Hamas message for Obama

The following is an excerpt from an article published by the Guardian newspaper in the UK, in which a Hamas leader, Mousa Abu Marzook, explains why the Israeli war against Palestinians in Gaza was unsuccessful. The article concludes by sending the following message to Barak Obama:

“And to President Obama we say: the wave of hope that met your election was heavily dampened by your silence on the Gaza massacre. This was compounded by your pre-election statement siding with the Israeli settlers of Sderot. You would do well to know the history of the places of which you speak. Sderot, which may be known to some as an Israeli town, lies on the ruins of Najd, a Palestinian village ransacked in May 1948 by Zionist terrorist gangs. Villagers were forced from their beds and homes with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, rendering them refugees for the next 61 years. That is the story of Sderot. It is never a good start to get your tyrant and victims mixed up, but there is still room for a revival of passionate optimism. Only if you decide to fairly address the issue of the 6 million Palestinian refugees and the ending of occupation of Palestinian lands, including Jerusalem, will you be able to start a new relationship with the Muslim world.”

Hamas will know, of course, that Obama’s Chief—of—Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is the son of a member of the Irgud, one of the Zionist gangs which Hamas refers to. Anyone who suggests that this does not mean that Emanuel himself is a Zionist is of course right; they may, however, wish to have a look at the Wikipedia entry on Emanuel.

They may also wish to consider the fact that Obama’s first public intervention after he won the Democrat Party’s nomination was at the AIPAC meeting on Wednesday, June 4th. AIPAC stands for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, and the organisation’s own website describes AIPAC as ‘America’s Pro-Israel Lobby’. It was during that AIPAC meeting that Barak Obama made a statement that the lobby’s members apparently found ‘pleasantly surprising’: ‘Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.’(1) The reason for their ‘pleasant surprise’ was the extremism of Obama’s position; not even the far right-wing Israeli government was making that kind of claim at the time. Obama was saying, in effect, that he agreed with those Israelis who claim that Jerusalem, including Arab East Jerusalem, belongs to Israel; by implication, all Arabs should be excluded from what many regard as the (future) capital of an independent Palestine.

Last but not least, Hamas will also have known that when the Israeli invasion of Gaza began, Barak Obama claimed that he would not make public his views on the attack because “When it comes to foreign affairs it is particularly important to adhere to the principle of one president at a time“. Obama’s silence on the Gaza massacre of children and other civilians was a sign of respect, or so it was claimed, for the fact that Bush was still the man in charge. International public opinion will, however, have noticed that throughout the Israeli invasion, Obama continued to make public his views on a variety of other matters. The claim that he was respecting the need for a single president in the realm of foreign policy was itself flatly contradicted when Obama met the Mexican president several days before he took office.

All of these signals constitute clear evidence that Obama was standing, to use his own words, on the wrong side of history where Israel is concerned, and this even before he took office. Hamas is nonetheless inviting Obama to reconsider his stance; will Obama be strong enough—and will he have the ethics, and the wisdom—to do so?

(1) ‘Obama’s Comments on Israel Stir Criticism in U.S.’ in New York Times, June 7, 2008. Accessed June 7, 2008.

~ by crocwatch on 22 January 2009.