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A President Who is Helpless in the Face of Middle East Reality
Obama's UN speech insists Israelis and Palestinians are equal parties to
conflict
Published on Friday, September 23, 2011 by The
Independent/UK
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-a-president-who-is-helpless-in-the-face-of-middle-east-reality-2359433.html
Today should be Mahmoud Abbas's finest hour. Even The New York Times has
discovered that "a grey man of grey suits and sensible shoes, may be slowly
emerging from his shadow". Barack Obama made the 'preposterous' suggestion
that Palestinians and Israelis were 'equal' parties to the conflict.
(Reuters)
But this is nonsense. The colourless leader of the Palestinian Authority,
who wrote a 600-page book on his people's conflict with Israel without once
mentioning the word "occupation", should have no trouble this evening in
besting Barack Hussein Obama's pathetic, humiliating UN speech on Wednesday
in which he handed US policy in the Middle East over to Israel's gimmick
government.
For the American President who called for an end to the Israeli occupation
of Arab lands, an end to the theft of Arab land in the West Bank - Israeli
"settlements" is what he used to call it - and a Palestinian state by 2011,
Obama's performance was pathetic.
As usual, Hanan Ashrawi, the only eloquent Palestinian voice in New York
this week, got it right. "I couldn't believe what I heard," she told
Haaretz, that finest of Israeli newspapers. "It sounded as though the
Palestinians were the ones occupying Israel. There wasn't one word of
empathy for the Palestinians. He spoke only of the Israelis' troubles..."
Too true. And as usual, the sanest Israeli journalists, in their outspoken
condemnation of Obama, proved that the princes of American journalists were
cowards. "The limp, unimaginative speech that US President Barack Obama
delivered at the United Nations... reflects how helpless the American
President is in the face of Middle East realities," Yael Sternhell wrote.
And as the days go by, and we discover whether the Palestinians respond to
Obama's grovelling performance with a third intifada or with a shrug of
weary recognition that this is how things always were, the facts will
continue to prove that the US administration remains a tool of Israel when
it comes to Israel's refusal to give the Palestinians a state.
How come, let's ask, that the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, flew
from Tel Aviv to New York for the statehood debate on Israeli Prime Minister
Netanyahu's own aircraft? How come Netanyahu was too busy chatting to the
Colombian President to listen to Obama's speech? He only glanced through the
Palestinian bit of the text when he was live-time, face to face with the
American President. This wasn't "chutzpah". This was insult, pure and
simple.
And Obama deserved it. After praising the Arab Spring/Summer/ Autumn,
whatever - yet again running through the individual acts of courage of Arab
Tunisians and Egyptians as if he had been behind the Arab Awakening all
along, the man dared to give the Palestinians 10 minutes of his time,
slapping them in the face for daring to demand statehood from the UN. Obama
even - and this was the funniest part of his preposterous address to the
UN - suggested that the Palestinians and Israelis were two equal "parties" to
the conflict.
A Martian listening to this speech would think, as Ms Ashrawi suggested,
that the Palestinians were occupying Israel rather than the other way round.
No mention of Israeli occupation, no mention of refugees, or the right of
return or of the theft of Arab Palestinian land by the Israeli government
against all international law. But plenty of laments for the besieged people
of Israel, rockets fired at their houses, suicide bombs - Palestinian sins,
of course, but no reference to the carnage of Gaza, the massive death toll
of Palestinians - and even the historical persecution of the Jewish people
and the Holocaust.
That persecution is a fact of history. So is the evil of the Holocaust. But
THE PALESTINIANS DID NOT COMMIT THESE ACTS. It was the Europeans - whose
help in denying Palestinian statehood Obama is now seeking - who committed
this crime of crimes. So we were then back to the "equal parties", as if the
Israeli occupiers and the occupied Palestinians were on a level playing
ground.
Madeleine Albright used to adopt this awful lie. "It's up to the parties
themselves," she would say, washing her hands, Pilate-like, of the whole
business the moment Israel threatened to call out its supporters in America.
Heaven knows if Mahmoud Abbas can produce a 1940 speech at the UN today. But
at least we all know who the appeaser is.
Obama's UN speech insists Israelis and Palestinians are equal parties to
conflict
Published on Friday, September 23, 2011 by The
Independent/UK
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-a-president-who-is-helpless-in-the-face-of-middle-east-reality-2359433.html
Today should be Mahmoud Abbas's finest hour. Even The New York Times has
discovered that "a grey man of grey suits and sensible shoes, may be slowly
emerging from his shadow". Barack Obama made the 'preposterous' suggestion
that Palestinians and Israelis were 'equal' parties to the conflict.
(Reuters)
But this is nonsense. The colourless leader of the Palestinian Authority,
who wrote a 600-page book on his people's conflict with Israel without once
mentioning the word "occupation", should have no trouble this evening in
besting Barack Hussein Obama's pathetic, humiliating UN speech on Wednesday
in which he handed US policy in the Middle East over to Israel's gimmick
government.
For the American President who called for an end to the Israeli occupation
of Arab lands, an end to the theft of Arab land in the West Bank - Israeli
"settlements" is what he used to call it - and a Palestinian state by 2011,
Obama's performance was pathetic.
As usual, Hanan Ashrawi, the only eloquent Palestinian voice in New York
this week, got it right. "I couldn't believe what I heard," she told
Haaretz, that finest of Israeli newspapers. "It sounded as though the
Palestinians were the ones occupying Israel. There wasn't one word of
empathy for the Palestinians. He spoke only of the Israelis' troubles..."
Too true. And as usual, the sanest Israeli journalists, in their outspoken
condemnation of Obama, proved that the princes of American journalists were
cowards. "The limp, unimaginative speech that US President Barack Obama
delivered at the United Nations... reflects how helpless the American
President is in the face of Middle East realities," Yael Sternhell wrote.
And as the days go by, and we discover whether the Palestinians respond to
Obama's grovelling performance with a third intifada or with a shrug of
weary recognition that this is how things always were, the facts will
continue to prove that the US administration remains a tool of Israel when
it comes to Israel's refusal to give the Palestinians a state.
How come, let's ask, that the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, flew
from Tel Aviv to New York for the statehood debate on Israeli Prime Minister
Netanyahu's own aircraft? How come Netanyahu was too busy chatting to the
Colombian President to listen to Obama's speech? He only glanced through the
Palestinian bit of the text when he was live-time, face to face with the
American President. This wasn't "chutzpah". This was insult, pure and
simple.
And Obama deserved it. After praising the Arab Spring/Summer/ Autumn,
whatever - yet again running through the individual acts of courage of Arab
Tunisians and Egyptians as if he had been behind the Arab Awakening all
along, the man dared to give the Palestinians 10 minutes of his time,
slapping them in the face for daring to demand statehood from the UN. Obama
even - and this was the funniest part of his preposterous address to the
UN - suggested that the Palestinians and Israelis were two equal "parties" to
the conflict.
A Martian listening to this speech would think, as Ms Ashrawi suggested,
that the Palestinians were occupying Israel rather than the other way round.
No mention of Israeli occupation, no mention of refugees, or the right of
return or of the theft of Arab Palestinian land by the Israeli government
against all international law. But plenty of laments for the besieged people
of Israel, rockets fired at their houses, suicide bombs - Palestinian sins,
of course, but no reference to the carnage of Gaza, the massive death toll
of Palestinians - and even the historical persecution of the Jewish people
and the Holocaust.
That persecution is a fact of history. So is the evil of the Holocaust. But
THE PALESTINIANS DID NOT COMMIT THESE ACTS. It was the Europeans - whose
help in denying Palestinian statehood Obama is now seeking - who committed
this crime of crimes. So we were then back to the "equal parties", as if the
Israeli occupiers and the occupied Palestinians were on a level playing
ground.
Madeleine Albright used to adopt this awful lie. "It's up to the parties
themselves," she would say, washing her hands, Pilate-like, of the whole
business the moment Israel threatened to call out its supporters in America.
Heaven knows if Mahmoud Abbas can produce a 1940 speech at the UN today. But
at least we all know who the appeaser is.