Justin Elliott has a nice piece on Obama’s navigations re the Jewish state following his terrible faux pas last year in Iowa when he said that Palestinians are suffering worse than Israelis. Rest assured, Obama’s in the tank. Marty Peretz has pronounced him kosher. In a conference call with Jewish reporters, seeking to counteract malicious rumors about pro-Arab sympathies, Obama said, "I want to make sure that we continue to strengthen the enduring ties
between our people and pledge to give real meaning to the words ‘never
again.’"
That was not the end of the Holocaust talk. JTA is said to have posted the call, I have not been able to listen to it (the link in Elliott’s story doesn’t work for me) but I am told that in the first five minutes of the call, in which Obama offered prepared remarks, he explicitly couched his support of Israel in Holocaust terms–swinging from his emotional visit to Yad Vashem, to Hezbollah‘s rocket attacks, then swinging back to the Holocaust. Says my informant, "the remarks were virtually drenched in Holocaust
rhetoric." This is not helpful.
I have fallen in love with Obama along with everyone else, but the calculating call to Jewish reporters–even as he claims to want to end all lobbies’ influence in Washington– seems to offer a window on Obama’s dark side. The rhetoric is exquisite, the symbolism is beautiful, but he doesn’t really have passion about any issue. He’s cold, Observer editor Peter Kaplan observed to me approvingly; and this coldness allows him to play on others’ sentiments.
At Harvard Law School, the Times reported last year, he was great at hearing people out and never committing. The Times described
his seemingly limitless appetite for hearing the opinions of others,
no matter how redundant or extreme. That could lead to endless debates… as well as some uncertainty about what Mr. Obama
himself thought about the issue at hand. In dozens of
interviews, his friends said they could not remember his specific views
from that era, beyond a general emphasis on diversity and social and
economic justice.
And that was when he was young! Well, everyone has a dark side. I sure hope we get to see his in action. Go Obama.
