How
Barack Obama Learned
To Love Israel
By Ali Abunimah
08 March, 2007
Electronic
Intifada
I
first met Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama almost
ten years ago when, as my representative in the Illinois state senate,
he came to speak at the University of Chicago. He impressed me as progressive,
intelligent and charismatic. I distinctly remember thinking 'if only
a man of this calibre could become president one day.'
On Friday Obama gave a speech
to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Chicago.
It had been much anticipated in American Jewish political circles which
buzzed about his intensive efforts to woo wealthy pro-Israel campaign
donors who up to now have generally leaned towards his main rival Senator
Hillary Clinton.
Reviewing the speech, Ha'aretz
Washington correspondent Shmuel Rosner concluded that Obama "sounded
as strong as Clinton, as supportive as Bush, as friendly as Giuliani.
At least rhetorically, Obama passed any test anyone might have wanted
him to pass. So, he is pro-Israel. Period."
Israel is "our strongest
ally in the region and its only established democracy," Obama said,
assuring his audience that "we must preserve our total commitment
to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military
assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense
programs." Such advanced multi-billion dollar systems he asserted,
would help Israel "deter missile attacks from as far as Tehran
and as close as Gaza." As if the starved, besieged and traumatized
population of Gaza are about to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Obama offered not a single
word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction,
of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians.
There was no comfort for
the hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza who live in the dark, or
the patients who cannot get dialysis, because of what Israeli human
rights group B'Tselem termed "one cold, calculated decision, made
by Israel's prime minister, defense minister, and IDF chief of staff"
last summer to bomb the only power plant in Gaza," a decision that
"had nothing to do with the attempts to achieve [the] release [of
a captured soldier] nor any other military need." It was a gratuitous
war crime, one of many condemned by human rights organizations, against
an occupied civilian population who under the Fourth Geneva Convention
Israel is obligated to protect.
While constantly emphasizing
his concern about the threat Israelis face from Palestinians, Obama
said nothing about the exponentially more lethal threat Israelis present
to Palestinians. In 2006, according to B'Tselem, Israeli occupation
forces killed 660 Palestinians of whom 141 were children -- triple the
death toll for 2005. In the same period, 23 Israelis were killed by
Palestinians, half the number of 2005 (by contrast, 500 Israelis die
each year in road accidents).
But Obama was not entirely
insensitive to ordinary lives. He recalled a January 2006 visit to the
Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona that resembled an ordinary American suburb
where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at "joyful
play just like my own daughters." He saw a home the Israelis told
him was damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).
Six months later, Obama said,
"Hizbullah launched four thousand rocket attacks just like the
one that destroyed the home in Kiryat Shmona, and kidnapped Israeli
service members."
Obama's phrasing suggests
that Hizbullah launched thousands of rockets in an unprovoked attack,
but it's a complete distortion. Throughout his speech he showed a worrying
propensity to present discredited propaganda as fact. As anyone who
checks the chronology of last summer's Lebanon war will easily discover,
Hizbullah only launched rockets against Israeli towns after Israel had
heavily bombed civilian neighborhoods in Lebanon killing hundreds of
civilians, many fleeing the Israeli onslaught.
Obama excoriated Hizbullah
for using "innocent people as shields." Indeed, after dozens
of civilians were massacred in an Israeli air attack on Qana on July
30, Israel "initially claimed that the military targeted the house
because Hezbollah fighters had fired rockets from the area," according
to an August 2 statement from Human Rights Watch.
The statement added: "Human
Rights Watch researchers who visited Qana on July 31, the day after
the attack, did not find any destroyed military equipment in or near
the home. Similarly, none of the dozens of international journalists,
rescue workers and international observers who visited Qana on July
30 and 31 reported seeing any evidence of Hezbollah military presence
in or around the home. Rescue workers recovered no bodies of apparent
Hezbollah fighters from inside or near the building." The Israelis
subsequently changed their story, and neither in Qana, nor anywhere
else did Israel ever present, or international investigators ever find
evidence to support the claim Hizbullah had a policy of using civilians
as human shields.
In total, forty-three Israeli
civilians were killed by Hizbullah rockets during the thirty-four day
war. For every Israeli civilian who died, over twenty-five Lebanese
civilians were killed by indiscriminate Israeli bombing -- over one
thousand in total, a third of them children. Even the Bush administration
recently criticized Israel's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese civilians.
But Obama defended Israel's assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its
"legitimate right to defend itself."
There was absolutely nothing
in Obama's speech that deviated from the hardline consensus underpinning
US policy in the region. Echoing the sort of exaggeration and alarmism
that got the United States into the Iraq war, he called Iran "one
of the greatest threats to the United States, to Israel, and world peace."
While advocating "tough" diplomacy with Iran he confirmed
that "we should take no option, including military action, off
the table." He opposed a Palestinian unity government between Hamas
and Fatah and insisted "we must maintain the isolation of Hamas"
until it meets the Quartet's one-sided conditions. He said Hizbullah,
which represents millions of Lebanon's disenfranchised and excluded,
"threatened the fledgling movement for democracy" and blamed
it for "engulf[ing] that entire nation in violence and conflict."
Over the years since I first
saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian
and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community
fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when
Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign
fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion
and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his
call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
The last time I spoke to
Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park
neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the
Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies.
But at that time polls showed him trailing.
As he came in from the cold
and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly,
and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine
right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things
calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism,
including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical
of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"
But Obama's gradual shift
into the AIPAC camp had begun as early as 2002 as he planned his move
from small time Illinois politics to the national scene. In 2003,Forward
reported on how he had "been courting the pro-Israel constituency."
He co-sponsored an amendment to the Illinois Pension Code allowing the
state of Illinois to lend money to the Israeli government. Among his
early backers was Penny Pritzker -- now his national campaign finance
chair -- scion of the liberal but staunchly Zionist family that owns
the Hyatt hotel chain. (The Hyatt Regency hotel on Mount Scopus was
built on land forcibly expropriated from Palestinian owners after Israel
occupied East Jerusalem in 1967). He has also appointed several prominent
pro-Israel advisors.
Obama has also been close
to some prominent Arab Americans, and has received their best advice.
His decisive trajectory reinforces a lesson that politically weak constituencies
have learned many times: access to people with power alone does not
translate into influence over policy. Money and votes, but especially
money, channelled through sophisticated and coordinated networks that
can "bundle" small donations into million dollar chunks are
what buy influence on policy. Currently, advocates of Palestinian rights
are very far from having such networks at their disposal. Unless they
go out and do the hard work to build them, or to support meaningful
campaign finance reform, whispering in the ears of politicians will
have little impact. (For what it's worth, I did my part. I recently
met with Obama's legislative aide, and wrote to Obama urging a more
balanced policy towards Palestine.)
If disappointing, given his
historically close relations to Palestinian-Americans, Obama's about-face
is not surprising. He is merely doing what he thinks is necessary to
get elected and he will continue doing it as long as it keeps him in
power. Palestinian-Americans are in the same position as civil libertarians
who watched with dismay as Obama voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot
Act, or immigrant rights advocates who were horrified as he voted in
favor of a Republican bill to authorize the construction of a 700-mile
fence on the border with Mexico.
Only if enough people know
what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them
to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering
the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best
a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the
growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold
Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.
Ali Abunimah
is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country:
A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse