BARACK - blessed, baruch-- OBAMA AND THE JEWS.

How Barack Obama learned to love Israel
Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 4 March 2007


(EI Illustration)

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.


From left to right, Michelle Obama, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Columbia University Professor Edward Said and Mariam Said at a May 1998 Arab community event in Chicago at which Edward Said gave the keynote speech. (Image from archives of Ali Abunimah)

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 lethal barrages of rockets against Israeli towns and cities 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.


Michelle Obama and Barack Obama listen to Professor Edward Said give the keynote address at an Arab community event in Chicago, May 1998. (Photo: Ali Abunimah)

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


Related Links:
The senator, his pastor and the Israel lobby , Ali Abunimah (31 March 2008)
Obama and the Jews, The Jewish Journal (9 March 2007)
Obama Pivots Away from Dovish Past, The Jewish Week (9 March 2007)



Latest articles on EI:
Palestine : Diaries: Live from Palestine: Why would Israel bomb a university? (29 December 2008)
Palestine : Development: Gaza without electricity, water (29 December 2008)
Palestine : Diaries: Live from Palestine: "They are wrong to think we are the terrorists" (29 December 2008)
Palestine : Opinion/Editorial: The dogs of war (29 December 2008)
Palestine : Diaries: Live from Palestine: The longest night of my life (28 December 2008)
Palestine : Activism News: Gaza carnage sparks protests throughout Palestine (28 December 2008)
Palestine : Human Rights: Most Gaza casualties were non-combatants, civilians (28 December 2008)
Palestine : Activism News: Palestinian leaders in Israel declare strike, call for boycott (28 December 2008)
Palestine : Diaries: Live from Palestine: Gaza: "This is only the beginning" (28 December 2008)
Palestine : Diaries: Live from Palestine: "Shabbat Shalom" in Gaza (27 December 2008)







Obama and the Jews
Harold Brackman, The Jewish Journal, 9 March 2007



One of the many paradoxes of contemporary American politics involves the Democratic Party's two most loyal constituency groups: African Americans and Jews. They have managed to stay under the same political tent even as their historic relationship has continued the long descent from the heights reached when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched side-by-side in Selma, Ala.

In the decade or so since Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March, the best -- or worst -- that can be said about the relationship is that it has pretty much moved from mutual alienation to mutual indifference as black newspapers rarely mention Jews except to take potshots at Israel, and Jewish papers can be relied on only to ritually invoke King on his birthday.

Bill Clinton, the ultimate political empath, became a favorite of both groups without really bridging the growing rift between them. A crowning irony of the next presidential sweepstakes is that the contender who may have the best chance of restoring Black-Jewish enthusiasm for the same candidate has the middle name "Hussein," after his paternal grandfather.

Everybody by now knows the outlines of Barack Obama's odyssey as the Hawaiian-born son of a white Kansas mother and a Kenyan father who was educated early on in Indonesia (the home of his Muslim stepfather) as well as Honolulu, worked as a community organizer in Chicago (his real political education), graduated from Columbia University, became president of the Harvard Law Review and spent six years in the Illinois State Senate before his nationally acclaimed speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention and election that same year to the U.S. Senate.

As Obama hires an operative to prepare the groundwork for a major Mideast policy speech, perhaps before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, his less-known Jewish connections are beginning to surface in the media: Gerald Kellman ("Marty Kaufman" in Obama's semi-autobiographical "Dreams From my Father"), a practitioner of Saul Alinsky-style community organizing, was Obama's first mentor in Chicago. Jay Tcath, director of Chicago's Jewish Community Relations Council; Robert Schrayer, a leading Chicago Jewish philanthropist; and Judge Abner J. Mikva are among Obama's fans. David Axelrod, his media maven, lost relatives in the Holocaust.

Those looking for Obama's views on the Mideast won't find a great deal. In 2004, he disappointed Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada by giving a speech to Chicago's Council on Foreign Relations endorsing the U.S. alliance with Israel. Speaking before Jewish audiences during his Senate campaign, he reassured them that his Swahili first name, Barack ("Blessed"), is a close relation of Baruch in Hebrew.

His current bestseller, "The Audacity of Hope" -- a carefully crafted manifesto positioning him for his 2008 run -- has a page on a recent trip to the Mideast, where he talked to both Holocaust survivors and Palestinian villagers. The book emphasizes the need for enhanced homeland security while offering sensible suggestions for a comprehensive approach, including carrots as well as sticks, to wean the Arab and Muslim world from Islamic extremism.

A reading of Obama's remarkably candid and insightful "Dreams from my Father," written in 1995, suggests his ultimate appeal for Jewish voters may not be ideology but temperament and sensibility. One telling moment in the book comes in 1992 with Obama, in his early thirties around the time of his marriage, joining Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, a congregation popular with upwardly-mobile black professionals.

One can't escape the impression that getting married and joining the church were both the politic thing for him to do. Regarding religion and politics, Obama emerges as a man wise beyond his years, with a deep appreciation of human frailties (including his own) and a profound aversion to fanaticism in any form. As a community organizer in Chicago, he learned the social importance of the black church and pulpit rhetoric.

Yet it is impossible not to be struck by temperamental affinities between Obama and earlier great Illinoisans -- not only Abe Lincoln, also a lanky, big-eared agnostic who married late -- but wryly wise Adlai Stevenson. Conversion or not, Obama remains deeply skeptical of religious dogma -- as was Old Abe (who never joined a church), despite his political mastery of biblical cadence and imagery. His careful, skeptical frame makes for a chilly relationship between Obama and demagogues like Al Sharpton and others who view Obama as inauthentically "black."

Another critical point in Obama's moral self-education, dramatized in "Dreams," comes during an interlude in New York when he was dating a white, apparently Jewish girl. He took her to a play, shot through with anti-white humor, at which the mostly black audience laughed and clapped, almost like in church.

"After the play was over, my friend started talking about why black people were so angry all the time. I said it was a matter of remembering -- nobody asks why Jews remember the Holocaust, I think I said, and she said that it was different, and I said it wasn't, and she said the anger was just a dead end."

The night ended with the girl crying that "she couldn't be black.... She would if she could, but she couldn't. She could only be herself, and wasn't that enough."


Relating the story a few years later to a friend, Obama said "whenever I think back to what my friend said to me, that night outside the theater, it somehow makes me ashamed."


Like other Americans, Jews who support Obama will be making a bet that -- despite his limited national political experience (another similarity with Lincoln, who served only one term in Congress before his election to the presidency) -- he has what it takes to move America beyond multicultural cliches to engaging real 21st century challenges, including our inescapable post-Iraq War responsibilities in the Mideast.

Like Stevenson, he will have to "talk sense to the American people," especially the left wing of his own party.

Like Lincoln, he will have to harness "the better angels of our nature" to reconcile Americans with each other, and challenge them to intelligently engage the rest of the world.

Harold Brackman, a historian who has written extensively on the history of Black-Jewish relations, lives in San Diego.