Blah, blah, blah

Obama is a friend of Palestine? So says an article on the front page of the L.A. Times.

The Nation implies it is poor and misleading reporting on the LA Times part, and I agree. By hyping up the article and catering to Anti-Palestinian groups, the author confounds the facts and obscures the truth.

The author apparently just ripped off an article by Debbi Schlussel, an ultra-conservative blogger known for “racist hate speech.”

The evidence that Obama supports Palestine? He attended events with prominent literature professors and scholars of Arab history - Edward Said [an influential critical theorist and major contributer to the founding of postcolonial theory] and Rashid Khalidi [the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University].

From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 [TEN YEARS AGO] Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. Electronic Intifada

I think it’s great that Obama heard lectures from the late Edward Said - I wish I could have! Said as “a Palestinian and a leading American intellectual” wrote one of the most important critiques of Western constructions of the East - Orientalism.

So 5 years ago Obama attended an event celebrating Rashid Khalidi - a Columbia University professor and director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute. At the event, a kid read a poem calling it as he sees it: Israel’s violence against Palestinians is a form of terrorism. And then someone else likened the Zionist settlers to Bin Laden since they were “blinded by ideology” - a fairly accurate assessment and I don’t doubt that an Israeli or two would agree.

Most importantly, I fail to see how the statements of someone else [others, if you will] reflect the opinions of Obama. I wish he shared their perspectives, but his current policy positions tell us otherwise.

Obama says he wouldn’t even talk with Hamas - and he’s the candidate who is attacked for being too “diplomatic.” And he wants Israel to have all of Jerusalem [nominally already controlled by Israel, which illegally seized E. Jerusalem during the Six-Day War] - even though East Jerusalem is majority Arab.

And of course, the article ends with a quotation from the Anti-defamation league - a former civil rights organization turned pro-Israel lobby that conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism: “In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that’s what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern.” [Is "a Said" a typo or does the ADL hate all "Saids"?]

But what does this all mean for Obama who went from “nobody’s suffering more than the Palestinian people” to Palestinians are suffering “from the failure of the Palestinian leadership [in Gaza] to recognize Israel” and to renounce violence? Not much, not much at all.