Obama’s failure, and achievement, in Palestine

When President Obama came into office eight years ago, friends in Washington said the private message on Palestine was clear. He wanted to do everything that liberal Zionists and the soon-to-be-announced J Street lobby wanted him to do: force Israel to end the settlements and retreat to the Green Line and thus allow the creation of a Palestinian state. Obama was said to have quoted FDR. “You’ve convinced me. Now go out there and make me do it.” I.e., build a movement that will compel me to do this, politically.

That approach was a miserable failure. Two-staters (and I was a wishy-washy one) failed to build such a movement inside the American establishment or more importantly, the Jewish community; J Street was marginalized; there are 100,000+ more settlers today than there were when Obama vowed in Cairo, “It is time for these settlements to stop;” Obama caved to political pressure and did nothing substantive till his last weeks in office, with the heroic abstention at the UN Security Council allowing the condemnation of settlements. For eight years the rightwing Israel lobby and its donors worked inside the Democratic Party to keep Obama from even thinking about putting pressure on Israel. An administration that began right after one massacre (Cast Lead) and quietly witnessed another (Protective Edge, 2014), still gave Israel more American aid than ever, $38 billion over ten years–more than half of all our foreign aid to a country whose GDP per capita is about to top France’s.

And I’m not even talking about the broader Middle East, which has become a “zone of disaster” in which our allies carry out massacres.

Still, I think I will look back on the Obama administration with fondness. Brain scientists say we store memories with two data points, peak and end; and the peak and end were good: The Iran deal, the Security Council abstention. Obama also kept us out of Syria despite huge pressure from the Clintonites. And at the last minute, when he had some autonomy, he freed Chelsea Manning. That UN resolution is likely to have massive negative consequences for Israel’s standing in the world. So Obama gave a big boost to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), and earned all of Netanyahu’s contempt for him.

That’s one achievement of the last eight years on the Israel-Palestine front: the successful internationalization of resistance to occupation and to Zionism. Things are worse in Palestine, but what had been a marginal global movement eight years ago is today a broad one, and about to convulse the Democratic Party and liberal institutions. Obama’s original national base– the Liberal Zionists, his “cabal” of rich Chicago Jewish liberals– is the big loser. The middle ground is vanishing. Increasingly, you are in the Greater Israel camp or in the boycott camp.

The two-state solution is over; and a struggle for equal rights in Israel and Palestine has begun in earnest, and is breaking into the mainstream. (Even Obama said the two-state “moment may be passing,” at his last press conference yesterday.)

People will say this is a leftwing achievement, and not Obama’s; but I give the president some credit. He never really liked Netanyahu. And though he did not resist him outright till the end, he objected on numerous occasions to the Likud agenda. No slideshow of the Obama presidency is complete without a picture of one of the awkward/angry Obama-Netanyahu meetings. Early on, it was said that Obama had read The Israel Lobby by Walt and Mearsheimer. His fights with his own party, in which liberal coastal Democrats savaged the president over his alleged opposition to Israel, and his speech in favor of the Iran Deal saying it would be an “abrogation” of his constitutional duty if he sided with Israel, have highlighted the truth of the Israel lobby theory. By the time they build an Obama library, the smear of the president as an anti-Semite will be a badge of honor.

Why didn’t Obama do more to call out Israel and its supporters and build a new base? I blame the power of the lobby; and yes, too, the deep state that seems to love the militarization of the Middle East. But there was also something characterological at work, Obama’s disinclination to engage with mortals and get down in the political mud. He was great at giving lofty speeches but afraid to put his chips down. A friend of mine who went to law school with Obama said you could see his conciliatory temperament then. At late night bull-sessions, Obama would draw everyone else out on their opinions, but at the end of the night you never really knew where the future president stood.

In years to come, there are sure to be memoirs– and revisions– in which we discover that Obama knew there was apartheid in Palestine and didn’t really believe in a Jewish state. So let the mythologizing begin. Some of it is deserved.

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Phil,

if I my add my opinion to this, which is not unsimilar to yours, but gets it from a diffrent point of view:

In his first term Obama was an abysmal failure, culminating in the needless murder of the African hero Muamar Gaddafi and so many more poor people, but in his second term Obama nevertheless proved to be a true son of Africa. Obama came back and fought and will surely be remembered as the one who dismantled the American Empire to the benefit of all oppressed people, whether they be in Africa, in Palestine and other parts of Asia or elsewhere. And I’m quite convinced, throwing the succeeding Presidency to Trump, and thereby securing to make the dissolution of the American Empire to be permanent, will once in a time be regarded as his masterstroke in the books of history.

That was phenomenal Phil.

Obama did not keep us out of Syria. He allowed Clinton to push her war hawk agenda both in Libya and Syria (not all the way in Syria but enough to fuel the human disaster) Arming unknown rebels and providing intelligence to unknown rebels is not staying out. He fucked up royally on Libya and Syria. Leveretts wrote a great deal about the power sharing deal that Assad was allegedly interested in over 6 years ago.

Under Obama Clinton was able to run the Christopher Stevens arms running machine from Libya through Turkey into Syria. Seymour Hersh and many others have written about these disastrous interventions.

Gaddafi’s son was trying to make a peace deal weeks before the disastrous military intervention in Libya. HRC refused to communicate. She is very much part of the neocon death cult . Obama is either a closet supporter or just went along. Not sure. In my book he belongs right behind Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld…etc Clinton for crimes against humanity at the Hague.

The Iran deal, Kerry and Obama’s effort on the I/P issue. the abstain vote all good. Iran deal great. Sure appears that Israel has truly become their own worst enemy. Two state solution dead. Apartheid state becoming so apparent

The Obama peaks for me were in the Pepsi Center during the Dem convention in Denver. Walked all around talking with people at the top of stadium and down in the pit before stage (had volunteered so much for Obama had tickets to all venues). People were out of their minds with the idea of hope and change (had worked with Republicans who were out pounding pavement for Obama) At one point during his speech people were stomping on the floor of many levels of stadium, on the benches. People were out of their minds with euphoria. I thought the whole place was going to levitate over the foothills of the Rockies.

I really think Obama failed harnessing this energy after he was in White House. So independent, Anyway he tried like hell.

My other Obama peak moment was on the National mall just behind the reflecting pond during the inauguration. Had been talking with a young African American male Steve who was standing next to me as well all huddled in the human bee hive in the freezing cold waiting for Obama. He and I had been talking about his two tours in Iraq (one of his jobs had been assisting with putting dead soldiers bodies in body bags to put on returning planes to states) Our conversation was long and heart felt. I asked him why he had joined the army? He said he had believed everything Bush, Cheney and war team had said about WMD’s in Iraq and trying to link Al Qeada with Iraq. I asked him what he had learned? Steve responded “I learned not to trust our leaders when they are trying to send you into a war zone. To do my own digging and research when it comes to what our leaders are claiming. We cried some more. Then we leaned our two heads together as Obama approached the podium, Steve said “I will never forget this moment” I gulped and let him know that “I would never forget that moment, That I honored his nature to serve but was royally pissed off that his sense of duty had been so manipulated” Leaning our heads together we cried as Obama came up to the podium to deliver his moving speech.

Then after the event the Bush exit helicopter circled the mall as people shot the bird up towards the copter and sang “na na na na na na hey hey hey good bye”

8 years later..Trump takes the podium. Yikes

“…I think I will look back on the Obama administration with fondness.”

I doubt the people who were on the receiving end of Obama’s bloody foreign policy will feel so warm and fuzzy about this war criminal. Frankly, Phil, you should be ashamed of yourself for making such a statement. What has happened to your moral compass?

Here are two links to summations of Obama’s rampage of death and destruction around the globe. There are plenty more out there.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/09/america-dropped-26171-bombs-2016-obama-legacy

http://original.antiwar.com/Nicolas_Davies/2017/01/18/obamas-bombing-legacy/

John Pilger recently had this to day about Obama:

“according to a Council on Foreign Relations survey, in 2016 alone Obama dropped 26,171 bombs. That is 72 bombs every day. He bombed the poorest people on earth, in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan.

“Every Tuesday ­ reported The New York Times ­ he personally selected those who would be murdered by mostly hellfire missiles fired from drones. Weddings, funerals, shepherds were attacked, along with those attempting to collect the body parts festooning the “terrorist target.”

“Under Obama, the U.S. has extended secret “special forces” operations to 138 countries, or 70 per cent of the world’s population. The first African-American president launched what amounted to a full-scale invasion of Africa. Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the late Nineteenth Century, the U.S. African Command (Africom) has built a network of supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American bribes and armaments. ”

72 bombs every day. That’s an average of 3 every hour. Barack Obama should be on trial in the Hague, and certainly should not be remembered “fondly” in any context.

“but at the end of the night you never really knew where the future president stood.”
Yes, that should be on his gravestone. Thought experiment: Would he have caved into the Zionists like Truman did, to give him a real chance against Dewey? Yes. Would he have signed the letter recognizing Israel? Yes. Would he have crossed out the adjective “Jewish” when he recognized the state of Israel? No. Is he Penny Pritzker’s boy? Yes.

Did he know about apartheid Israel? Yes. Does he want a comfy life style in retirement? Yes. He says he will still fight as an ordinary citizen (with instant recognition, backed by 99% of blacks) for Palestinian rights, and against Israel Lobby abuse of the USA’s blood and treasure? Yes, in a diluted manner parallel to his abstention at the UN SC vote on settlements.

Does he know what a gigantic creep Netanyahu is? Yes.