Behind Obama’s Beautiful Rhetoric
By Matthew Rothschild, June 4, 2009
Barack Obama was at his finest in Cairo, and that’s mighty fine.
He summoned all his talents not just as a speechwriter but also as a speechthinker to bravely put on the table just about all the mess that needs to be dealt with.
In his refreshing manner of treating everybody like intelligent adults, he basically told the world to discard foolish and dangerous ideas.
To the 9/11 conspiracists here in the U.S. and in the Muslim world, he said, “Let us be clear: Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day. . . . These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with.”
Similarly, he said, denying the Holocaust “is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.”
On the vexing issue of Israel and Palestine, Obama equally discussed the grievances on both sides. He acknowledged “the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” he rejected additional Israeli settlements, and he called on Palestinians to “abandon violence.”
He pointed out that “privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away. Likewise, many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time,” he said, “for us to act on what everyone knows to be true.”
In a crazy world, this was a plea for rationality and for “mutual respect.”
Obama used the “respect” word several times, intentionally signaling that the United States does not look down upon the Muslim world. And he quoted the Koran several times to show his appreciation.
As he did in his famous speech on racism in Philadelphia during the campaign, Obama insisted that “the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”
Unlike any president before him, Obama is comfortable owning up to the errors of our Western ways.
He noted that “colonialism” denied many Muslims their rights and opportunities.
He noted that in the Cold War, “Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations.”
He also acknowledged that during the Cold War, “the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.”
And, in an obvious indictment of Bush and Cheney, he said 9/11 “led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals.”
This is the Obama I admire.
But then he couldn’t help glossing over the realities of current U.S. policy.
“Given our interdependence, any world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will inevitably fail,” he said. Well, the existing world order has the U.S. at the top of the heap, so either he was willfully ignoring that fact or he was making a dire prediction.
On the issue of nuclear weapons, he reiterated his laudable desire for the world to get rid of them. But he added: “No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons.” Yet that’s exactly what the United States has been doing vis-à-vis Iran and North Korea.
On democracy, he said, “No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation on another.” But that’s what the United States has done, and is doing, in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Acting bashful, he added, “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election.”
But that’s precisely what the United States, under Bush and Obama, has been doing in regards to Hamas’s victory at the ballot box in Gaza.
With his rhetoric, Obama painted a better picture of America than exists in the here and now.
He’ll have to do a whole lot more, in his actions, to bring the United States close to that picture.
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Did you know that there was never any country called "Palestine"? Did you know that there is no such thing as a "Palestinian" people?
The ideas that the West Bank and Gaza are occupied "Palestinian" land, and that the "Palestinian" people are fighting for their land, have been accepted by most of the governments of the world and by most of the media in the world. But if you read on, you will see that these two claims are the biggest lies ever deliberately perpetrated on humanity.
Check out any map of the Middle East and see for yourself. You will find Palestine listed as a region as it always has been, but definitely not a country. We can locate the Mojave Desert on the map, but we still do not recognize it as our 51st state, let alone a country. Similarly, the region of Siberia is a region not a state. Or the Sahara is a region not a state, etc. Neither is Palestine a state. It never was a country, just a region.
Importantly, the Jews did not displace anyone, because no one permanently resided there. It was a land inhabited by nomadic, Bedouin tribes. The whole region was nothing but deserts and swamps. Only about 120,000 Arabs resided in an area that covered the territories, the state of Israel and Jordan. When Mark Twain visited the area, he wrote he found nothing but a wasteland.
During the 19 years that the territories, including Jerusalem and Gaza, were occupied by the kingdoms of Jordan and Egypt, no one talked about a Palestinian state, not the Arab countries, not the United Nations. Nobody asked Jordan or Egypt to abdicate their ownership and give it to the Palestinians. Not even the "Palestinians" (people living in the region) themselves ever said anything about a Palestinian state or a Palestinian people, because nobody heard of a Palestinian people. It never existed.
The fact simply is that there are no Palestinians. These people are Arabs like all other Arabs, and they happen to live in a region called Palestine. They are not a separate people.
What makes a separate people? Religion, language, culture, garb, cuisine, etc. The Arabs in Palestine speak the same language, practice the same religion, have the same culture, etc., as all the other Arabs. The few minor differences that exist between them are like the minor differences that exist between the American Northerners and Southerners, Easterners and Westerners... but they are still all Americans. People in the south of France are quite different from the people in the north, but they are still all French. These inconsequential differences do not make a people.
The Arabs living in Syria or Jordan, etc., are also the same Arabs, but they are each a separate nation because they each have a separate country. The so-called "Palestinians" want a separate country because they claim to be a separate nation.
They are not. They were never a separate people before the new state of Israel.
Let us examine the truths here:
1) There never was a Palestinian state or a Palestinian nation. There are no Palestinian people, per se. Rather, these are Arabs living in a region that historically has been called many things, including "Palestine."
2) Israel did not go to war against a Palestinian state and occupy its land. Rather, Israel was attacked by six Arab countries at once. She defended herself, defeated her attackers, and won the so-called territories, not from the "Palestinians," but from Jordan and Egypt.
3) Jerusalem was never the capital of any state but Israel. It was certainly never the capital of a country that never existed. Why should the "Palestinians" get any part of it? Because they want it? Because they have terrorists?
4) Jerusalem, under the current Israeli control, is a free and open city. Israel, as a democracy, guarantees freedom of religion within its borders. Contrast this fact with areas that have come under "Palestinian" occupation. What percentage of Christians have left in recent years because they cannot stand the harassment and persecution?
5) Most Arabs living in "Palestine" today are not indigenous to the region. It was not until after the Jews had changed deserts and swamps into a productive and thriving land that the Arabs started migrating there. Arafat himself was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt.
The belief that giving the "Palestinians" a state will bring peace is a delusion. The truth is that they want it all. The short-term goal is a state consisting of the West Bank and Gaza. The long-term goal is a state which includes all of "historical Palestine," including Jordan.
How do I know this?
The late Faisal Husseini, Arafat's Jerusalem representative, a man who was cultured, sophisticated and considered the most moderate of all the "Palestinians," shortly before his death on May 31, 2001, expressed his true feelings in an interview with the popular Egyptian newspaper el Arav. Husseini said: "We must distinguish the strategies and long-term goals from the political-phased goals which we are compelled to accept due to international pressures." But the "ultimate goal is the liberation of all of historical Palestine." Explicitly he said: "Oslo has to be viewed as a Trojan Horse."
He even added and clarified that it is the obligation of all the "Palestinian" forces and factions to see the Oslo Accords as "temporary" steps, as "gradual" goals, because in this way, "We are setting an ambush for the Israelis and cheating them." He also differentiated between "strategic," long-term, "higher" goals, and "political" short-term goals dependent on "the current international establishment, balance of power" etc.