The most important thing about the Al Arabiya interview is of course that it happened first, giving huge credibility to an Arab network and a fine journalist, Hisham Melhem. The news is that Obama virtually endorsed the Saudi peace initiative and recognized the centrality of I/P conflict to peace in the Middle East:
Hisham Melhem: Absolutely.
THE PRESIDENT: — to put forward something that is as significant as that.
I think that there are ideas across the region of how we might pursue peace.
And the other news is that he is celebrating his Muslim roots.
stake in the well-being of the Muslim world that the language we use
has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I
have lived in Muslim countries.
Q: The largest one.
THE PRESIDENT: The largest one, Indonesia.
The Melhem interview is a perfect counterweight to the important interview that Obama gave Jeffrey Goldberg last May, when he needed conservative Jews. Then he said that just about all his Chicago were Jewish, that he was Jewish himself in thought, that he was formed by Philip Roth and Holocaust consciousness, and a Jewish camp counselor, and, the big enchilada, Leon Uris:
scholars and writers, even though I didn’t know it at the time. Whether
it was theologians or Philip Roth who helped shape my sensibility, or
some of the more popular writers like Leon Uris…. [T]here are some
suspicions of me in the Jewish community. Look, we don’t do nuance well
in politics and especially don’t do it well on Middle East policy. We
look at things as black and white, and not gray. It’s conceivable that
there are those in the Arab world who say to themselves, “This is a guy
who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein,
and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so
he’s not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as
George Bush,” and that’s something they’re hopeful about. I think
that’s a perfectly legitimate perception as long as they’re not
confused about my unyielding support for Israel’s security.
What was merely "conceivable" then in the minds of others is now something Obama himself is expressing with real feeling. Then he was distancing himself from his Muslim roots. Now he's running toward them. This man is a great politician. Having swallowed the middle-of-the-road Goldberg in the primaries and the general election, he is moving on to his next constituency. (Phil Weiss)
