of the American Jewish Comittee. Andrew Sullivan gets religion on the Israel lobby (3 years after Walt and Mearsheimer published). Walt and Mearsheimer Are Honored In England. Disgraced Here.