As Barack Obama was running for President, many of us wondered how he would deal with Israel. Typically, very few Democrats ever take strong positions on Israel and Israel defending themselves unless they’re from a predominantly Jewish area (for example, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton, for the most part, are very much pro Israel). The question marks come when you’re from an area that’s very left-leaning and not as much Jewish.
In Barack Obama’s weekly address this week, we got our answer, whether he wanted to give it to us or not. His address to the nation (because, as you know, it’s important for a man who holds no office yet to tell you what he thinks) this week did not mention Israel. Not one time. Not at all. Not even in passing. In fact, since Change.gov launched, Israel has only been mentioned once, and then only in the concept of a general foreign policy outline.
I’m not saying he needs to layout his entire plan, or that he even has to come charging onto the camera and call for Hamas to be destroyed. What bothers me most, however, is that this conflict has been going on forever, and over the past month has escalated. Originally, it was Hamas and their lackeys firing rockets into Southern Israel, hundreds at a time, for a few weeks. Eventually Israel started striking back, and it escalated this weekend with Israel sending ground troops into Gaza.
Despite this escalation, Barack Obama has chosen to make the topic of this week’s address the economy.
Doesn’t that seem odd to anyone?
Now you may say that his video is pre-done. That’s fine. This conflict isn’t new and he hasn’t addressed it yet. President-elect Obama doesn’t seem to have an opinion on the issue in any way. In fact, the AP noticed it and contacted the Obama campaign to get some clarification.
As the clock ticks down to Barack Obama’s inauguration, the US president-elect has kept silent on the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its latest deadly turn in the Gaza Strip.
Obama transition officials have ventured little more than saying their boss is “monitoring” the situation in Gaza, where at least 460 people have been killed in eight days of air raids before a ground offensive began Saturday.
In the same period, Gaza militant rockets have killed four Israelis and wounded several dozen people.
“The president-elect is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza,” his national security spokeswoman Brooke Anderson said in a statement after the ground assault got underway.
But she offered no further comment on the violence in Gaza and used a phrase repeated often by Obama and his aides: “There is one president at a time and we intend to respect that.”
Oddly enough, the fact that there is only “one president at a time” has never kept the Obama “transition team” from discussing other issues such as the economy, the environment, and so on. 16 days from the inauguration, and this is the issue he’s decided to defer to the President on? I guess there wasn’t only one President back in July, when Barack Obama told the New York Times:
In a July interview with The New York Times, Obama said he did not think that “any country would find it acceptable to have missiles raining down on the heads of their citizens.
“If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” he said. “And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.”
As for talking with Hamas, Obama told the Times that it was “very hard to negotiate with a group that is not representative of a nation state, does not recognize your right to exist, has consistently used terror as a weapon, and is deeply influenced by other countries.”
It would be nice if our future President would stand by his words, but I don’t see it happening. He’ll just defer to W. until he’s in office and then make no decisions and defer to Congress. This is the guy you elected, America. President Hopeandchange.