Introduction
This line-by-line critique poses tough questions about the meaning and intent of the speech which President Obama delivered in Cairo on June 4, 2009. This important address was conceived and written by the President himself. The topic is also covered more succinctly in two November 2009 essays posted to this website. See "Cairo and After: Does Obama Seek a Weak Israel?" and "Obama: Walking on Israel in Chamberlain's Shoes?" There is also a posting entitled "Aboriginal Rights of the Jewish People" which explains more deeply some of the key historical and legal references that feature repeatedly in the following analysis:http://www.allenzhertz.com/2017/02/aboriginal-rights-of-jewish-people-2017.html
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Cairo, Egypt)
_________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 4, 2009
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
ON A NEW BEGINNING
Cairo University
Cairo, Egypt
1:10 P.M. (Local)
PRESIDENT OBAMA:
...
Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I'm a Christian, ...
[Comment: President Obama here chooses to broach the sensitive matter of his personal religious affiliation. This makes sense because consistent public-opinion polling reveals that most Americans want a political leader to have strong religious belief, and are interested in learning something about their leader's religious faith. Thus, commentators are also fully entitled to discuss these delicate religious questions that President Obama himself sometimes raises.
Not too far into his Cairo speech, President Obama included the phrase,“as-saalamu ‘aleikum,” a phrase Muslims use to greet other Muslims. Though probably Muslim in childhood, Barack Obama started publicly practicing Christianity shortly before his October 1992 marriage to Michelle Robinson. For about 15 years he attended services at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, where the Reverend Jeremiah Wright frequently used the pulpit for anti-Israel and anti-USA rants. During the 2008 Democratic nomination campaign, candidate Obama made the improbable claim that he had been unaware of the bitterly anti-USA pronouncements of his long-time pastor. But, this self-serving denial directly contradicts what had previously been written about Wright in Obama's 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father.]
but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk.
[Comment: Psychologists tell us that childhood experience is significant. And, the Jesuits believed: "Give me the child until the age of seven and I will give you the man.” Because President Obama is a pivotal public figure who himself raises the matter of his Muslim roots, we are fully entitled to ask about his childhood to help us better understand the foundations of his current worldview and perhaps predict his policy directions, including with respect to Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Theologically, Islam regards all children to be born Muslim and to remain such until adults teach them otherwise. Child Obama was probably Muslim also because: (1) his paternal grandfather in Kenya was Muslim; (2) his Kenyan father (though ideologically Marxist) was born Muslim, always used his two Muslim personal names ("Barack" and "Hussein"); and when he died, his family wanted him buried with Muslim rites; (3) he was given the Muslim personal names, "Barack" and "Hussein"; (4) his Indonesian stepfather was also Muslim; (5) his Indonesian classmates and playmates recall that he attended religious services both at school and in mosques, when they believed him to be Muslim; (6) he was registered specifically as Muslim at two elementary schools in Indonesia; (7) he then studied the Koran; (8) an old Indonesian teacher recalls that child Obama was also doing hifz, memorization and Arabic recitation of the Koran, a part of which adult Obama can still fluently recite by memory, as demonstrated during a 2007 interview with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof; and (9) reflecting on her childhood with her older brother, Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro in 2007 told the New York Times: "My whole family was Muslim."]
As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.
[Comment: The Cairo speech has five references to "dignity," but not once in specific connection with Jews, Judaism, the Jewish People or Israel. In the Cairo speech, the specific references to "dignity" are significantly reserved for Muslims and Palestinians.
This passage recalls information in Barack Obama's 1995 autobiography Dreams from My Father which, inter alia, details his continuing ties to Muslims, e.g., close friends and roommates. Dreams From My Father and other statements by Barack Obama (e.g., about his 1981 trip to Pakistan) raise the possibility that he retained something of a Muslim self-identification beyond his first decade. This hypothesis is supported by testimony from an erstwhile lover. On the basis of her diary, Genevieve Cook recalls that, as a recent graduate (1983) from Columbia University, Barack Obama socialized mostly with Muslims from Pakistan.
Obama's longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is a famous USA theologian with a doctorate in divinity. When he first met Obama in 1987, Wright was deeply impressed by how much Obama then knew about the religion of Islam, by contrast with Obama's slender knowledge about Jesus. Asked if he had then converted Obama from Islam to Christianity, Wright replied:
That's hard to tell. I think that I convinced him it was okay for him to make a choice in terms of who he believes Jesus is. And I told him that it was really okay and not a put down of the Muslim part of his family or his Muslim friends.As a new law student at Harvard University in 1988, Obama was told by the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Senior: "If you want to succeed in politics in this country, you had better get yourself a Christian religion." What did Jackson then know about Obama's religious background? And why twenty years later (October 2008), did Jackson publicly predict that an Obama victory in the presidential election would certainly mean a reversal in USA policy toward Israel?
Thus, the high probability that Barack Obama was Muslim as a child in Indonesia does not necessarily mean that his close connection with Islam and Muslims abruptly ended in 1971, when he moved to Hawaii. For example, across the 1970s and 1980s, he was back in Muslim Indonesia for long visits approximately five times. He also stayed in Muslim Pakistan for three weeks in 1981. Significantly, Obama himself pointed to the possibility that he retained something of a Muslim self-identification at the April 28, 2013 White House Correspondents' Dinner. There, speaking truth in jest, the President said: "I’m not the strapping young Muslim socialist that I used to be."
Certainly, President Obama's 2009 journey to Cairo to reach out to the Muslim world cannot be compared with President Richard Nixon's 1972 trip to Beijing to begin direct dialogue with the communist leaders of China. As a long-time "Cold Warrior" with sterling anti-communist credentials, Nixon was hard to challenge on his motives for talking with Chairman Mao. By contrast, ought there not to be some degree of skepticism about the motives of a President with publicly avowed Muslim roots, reaching out to the Muslim world? The potential political problem here falls under the familiar headings of bias and conflict of loyalties.]
...
The second major source of tension that we need to discuss is the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.
[Comment: The Islamic Republic of Iran is discussed later in the speech. Thus, President Obama here significantly implies that the crisis sparked by the Islamic Republic of Iran’s race to develop nuclear weapons is less “a source of tension” than the long-standing dispute caused by the stubborn refusal of most Muslims and Arabs to accept the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland.
President Obama's highly peculiar decision to prioritize "the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world" is a key foreign-policy error. In the eyes of both Arabs and Jews, USA credibility and prestige depend on President Obama's first dealing promptly with the race to nuclear weapons of the Islamic Republic of Iran. A USA President who appears to falter or to appease the Islamic Republic of Iran would have little moral and political authority to broker peace between Arabs and Jews. By contrast, great would be the moral and political authority of a USA President who demonstrates strong commitment to an enduring Mideast "pax Americana," by first bringing an end to the nuclear-weapons programs of the Islamic Republic of Iran.]
... the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world.
[Comment: Nothing in President Obama's speech provides a clue to the spectacular fact that right now Jews are no longer the demographic minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. President Obama refers at least five times to “the Palestinian people,” but only once to “the Jewish people.” And there, the reference to “the Jewish people” is not to a “People” as bearer of rights, but as historic victim. By contrast, President Bill Clinton's peace parameters (December 23, 2000) specifically referred to "the state of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people."
It is probably no accident that President Obama prefers to talk about “Israelis” and words that perhaps suggest the existence of an Israeli People. But, 20% of Israelis are Muslim Arabs. Are not these Israel Arabs also part of President Obama's “Arab world”?
Does he here carefully choose words to distance Jews in the USA from those in Israel? Does he seek to conform to the Muslim and Arab narrative that stubbornly insists that Jews are practitioners of a religion, but not a “People” entitled to invoke the political and legal doctrines of aboriginal rights and the self-determination of Peoples? Since self-identification is the required rule, President Obama should listen carefully to what Jews themselves say about this issue. To the extent that Jews in Israel and around the world say that they are one People and that Israel embodies their self-determination, what grounds could President Obama have to dissent from their view?
And, are not non-Arab parts of the Muslim world also key players here? For example, the non-Arab, Islamic Republic of Iran repeatedly threatens to destroy Israel and regularly funds, trains, arms and participates in terrorist organizations that strike not only in Israel but also against Jews in other countries. Thus, this long-standing struggle is nothing less than a Muslim war against the Jews.
In this context, most Muslims and Arabs stubbornly refuse to accept the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland. Moreover, the Cairo speech dovetails with the Muslim and Arab narrative by spectacularly omitting two essential points. Firstly, the Jewish People is indigenous to the Mideast. Secondly, some then self-identified "Jews" have always lived in their aboriginal homeland; namely, in each and every year since the Jewish People's ethnogenesis around twenty-six centuries ago.]
America's strong bonds with Israel are well known.
[Comment: Nowhere in the Cairo speech does President Obama explicitly say that he personally approves of the strong USA bonds with Israel; nor does he commit to their future maintenance. He simply states neutrally there are now “strong bonds” and high awareness thereof. Al Qaeda, Hamas, Ahmedinejad, and the Walt-Mearsheimer critics of USA foreign policy all concur. In fact, they "accuse" the USA of having bonds with Israel that are "too" strong.]
This bond is unbreakable.
[Comment: Given consistent USA public opinion and Israel’s firm bipartisan support in the Senate and the House of Representatives, President Obama knows that the USA bond with Israel is now practically “unbreakable.” However, here he significantly fails to promise that the bond will remain unbroken in the future. To the contrary, he later significantly threatens, “America will align our policies with those who pursue peace.” The implication here is that an Obama-approved pursuit of peace must be in line with the peculiar pro-Muslim and pro-Arab tilt of this speech.]
It is based upon cultural and historical ties....
[Comment: "Cultural and historical ties" are the President's code language for the stubborn reality that about three-quarters of Americans self-identify as Christian. In addition to the Gospels, USA Christians generally revere the Jewish Bible, known to them as the Old Testament. Thus, from childhood, the majority of Americans have been authoritatively instructed that there is some sort of a compelling connection between the Jewish People and "the Land of Israel."
Here, President Obama's acknowledgement is just another neutral statement of fact, but certainly no promise for the future. By contrast, the Cairo speech later offers a stunning, specific commitment of continuing support for the Palestinian People.
It is telling that President Obama’s Cairo speech nowhere points to a political rationale or moral foundation for maintaining "America’s strong bonds with Israel." This is one of the main respects in which the Cairo speech tilts against Israel. Could President Obama here be signalling a significant change in USA Mideast policy via the speech's moral condemnation of Israel?]
and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.
[Comment: In the Cairo speech, President Obama consistently chooses words very carefully in a sly effort to subtly denigrate and demote the Jewish People, including by persistently minimizing Jewish rights and downplaying Jewish political achievement.
With the phrase, "tragic history that cannot be denied," the President pays lip service to the well-known psychological needs of American Jews whose psyche he intimately understands and consistently exploits for his own political advantage, both domestically and internationally. Holocaust obsessed and slavishly subservient to the Democratic Party, American Jews have real difficulty grasping that it significantly shortchanges the Jewish People to flagrantly ignore essential Jewish rights today, while simultaneously offering empty rhetoric about historical suffering.
In this regard, the President clearly discriminates against the Jewish People, because the Cairo speech otherwise (e.g., with regard to the Palestinian People) consistently conforms with the left-liberal precept that suffering gives rise to compelling current rights. And truth be told, modern human-rights methodologies do normally insist that an historically-disadvantaged People is entitled to: (1) a sincere apology; (2) significant reparation; and (3) special vigilance lest it once again fall victim to the same or other oppressors. And, make no mistake -- with an eye to growing antisemitism worldwide and to the publicly-declared genocidal intent of the Islamic Republic of Iran, there is no sense in which this tripartite human-rights formula now applies to any other People more than to the Jewish People.
Insulting (perhaps even intentionally threatening) is the peculiarly abstract and indefinite way in which President Obama talks about “the aspiration for a Jewish homeland.” Where is this homeland? And will it ever be reached? Strangely, the President sounds as if he might be speaking perhaps at the dawn of the 20th century, when for a brief time there was talk about Uganda, as potential venue for Jewish settlement. But, the stark truth is that today the Jewish People does not have an “aspiration" for a homeland. Rather, the Jewish People already has Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its larger "aboriginal" homeland.
For more than 61 years, Israel has been the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People. And before the 1948 birth of Israel, there was -- from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River -- the "national home for the Jewish People," as created by the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. This international instrument is akin to a multilateral treaty that still has some legal effects today. President Obama ought to be reminded that the USA solemnly "consented" to all the specific terms of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, as incorporated verbatim in the body of the 1924 Anglo-American Treaty. Duly ratified by the USA Senate, the Anglo-American Treaty constitutionally ranks as "supreme law" of the USA.
From ethnogenesis around 600 BCE, the specifically named "Jewish" People has always stubbornly kept some demographic and cultural links with the Holy Land, known to Jews as "Eretz Israel." Of all extant Peoples, the Jewish People has the strongest claim to be aboriginal to the Holy Land. In all those 26 centuries, then self-identified "Jews" did not dream of a homeland in Uganda or Birobidzhan. Their dream was persistently of Eretz Israel, their native land, where (in greater or lesser numbers) some then self-identified "Jews" have always lived, in each and every year across more than two millennia.
The Cairo Speech says nothing to indicate that Jews are no longer a minority in the Holy Land. In this regard, the President's omission is not accidental, because he wants to sidestep demographic realities that permit the Jewish People to now more fully benefit from the doctrine of the self-determination of Peoples, which normally assigns territory according to the ethnic character of the current local population. Moreover, President Obama chooses to forget that the Jewish People also has longstanding aboriginal and treaty rights in its ancestral homeland.
President Obama's reference to "tragic history" (e.g., the Holocaust) plays well with American Jews, but conceptually is not required to juridically establish the Jewish People's right to sovereignty and territory. True, the 1948 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel refers to the Holocaust as lending "urgency" to the then plight of the Jewish People:
The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people — the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe — was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations.
Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.But, the Declaration does not use the Holocaust as the juridical foundation for the Jewish People's right to self-determination in its aboriginal homeland. Rather, the Declaration claims the Jewish People's right to self-determination in the land of its birth as a "natural and historic right" that existed centuries before both the Holocaust and the 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution that explicitly recommended creating "the Jewish State" (sic).
President Obama should be reminded that, for more than two millennia, the Jewish People has been persistently claiming aboriginal rights in the Holy Land, in the same way that the aboriginal Peoples of North America claim rights in their tribal lands. He should also know that today, the modern political and legal doctrine of the self-determination of Peoples applies to the Jewish People in the exact same way as to the Japanese, Italian or Turkish Peoples.
The great Arab People’s right to self-determination is already expressed via twenty-one sovereign States that explicitly self-identify as Arab. After 1967 CE, a specific Muslim Arab population for the first time chose to generally self-identify as "the Palestinian People." This newborn Palestinian People now has claims to self-determination, independence and territory. But these Palestinian rights are neither fully formed nor self-executing. Urgently required is a peaceful process that fully respects the honor and dignity of both Peoples. In this context, there is a moral and legal imperative to "peacefully" reconcile subsequent Palestinian rights with prior rights of the age-old Jewish People -- including Jewish self-determination rights and longstanding aboriginal and treaty rights.
In morality and law, the Jewish People is already fully entitled to live safely in its own aboriginal homeland, and particularly in that part of its homeland that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. For this reason, the newborn Palestinian People lacks a right to wage a war of national liberation against the Jewish People whose presence there has been internationally recognized to be aboriginal, not colonial in character.]
Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and...
[Comment: President Obama moves quickly to discuss Europe, without saying anything about 1400 years of persistent Muslim and Arab discrimination against Jews. Is the President validating the Muslim and Arab narrative by ignoring Jewish history in the Mideast? The Mideast has always had large numbers of Jews, e.g., around one million in 1900 CE. Moreover, in each year from antiquity to the present, there have always been some then self-identified "Jews" living in the aboriginal homeland of the Jewish People. Part of their long history there is as the sorry victims of Muslims who offered local Jews not only periodic bouts of bitter persecution, but also consistent discrimination, beginning with the Arab conquest in the fourth decade of the 7th century CE.]
anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed --more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.
[Comment: "Buchenwald" was a sop for USA Jews! President Obama very significantly balances the Cairo speech with a trip to a German concentration camp. However, internationally more relevant would have been a formal State visit to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The Buchenwald trip was a clever public-relations stunt to ensure that USA Jews would miss or forgive the shabby treatment of Israel in the Cairo speech.
The Holocaust reference was calculated to confuse. The Nazi killing of six million Jews was not necessary to juridically establish the Jewish People’s moral and legal rights in its aboriginal homeland. Israel as "the" Jewish State is primarily based on the political and legal doctrines of aboriginal rights and the self-determination of Peoples.
Before the Holocaust of the 1940's, the Jewish People's historic connection to its ancestral homeland was already explicitly recognized from 1917 to 1922, in a series of declarations, resolutions and treaties that were subsequently blessed by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty with the Turkish Republic, as successor to the Ottoman Empire. For example, the post-WW1 settlement included the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine which specifically created "a national home for the Jewish People," explicitly stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Because the USA was not a member of the League of Nations, unequivocal USA "consent" to the specific terms of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine was embodied in the 1924 Anglo-American Treaty, which was ratified by the USA Senate. The 1924 Anglo-American Treaty verbatim incorporates the full text of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine.
In terms of an objective comparison that refers to the normal "sources and evidences of public international law," few sovereign States have been born with a stronger legal pedigree than that of the new State of Israel.]
Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.
[Comment: The reference to Holocaust denial is close to worthless internationally but domestically powerful in terms of President Obama's relationship with American Jews who gave him overwhelming support in the 2008 presidential contest. Looking forward to the 2012 presidential election, President Obama is eager to pay lip service to the psychological requirements of American Jews but offers nothing new that is positive to the State of Israel. As elsewhere in the speech, President Obama here intentionally plays to the well-known sentiments, anxieties, and fears of USA Jews in order to camouflage the text's significant anti-Israel directions. Throughout the speech, the President seeks subtle ways to divide American Jews from Jews in Israel.
Though Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad is a Holocaust denier, some Muslims and Arabs accept the historicity of the Holocaust for the particular purpose of arguing that the Arabs of the Holy Land should not have to pay the price for the genocidal crimes of Europeans. Precisely in this connection, let us examine the record of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini.
Before the rise of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Haj Emin Al-Husseini was the most prominent political figure in the Arab Mideast. He was also the principal leader of local Arabs from the 1920's until the mid-1940's. After the British exiled him from Mandate Palestine, the Grand Mufti went to Baghdad where he played a major role in instigating the deadly 1941 "farhud" pogrom that decimated the Jews of Iraq. Moreover, the Grand Mufti was an early fan of Adolf Hitler with whom he met in late 1941. The Mufti was an enthusiastic supporter of the Holocaust and played a direct role in ensuring the Nazi killing of Bosnia's Jews. He fervently hoped that Hitler's "final solution" would soon extend to killing all the Jews of the Mideast. Truth be told, Germany and the Nazis were then generally favored by Muslims and Arabs who, from 1939 to 1945, did little to aid the Allied war effort. By contrast, the Jews of Eretz Israel then made very substantial contributions toward Allied victory in WW2.
The Cairo speech notably ignored the Jewish People’s longstanding aboriginal and treaty rights in its ancestral homeland and instead seemed to accept the peculiar Muslim and Arab narrative that the Jewish claim to Israel rests juridically on the Holocaust.]
Threatening Israel with destruction --or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews-- is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.
[Comment: Saying “threatening Israel with destruction is deeply wrong” was, inter alia, calculated to resonate powerfully with USA Jews who, lacking the practical experience of Israel Jews, are unreasonably grateful for Israel’s mere survival. By contrast, most Israel Jews have the good sense to understand that, with regard to the same or similar circumstances, Israel needs to enjoy rights identical to those of other countries, and to be regularly judged according to the same standards commonly applied to other countries.
President Obama’s repeated existential focus is too starkly minimalist to accommodate Israel within the world of States, where Israel -- like other countries -- has a legitimate daily need to advance specific economic, political and legal interests. Given the touted USA bonds with Israel, President Obama ought to refer to Israel in terms going well beyond a mere right to exist. On this point, let's hear from former Israel Foreign Minister Abba Eban who in 1981 emphasized:
Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its ‘right to exist.’ Israel’s right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel’s legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement... There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its ‘right to exist’ a favor, or a negotiable concession.As a close friend, the USA ought to advance any number of concrete Israel interests. However, President Obama’s repeated minimalist focus on a bare right to exist is perhaps a signal that that he intends to sell Israel short. This interpretation would be consistent with an earlier remark attributed to USA National Security Adviser General James Jones who quipped that the Obama administration was not going to “throw Israel under a bus.”]
...and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.
[Comment: Is President Obama here suggesting that regional peace has not been achieved partly because "Israelis" are paranoid due to Jewish experience of the Holocaust of the 1940's? If so, this is a familiar left-liberal trope that willfully ignores the real threat now posed by various Muslim and Arab regimes that would (if they could) destroy Israel and kill great numbers of Jews both there and abroad.
For example, the genocidal intent of the regime of the ayatollahs has been repeatedly expressed by a variety of key Iranian players using a range of language. However, in some left-liberal circles, there is a pretense that the allegation of Iranian threats of genocide rests merely on faulty translation from Farsi of just one statement by President Ahmedinejad! Truth be told, the genocidal intent of the ayatollahs is as clear today as was that of Nazi Germany in the 1930's.
It is also possible that President Obama's language was carefully chosen to dovetail with the spin of the many Muslims, Arabs and leftists who regularly accuse Jews of "exploiting" the Holocaust for political and financial advantage. This essentially Anti-Semitic charge is in every sense as reprehensible as it would be to say that Black Americans seek political and financial advantage by "exploiting" the memory of slavery.
In the normal context of modern human-rights methodologies, we do not second guess the victims and their suffering. It is deeply offensive to question the authenticity of a People's voice, its historic trauma and any continuing persecution or discrimination. A tragic history of victimhood normally gives rise -- not to insulting suggestions of paranoia -- but rather to special efforts to protect the victims from repetition of the same or similar crimes, as well as an obligation to apologize and make significant reparation.
Though there are still some indigent Jews -- and there were many more in the 19th and 20th centuries -- today the most salient aspect of Jewish "disadvantage" arises not from economics but from the persistent Anti-Semitic passion to kill Jews en masse. Thus, there were large-scale Russian and Romanian pogroms in the 19th and 20th centuries and the Holocaust in the 1940's.
The main feature of 21st-century Jewish disadvantage remains the sad fact of so much current Muslim and Arab intent to destroy Israel and kill Jews. President Obama should be reminded that Jews living in Israel are not paranoid, but rather have every reason to fear that some of their Muslim and Arab neighbors really are planning to kill them.]
On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people --Muslims and Christians-- have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.
[Comment: "Muslims and Christians"? Europeans and North Americans are regularly fed the evident falsehood that the Palestinian cause is "secular.” Is President Obama validating the Palestinian narrative in this respect? He refers to the Christians, but fails to inform us that their numbers have dramatically dwindled. On the West Bank and in Gaza, the rapid eclipse of the Arabic-speaking Christians is principally due to sharper persecution by the Muslim Arabs who are increasingly drawn to political action based on their Islamic identity.
For centuries, Jews living in their own aboriginal homeland (Eretz Israel = the Holy Land) were generally hated by both Muslim and Christian neighbors. However, this does not mean that there was often much solidarity between Muslims and Christians there. Today Christians are fleeing the Mideast because of heavier Muslim oppression.
As in the speech's later references to Jerusalem, President Obama chooses to ignore the sad circumstance that Israel is the only Mideast country where Christians are able to freely practice their faith.]
On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people... have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.
[Comment: “On the other hand”? Is President Obama here implying that the Palestinian People’s suffering in quantity and quality matches Jewish suffering in the Holocaust? Just such an equation features in the Muslim and Arab narrative, which then goes further to say that the Jews in Israel are as bad as the Nazis. If so, the implied comparison would be wildly inaccurate and inappropriate for many reasons, including the key fact that the Jews never tried to exterminate the Arabs living in the aboriginal homeland of the Jewish People, i.e. Eretz Israel = the Holy Land. Thus, a century of enhanced efforts to implement the Jewish People’s aboriginal and treaty rights there saw Arabs experiencing not genocide, but rather exceptional population growth which Arabs themselves celebrate. By contrast, the Nazi extermination of six million European Jews was a clear demographic catastrophe for Jews, whose numbers dramatically fell in absolute terms.]
On the other hand, it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people... have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.
[President Obama's sonorous reference to "pursuit of a homeland" by "the Palestinian People" is intended to refer to the political and legal doctrine of the self-determination of Peoples. In its entirety, the Cairo speech is articulate about the self-determination rights of the Palestinian People, but says nothing explicit about the self-determination rights of the Jewish People. Similarly, President Obama completely ignores the aboriginal and treaty rights of the Jewish People.
Here President Obama's approach is consistent with the habit of left-liberals and Muslims who falsely imagine that the right to self-determination of the newborn Palestinian People is absolute -- and can justify anything. Such claims are political, perhaps even criminal, but hardly properly juridical. For an antidote, consider some pure law. Let's look at universal principle, without reference to any particular dispute. Thus, let's listen to moral and political philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) who held the Conant Chair at Harvard University.
In his 1993 paper, The Law of Peoples, Rawls does not believe that a People has an unqualified or absolute right to self-determination and independence: "No people has the right to self-determination, or a right of secession, at the expense of the subjugation of another people..." A fortiori, Rawls would agree that a People lacks a political, moral or legal right to independence and self-determination for use as a means for destroying or annihilating another People.
It is entirely consistent with morality and law to support the principle of the self-determination of Peoples, while simultaneously demanding that implementing the newborn Palestinian People's right to self-determination is politically, morally and legally contingent on Palestinian acceptance of: (1) real and effective security arrangements for the Jewish People; and (2) the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland.
Born via a socio-political process of general self-identification, "a People" exists in history with a particular name. Sometimes a new, named People is born (e.g., around 1960 CE, the Quebecois in Canada) and sometimes a specific, named People disappears from history, e.g., the ancient Philistines who simply vanished without a trace. A then commonly self-identified, specifically "Jewish" People has objectively existed since circa 600 BCE. A then commonly self-identified, specifically "Palestinian" People has objectively existed since circa 1967 CE. And make no mistake -- a People's birthday is relevant because there is logically a temporal dimension implicit in Rawls's references to "self-determination" and "secession," both of which entail the notion of prior rights pertinent to a People's decision to exercise its right to self-determination.
There was no such thing as a then commonly self-identified, specifically "Palestinian" People at the time of Woodrow Wilson. Neither he nor anybody else at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference had ever heard anything about the existence of a distinct "Palestinian People" -- though the statesmen there were famously grappling with the often conflicting claims of more than a score of other well-known Peoples with long histories of self-affirmation, suffering and struggle. There, in that post WW1 peace settlement that recognized the Jewish People's historical connection to Palestine, there was a sincere search for equities that carefully weighed the needs of the great Jewish People of world history against the needs of the great Arab People of world history.
The rock solid fact is that, at the dawn of the 20th century, locally only a handful of Arabic-speaking Christians were then concerned with anything like a notion of "Palestine" or "Palestinians." But, history, sociology and law all strenuously insist that an acorn is not an oak tree! Nor today can a given People in its own name claim any political, moral or legal rights with respect to a time before its own birth. All such prenatal claims are logically by way of alleged succession in title from some earlier, named People, with regard to which there must be an entirely new evaluation, including what was then specifically affirmed by that earlier, named People.
Before 1967 CE, locally the non-Jewish population did not generally self-identify as "the Palestinian People," but rather as "Muslim" and "Arab," which are still very powerful self-identifications there even today. In this regard, it is pertinent to note that the claims of the Muslim "umma" or of "the great Arab People of world history" are morally and legally no stronger against the prior rights of the Jewish People than are the current claims of the newborn Palestinian People.]
For more than 60 years they've endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead.
[Comment: Again President Obama appears to validate the Muslim and Arab narrative. Although he notably fails to attribute any of the historical suffering of the Jewish People to Muslim and Arab wrong-doing, he implicitly blames Jews for Arab suffering in 1948 and later.
Though the great Arab People was born in Arabia, the modern Jewish People has generally been practical enough to understand the need for compromise with respect to sharing its aboriginal homeland with Arabs. For example, in both 1937 and 1947, Jews accepted the principle of sharing with an Arab State the territory of the recognized "national home for the Jewish People" that then stretched from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. By contrast, Arabs locally and generally then rejected the principle of peacefully sharing with "the Jewish State" the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The Holy Land didn't have any refugees until May 1948, when local Arabs and the Arab States opted to launch a war with the proclaimed aim of exterminating the Jews. This Arab decision to go to war caused the problem of the refugees -- around 850,000 Jews from various Muslim and Arab countries and around 600,000 Arabs from the parts of the "national home for the Jewish People" that ended up under Israel control.
President Obama should be reminded that, though local Arabs have undeniably suffered, there is the key moral and legal issue of the extent to which they and their Arab allies were the principal authors of this misfortune. Moreover, President Obama is a lawyer, so he ought to understand that Arabs locally and generally have always had a clear moral and legal duty to promptly mitigate their own losses, no matter how caused.]
They endure the daily humiliations --large and small-- that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own. (Applause)
[Comment: "humiliation" -- The Cairo speech has a psychological strategy or game plan. For example, here Barack Obama volunteers to introduce the complex topic of "humiliation," closely followed by its opposite -- the notion of "dignity." The latter features five times in the Cairo speech, including with explicit reference to Islam and Palestinians, but not once specifically in connection with Jews, Judaism or Israel. In its entirety, the Cairo speech shows that Barack Obama does not much care about Jewish dignity.
Logically and historically, "humiliation" and "dignity" are linked together in the broader, sociological concept of "honor," which for centuries has played a key role in Western and Islamic civilization. The notion of honor is crucial throughout the Muslim and Arab Mideast. So what is honor? English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) opined:
The manifestation of the value we set on one another is that which is called honoring and dishonoring. To value a man at a high rate is to honor him, at a low rate is to dishonor him. But high and low, in this case, is to be understood by comparison to the rate that each man sets on himself.Thus, dishonor or humiliation is a subjective phenomenon. For example, Wikipedia says:
Humiliation is the abasement of pride, which creates mortification... It is an emotion felt by a person whose social status has just decreased.Significantly, "humiliation" features twice in the Cairo speech -- the first time referring to "the Palestinian people" and the second time to "black people in America." This is an important clue that Barack Obama is purveying the left-liberal trope that falsely portrays the Palestinian People as analogous to Black Americans. But, unlike the newborn Palestinian People, Black Americans really do have a history of several centuries of disadvantage and suffering; just as Christians and Muslims have victimized the Jewish People for close to two millennia. Consequently, modern human-rights methodologies teach us that both the Jewish People and Black Americans are owed apology, restitution and special vigilance against revictimization.
By contrast, though the newborn Palestinian People now has a bitter dispute with the Jewish People, it has no such super-added, age-old claim to be classified as an historically-disadvantaged group. Moreover, today's Palestinians simultaneously self-identify as "Muslim Arab," which was undoubtedly their primary self-identification before 1967 CE. President Obama should remember that, for circa 1400 years, Muslim Arabs have taken special pride in their glorious history of conquest, including the brutal subjugation of other Mideast Peoples, like the indigenous Jews, Copts, Armenians, Kurds, etc.
Since President Obama encourages us to link Palestinians with Black Americans, can we ask if it is also a humiliation that Black Americans do not have "a state of their own"? Truth be told, we really do not know what would be enough to end Palestinian "humiliation." What would satisfy subjective sentiments of Palestinian honor? Would establishing another Arab mini-State suffice for Palestinian honor or would Palestinian "humiliation" only end with the destruction of Israel and the killing or flight of the more than six million Jews there? This is no mere rhetoric because history shows that seeking such vengeance has frequently been the Mideast option. Thus, Barack Obama's invocation of "humiliation" and "dignity" is still another instance of his intentional use of irresponsible and extravagant words for the express purpose of undermining Jewish rights and interests.
Certainly, nowhere in the Cairo speech is the President at all concerned to protect Jews from the subjective emotion of humiliation. Rather, he once hints at Jewish paranoia caused by memories of the Holocaust, and elsewhere prefers to play on Jewish emotions of fear. For example, his only direct reference to "the Jewish People" is as victim of centuries of outright persecution. Similarly, he twice refers to Israel's "right to exist" and to its need for "security." Since with regard to Jews, the President himself opts to play on fear, let us ask if a single Jewish life is worth less than some Palestinian "humiliation," e.g., in connection with security procedures at check points required for the prevention of terrorism？
And what about the daily humiliation of airline passengers worldwide from intrusive airport-security procedures? Make no mistake -- that regular affront to the privacy and dignity of millions of travelers was historically triggered by the need to prevent aircraft hijacking and other airborne or airport terrorist acts, no small part of which was initially perpetrated by Palestinians or by persons claiming to act for the cause of the Palestinian People.
To spare itself humiliation, the newborn Palestinian People has always had (and continues to have) the dignified option of agreement to a full-and-final, bilateral peace treaty, including recognition of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its larger aboriginal homeland.]
They endure the daily humiliations --large and small-- that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own. (Applause)
[Comment: "occupation" -- There are a number of important legal doctrines that the Cairo speech could have referenced in connection with the current dispute. However, President Obama deliberately chose to echo the Muslim and Arab narrative that focuses on the so-called "occupation." At the same time, he significantly failed to include any discussion of the Jewish People's aboriginal, treaty and self-determination rights. Thus, President Obama joined those placing peculiar, persistent and exaggerated emphasis on one particular doctrine -- the law of belligerent occupation.
By contrast with some of its specific humanitarian content, the doctrine of belligerent occupation itself is not a fundamental norm of public international law. Thus, there are instances in which aspects of the doctrine of belligerent occupation must give way to some far more important legal elements -- for example, rights explicitly stipulated in directly relevant treaties; and the principle of the self-determination of Peoples, which probably ranks as a fundamental norm of public international law. This means that the Jewish People's right to self-determination between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea -- as well as any treaty specifically to that effect -- can outrank and render inapplicable some parts of the doctrine of belligerent occupation.
To be sure, President Obama knew the reference to "occupation" was code-language for moral and legal condemnation of Israel. By contrast, those who genuinely seek a full-and-final settlement agreed between the Parties tend to steer clear of prejudicial references to belligerent occupation. True peacemakers know that they have to start by respecting the honor and dignity of both Peoples and then reconcile their relevant rights. Namely, there is an urgent need to effect something like a careful juridical reconciliation of Jewish aboriginal, treaty and self-determination rights with the self-determination rights of the Palestinian People.
There is bias in tarring the Israel government via exaggerated and unreasonable applications of the doctrine of belligerent occupation. To do so dishonors the Jewish People in its aboriginal homeland, significantly undermines prospects for an "agreed" settlement, and provides a rationale for continued conflict. Let us listen carefully to the rhetoric of those who inflate the scope and meaning of the doctrine of belligerent occupation. In their logic, is there not contradiction between their view of belligerent occupation and the need for a full-and-final settlement that is "agreed" between the parties? If the Jewish People is unlawfully occupying another People's territory, what is there to negotiate? In that event, it would only remain for the Jews to get out of there pronto! And, with what consequence? Almost certainly further conflict, as was the case after the unilateral Israel withdrawals from South Lebanon and Gaza.
Does President Obama sincerely support the idea of a full-and-final settlement "agreed" by the parties? It certainly doesn't seem so, because he consistently chooses words that undermine the legitimacy of Israel and encourage Muslim and Arab intransigence.]
So let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. And America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own. (Applause)
[Comment: "America will not turn our backs" -- President Obama here made an unequivocal and spectacular USA promise to the Palestinian People. Though veiled by some relevant dissimulation, the Cairo Speech notably lacked any clearly expressed USA commitment to continue to support Israel. Nor does the speech contain any moral rationale for continuing USA support of Israel. To the contrary, the speech's moral condemnation of Israel demonstrates that President Obama is uncomfortable supporting Israel.
Was he once again validating the Muslim and Arab narrative by falsely implying that Israel is the obstacle to a Palestinian State? To get Palestinians to say “yes” to a Palestinian State, the Israel government did a lot of work in connection with the 1993 Oslo Accords that created the Palestinian Authority, which now directly administers almost all of the parts of the West Bank that are mostly inhabited by Palestinians. The Israel government also made generous peace offers, e.g., in the negotiations brokered by President Bill Clinton in December 2000, and in 2008 talks between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas. Moreover, egregiously omitted from the Cairo Speech was any mention of Israel's voluntary withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.]
For decades then, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive.
[Comment: To tilt toward the Palestinians, President Obama consistently seeks to make unequal things appear equal. For example, there is no reference to the fact that right now Jews are no longer a minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
From the context of the whole speech, President Obama here likely refers to an imagined Israel People rather than to "the Jewish People" which is the rationale for the existence of the Jewish State. This helps him stay closer to the Muslim and Arab narrative that strongly denies the existence of "the Jewish People" as a People entitled to invoke the political and legal doctrines of aboriginal rights and the self-determination of Peoples.
Does President Obama also avoid talking about “the Jewish People” partly to drive a wedge between Jews in the USA and those in Israel?
For certain, President Obama knows that most Muslims and Arabs are nowhere near to accepting the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland (Eretz Israel = the Holy Land). President Obama should be reminded that the Jewish People is among the world’s oldest Peoples, while local Muslim Arabs generally self-identified as the distinct "Palestinian" People only after 1967 CE. Nor are the Jewish People's aboriginal, treaty and self-determination rights there any weaker if the non-Jewish population chooses to self-identify as "Arab" or "Muslim," both of which today remain very powerful ethnic and religious identities.]
It's easy to point fingers -- for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought about by Israel's founding,
[Comment: Is President Obama here suggesting that Palestine's Arabs were displaced by Israel’s founding? If so, this is a false moral and legal indictment which reveals the extent to which he adheres to the tendentious Muslim and Arab narrative.
President Obama ought to know that the displacement of around 850,000 Jews from the various Muslim and Arab countries and around 600,000 Arabs from some parts of Palestine was brought about, not by Israel’s creation, but rather by the deliberate war of aggression which Arabs locally and generally freely chose to launch in a then widely proclaimed attempt to exterminate the Jews there.
The UK government had served notice that the British regime would terminate at the end of Friday, May 14, 1948. This was the day British troops left Mandate Palestine. Within hours, several Arab armies crossed the border to begin outright war as a planned response to British withdrawal. This long-promised and -planned Arab invasion would most certainly have happened, whether or not Palestine's Jews had already proclaimed the independence of the State of Israel which was born no earlier than the afternoon of May 14th. This creation of "the Jewish State," as such, had been specifically recommended by the United Nations. In November 1947, the General Assembly had passed a resolution recommending the trisection of Mandate Palestine into an internationalized City of Jerusalem and two very small countries -- namely, "the Jewish State" and "the Arab State."
The recommended internationalized City of Jerusalem and these two new micro-jurisdictions were all three proposed to be situated on land that had been internationally recognized as venue for "a national home for the Jewish People," in a consistent series of declarations, resolutions and treaties from 1917 to 1922, that were endorsed by the 1923 Lausanne Treaty with the Turkish Republic, as successor to the Ottoman Empire. Nonetheless, most Jews warmly welcomed the 1947 trisection recommendation which was flatly rejected by Arabs both locally and generally. But, had Arabs then accepted the UN recommended trisection, war could have been averted -- and there might have been peaceful creation of the internationalized City of Jerusalem, plus the two mini-States, without displacement of Mideast populations.]
and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond.
[Comment: This is another example of words carefully chosen to favor Arabs and cast doubt on Israel's viability. President Obama is wrong to suggest that Israel says that it has suffered from “constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders...” Attacks on Israel have for the most part come from beyond its borders, including some attacks inside Israel by infiltrators from outside. In this respect, the Cairo Speech again tilts against Israel by tending to exculpate the Arab countries from State responsibility for so often allowing their territory to be used as launching pads for terrorist attacks on Israel. And, such attacks from "beyond" have clearly been a major problem in the more than 60 years of Israel's existence.]
But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth:
[Comment: An impartial search for truth? That is not a phrase that could reasonably be used for President Obama's speech which mostly validates the familiar Muslim and Arab narrative. In this Cairo address, there is very little of a balanced presentation that also accommodates some of the key perspectives of Jews, Judaism, the Jewish People and Israel.]
The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security. (Applause)
[Comment: In the Cairo speech, President Obama favors references to "Israelis," but tends to steer clear of acknowledging the right to self-determination of "the Jewish People." However, the Cairo speech is firmly planted in the modern political and legal doctrine of the self-determination of Peoples. There, the clearly recognized rule is self-identification. If local Arabs tell us that they now self-identify as "the Palestinian People," we are obliged to take them at their word. By the same token, the fact that the majority of Jews in Israel and around the world self-identify as "the Jewish People" requires President Obama to accept their self-identification, including Israel's claim to be "the Jewish State." Does President Obama have difficulty with the notion that the right to self-determination also belongs to "the Jewish People," which is among the world's oldest Peoples?
Is he implying that the Arabs have been championing and the Jews rejecting the notion of partitioning the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea? The very opposite is true. Though the then internationally recognized "national home for the Jewish People" stretched from the Jordan River to the Sea, Zionists pragmatically embraced partition proposals in 1937 and 1947. And subsequently, Israel governments have repeatedly offered partition, e.g., under Prime Ministers Barak (2000) and Olmert (2008). And beyond talk, there were deeds -- in 2005, the Israel government unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. This involved uprooting thousands of Jewish inhabitants who had to abandon homes, schools, synagogues and businesses.
By contrast, most Muslims and Arabs still stubbornly reject the principle of an agreed, full-and-final peace treaty that would permanently partition the land between the Jordan River and the Sea. Muslims and Arabs generally reject a permanent partition, principally because they cannot bring themselves to sign a full-and-final peace treaty that includes unequivocal acceptance of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland (Eretz Israel = the Holy Land).
Remarkably, most Muslims and Arabs pretend to ignore that the Jewish People is indigenous to the Mideast and aboriginal to its ancestral homeland, where then self-identified "Jews" have lived in each and every year since antiquity.]
That is in Israel's interest, Palestine's interest, America's interest, and the world's interest.
[Comment: This is another instance in which words have been carefully chosen to the detriment of Israel's bargaining position. Though the USA and Israel are already independent States, President Obama egregiously begs the question with repeated present-tense references to “Palestine” which literally does not now exist.
Nor in all recorded history was there ever a Muslim or Arab or Turkish "State" or "province" called Palestine. In 1922, there was created an entirely new British jurisdiction under the League of Nations Palestine Mandate. This new jurisdiction included two new entities -- the Transjordan Emirate; and the "national home for the Jewish People," that extended from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.
Approved by the last Assembly of the League of Nations, a 1946 treaty created the new, independent Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, which only then was severed from the League of Nations Palestine Mandate. In 1948, the "national home for the Jewish People" became the independent State of Israel.]
And that is why I intend to personally pursue this outcome with all the patience and dedication that the task requires. (Applause)
[Comment: Here, President Obama's clear declaration of his own stubborn intention has to be read together with his earlier phrase: "America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own." Taken together, the two statements amount to a spectacular promise to the Palestinian People, arguably the most outstanding feature of the Cairo speech. By contrast, President Obama there makes no firm promise favoring the future of the Jewish People or Israel.]
The obligations --the obligations that the parties have agreed to under the road map are clear. For peace to come, it is time for them --and all of us-- to live up to our responsibilities.
[Comment: President Obama fails to note that the 2003 Road Map to Peace was drawn up before Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007. Because the Palestinian Authority’s fundamental situation has significantly deteriorated, it is probably unrealistic to think that all of Israel's Road Map obligations can be fulfilled at this time.
When and where to follow the Road Map thus partly depends on the conduct of other participants. For example, the Road Map has been flagrantly violated by the firing at Israel civilians of several thousand mortar rounds and rockets -- acts which constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law.]
Palestinians must abandon violence. Resistance through violence and killing is wrong and it does not succeed.
[Comment: Is it just coincidence that President Obama chooses to use the word “resistance”? Such usage is fully consistent with the Muslim and Arab narrative that Palestinian fighters are not terrorists but rather militants engaged in legitimate “resistance” to foreign occupation of their country. "Resistance" conjures up the memory of the many wars of national liberation fought against colonial regimes after WW2. There is also the history of the famous French Resistance, the "maquis" that fought the Nazis during WW2.
It is striking that the word “terrorism” appears nowhere in the Cairo speech. Ostensibly calling for an end to violence, President Obama’s Cairo speech as a whole tends to ideologically validate a narrative that provides the moral justification for Muslims and Arabs to continue their war against the Jewish People.
President Obama should be reminded that, between the Sea and the Jordan River, the Jewish People is no colonialist interloper, but rather the People with the strongest claim to be aboriginal. In greater or lesser numbers, Jews have lived in the Holy Land (Eretz Israel) in each and every year since the ethnogenesis of the Jewish People some 26 centuries ago. Because the Jewish People's presence between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is lawful, the newborn Palestinian People lacks the right to wage a war of national liberation.]
For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation.
[Comment: President Obama seems to equate the suffering of Palestinians with that of "black people in America.” Such a shocking comparison slanders Israel’s Jews by suggesting that they are like the 19th-century American slave owners. Similarly, does the reference to “humiliation of segregation” validate the Muslim and Arab narrative that says Israel is an apartheid State? This disturbing possibility is reinforced by President Obama's subsequent reference to White South Africa in connection with movements of national liberation.
Both repugnant and inappropriate is a metaphor that compares the Palestinian People to "black people in America" and Israel Jews to the USA majority population that for four centuries
discriminated against Black Americans. The comparison is perverse because during the last 1400 years in the Holy Land
and elsewhere, Muslims and Arabs regularly maltreated Jews, not the other
way around. Thus, despite the President's innuendo and dog whistles, the truth is that Jews are both aboriginal to the Holy Land and historically the prime example of the victim-People, whether in Europe or the Mideast. Without doubt, North American Indians, Black Americans and others have also suffered over long periods of time, but their suffering has not exceeded that of the Jewish People.
By contrast with the great Jewish People, the great Arab People does not have a special history of being a victim for close to two millennia. To the contrary, the great Arab People has generally prided itself on a glorious history as conqueror of other Peoples. And what of the "Palestinians"? As such, they first enter the pages of history only after 1967 CE, before which they principally self-identified as "Muslim" and "Arab," but hardly ever as "Palestinian," for specific political reasons adequately explained by the history of the toponym "Palestine."As "Philistia," the name "Palestine" dates back to the beginning of antiquity. Then, it referred to the land of the Philistines who might have been one of the seafaring Aegean Peoples and thus, in the second millennium BCE, perhaps well known to the ancestors of the ancient Greeks. There is absolutely no historical evidence of any kind suggesting that the population which today newly self-identifies as "Palestinian" has any special genetic or cultural links with the ancient Philistines.
Toward the end of the first millennium BCE, not too much was remembered about the Philistines who had literally disappeared from history. In the 5th century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus referred to "Palestine." The later Roman world knew the toponym "Palestine" from the Greeks and also something of the story of the defunct Philistines from the Jewish Bible, which had already been translated into Greek before the rise of Rome. In the late first century CE, the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus not untypically pointed to "Palestine" as the coastal area near Gaza.
Apart from the postulated precedent of the mysterious Philistines, "Palestine" has never been the name of an independent State; nor of a Muslim, Arab or Ottoman "province." As the name of a Roman province, "Palestine" first featured in the 2nd century CE, when the local population was still largely Jewish. There, Christianity became the official State religion in the 4th century CE. For hundreds of years thereafter -- and especially after the classicism that marked Renaissance humanism -- memories of this Christian "Palestine" were treasured by Christians everywhere, including by the Arabic-speaking Christians of the Mideast.
After the Muslim conquest of the early 7th century CE, the Caliphate for a time kept the name "Palestine," arabicized as "Filastin," for one small district (jund) of Damascus province. Straddling the Jordan River, this "Jund Filastin" was never anything like a "province" of the Caliphate. Rather "Jund Filastin" was just something like a county -- geographically commensurate with no more than the "Palaestina Prima" that had been one of the three administrative units of the larger Palestine Province of the Roman-Byzantine Empire.
From the mid-13th century to the beginning of the 16th century, no place there was locally called "Palestine" which did not feature among the administrative units of the Mamluks. Similarly, the subsequent Ottoman Empire (1516-1918 CE) never had a province or unit called "Palestine." Nor did the Ottomans ever have, under some other name, a single administrative entity (or even a collection of entities) that geographically dovetailed with the historic Holy Land.
Around 1900 CE, the perhaps half million Muslim Arabs of the Holy Land were without much attachment to the then largely Christian concept of "Palestine," which -- as a simple matter of fact -- was then a completely non-existent country that seldom featured in their imagination. Nor were Muslim Arabs there objectively seen as "Palestinians" by their neighbors or by the increasing number of foreigners who visited the Holy Land. Nineteenth-century travelers realistically spoke about "a land without a People," because they perceptively saw that the territory there was sparsely populated and understood that the few hundred thousand local inhabitants lacked a single national identity distinct to the Holy Land, but rather had several, separate, ethno-religious self-identifications similar or identical to those of the adjacent populations, also under Ottoman rule.
Around 1900 CE, local Muslim Arabs had several significant self-identifications that commonly included family and clan ties; hometown and neighborhood patriotism; attachment to Greater Syria; feeling for Ottoman citizenship; a sense of belonging to the ecumenical Muslim community (ummah); and pride in the Arabic language and the Islamic civilization of the great Arab People. At that time, some focus on "Palestine" understandably came more easily to local Arabic-speaking Christians who for centuries had been a despised minority. By contrast, strong national self-identification using the geographical reference "Palestinian" only started to become general among the Muslim population there a full half-century after the name "Palestine" was politically reborn during WW1 (1914-1918 CE).
This dramatic resurrection of the political appellation "Palestine" was effected by a series of declarations, resolutions, and treaties explicitly recognizing the Jewish People's claim to its historic homeland. Stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, the new "national home for the Jewish People" was the western part of an entirely new British jurisdiction under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, that from 1922 CE until 1946 CE also included the much larger Transjordan Emirate.
In the three decades after WW1, the name "Palestine" was far too closely identified with the Zionist project to have had much attraction for most Muslim Arabs there. Muslim Arab perception of the connection between Jews and the toponym "Palestine" generally endured until May 1948. Then, the name "Israel" was suddenly revealed as the appellation for "the Jewish State." Thus, the Jews had first to definitely abandon their own use of the "Palestine" trademark before local Muslim Arabs could begin feeling comfortable about perhaps seeing themselves as "Palestinian."
In addition to eventually taking over the "Palestine" trademark, the newly-emerged Palestinian People went on to craft an identity that, in several essential ways, is mirror image of the very long history of the Jewish People. From the late-20th century, the Muslim and Arab narrative generally supplants the Holocaust with the dislocation caused by the 1948 War; the Jewish Diaspora with that of the so-called Palestinian "refugees"; and the age-old Jewish longing to return to Eretz Israel with an alleged Arab "right of return" to Palestine, including all the territory of the State of Israel.
The political purpose of this novel Muslim and Arab narrative is to appropriate for the newly self-identified Palestinian People, the Jewish People’s long-standing aboriginal and treaty rights, as well as whatever is morally owed to the Jewish People by reason of almost two millennia of persistent discrimination and periodic persecution at the hands of both Christians and Muslims.]
But it was not violence that won full and equal rights.
[Comment: We need to think twice before accepting facile comparisons likely to spawn false conclusions. For example, should we endorse President Obama's implication that the goal is to give the Palestinian People "full" rights that are internationally "equal" to those of the Jewish People?
Clearly, the Jewish People and the Palestinian People both have self-determination rights within the context of the political and legal doctrine of the self-determination of Peoples. However, the longstanding Jewish People significantly has aboriginal and treaty rights which the newborn Palestinian People understandably lacks. If President Obama is here suggesting that the two Peoples have (or ought to have) fully identical rights internationally, he may have erected a further obstacle to a full-and-final peace settlement. By contrast, recognizing that the rights of the two Peoples are not identical internationally enhances significantly the possibilities for peacefully reconciling the former with the latter.
For example, the aboriginal, treaty and self-determination rights of the Jewish People combine to argue that any new jurisdiction west of the Jordan River be demilitarized or "unmilitarized." Otherwise, a new Palestinian State would likely soon become a stepping stone to the destruction of Israel. Without an army are about ten percent of the world's independent States, e.g., Costa Rica. And, other independent countries like Switzerland have accepted some permanent treaty limitations with respect to their conduct of foreign relations. Thus, President Obama's incautious reference to "full and equal rights" can be seen as another instance of his imprudent rush to proclaim "peace" positions that in practice tend to perpetuate the conflict.]
It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding. This same story can be told by people from South Africa to South Asia; from Eastern Europe to Indonesia.
[Comment: In a speech that barely mentions the existence of the Jewish People and strains to ignore Jewish self-determination rights, President Obama casts his eyes wildly around the world to rhapsodize about various movements of national liberation against colonialist oppression and British and Soviet imperialism.
The bias in his rhetoric is exposed by his bizarre reference to "America's founding." Barack Obama appears to be comparing Palestinians to the American colonists who revolted against King George III. If so, is he simultaneously suggesting the weird distortion that would portray Israel as the British Empire, against which local Jews struggled post-WW2, in their own bid for national liberation?
Brushing aside the President's misrepresentations and deceptions, the stark truth is that 18th-century America was a colonial venture erected on territory that was brutally seized from the aboriginal Peoples there. Barack Obama wants us to forget a tragic American history of struggle between "cowboys and Indians." Such amnesia is convenient for his anti-Jewish purpose. But, the actual historical facts remind us that the Jewish People is not to be identified with the intruding "cowboys" but rather with the native North-American "Indians." Namely, the Jewish People is aboriginal to the Holy Land.
In the Cairo speech, President Obama curiously informs us that he is a Christian. At the same time, he also demonstrates astonishing familiarity with Islam. Thus, it is entirely reasonable to presume that he already knows that the historical connection of the Jewish People to the land of its birth is a commonplace that had significantly been accepted by most Christians and Muslims across more than a millennium before the emergence of the current dispute there in the course of the 20th century CE.
Nonetheless, President Obama stubbornly intends to validate the Muslim and Arab narrative that claims the Palestinian struggle against the Jewish People is like several well known modern instances of indigenous "resistance" to the colonialism of foreigners. But this is a sheer invention! President Obama should be vigorously corrected, in that the Jewish People is -- firstly aboriginal to the Holy Land; and, secondly indigenous to the Mideast, which has always had a large Jewish population, e.g., around one million in 1900 CE.
The President should be told that each century since ancient times witnessed some then self-identified "Jews" continuing to live on their aboriginal lands, where today they are again no longer a minority. Of all extant Peoples, the Jewish People has the strongest claim to be the aboriginal People of the Holy Land (Eretz Israel), which is most certainly not the original home of the great Arab People that was born in Arabia.
Nor before 1967 CE did world history know too much about the existence via general self-identification of any distinct "Palestinian" People. This was a new moniker that local Arabs commonly accepted only after the defeat of Egypt and Jordan in the Six-Day War. Though the newly self-identified Palestinian People may now have claims to some territory and independence, it nonetheless lacks a right to wage a war of decolonization against the Jewish People which is lawfully in its own aboriginal homeland.
Because one People cannot claim to rule another People, mandatory is a peaceful process that now recognizes the honor and dignity of both Peoples and seeks to reconcile the subsequent rights of the newborn Palestinian People with the prior rights of the age-old Jewish People. For example, a full-and-final peace settlement agreed "today" would probably have to include a waiver of most Jewish aboriginal and treaty rights with regard to territory "now" mostly inhabited by Palestinians, wishing to live in a new Palestinian State.
However, both morality and law demand that any new Palestinian State be created in such a way that guarantees that it could never be a stepping stone to the destruction of the Jewish State. This is especially so because many Muslims and Arabs openly say that they want to destroy Israel. Such repeated public statements are clear confession of intent to commit grave violations of international law, including genocide and nullification of the aboriginal, treaty and self-determination rights of the Jewish People.]
It's a story with a simple truth: that violence is a dead end. It is a sign neither of courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That's not how moral authority is claimed; that's how it is surrendered.
[Comment: President Obama does not denounce as a war crime the firing of Hamas rockets at civilians in Israel. Nor does he specifically condemn Arab bombing of Israel public transport as “terrorism” which remarkably is a term entirely absent from the vocabulary of the Cairo speech as a whole. This is noteworthy because Islam-based terrorism remains a grave security threat to the USA both at home and abroad. And, many thousands of miles away from Israel, Islam-based terrorism also afflicts a great number of countries, where Islamic ideology plays a distinctive and prominent role in violent confrontations among Muslims and between Muslims and non-Muslims.]
Now is the time for Palestinians to focus on what they can build. The Palestinian Authority must develop its capacity to govern, with institutions that serve the needs of its people. Hamas does have support among some Palestinians, but they also have to recognize they have responsibilities. To play a role in fulfilling Palestinian aspirations, to unify the Palestinian people, Hamas must put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, recognize Israel's right to exist.
[Comment: "Hamas does have some support among Palestinians" -- Here President Obama curiously chooses to veil Palestinian enthusiasm for Hamas, which the USA State Department has designated as a terrorist organization since 1997. This passage in the speech perhaps signals a new USA willingness to reach out and talk with Hamas, as part of efforts to achieve a general settlement. In 2007, Hamas staged a successful coup which violently ended the Palestinian Authority's role in Gaza.
Here as elsewhere, repeated references to Israel’s "right to exist” fall way short. What is required is Hamas acceptance of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland. In return, Israel would recognize the new Palestine as the embodiment of the self-determination of the Palestinian People.
Hamas is the Palestinian Wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. To the horror of the Mubarak government, President Obama significantly favored the Muslim Brotherhood with invitations to attend his Cairo speech:
www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/06/-brotherhood-invited-to-obama-speech-by-us/18693/
The Atlantic
"Brotherhood" Invited To Obama Speech By U.S.
MARC AMBINDER JUN 3, 2009
A sign that the Obama administration is willing to publicly challenge Egypt's commitment to parliamentary democracy: various Middle Eastern news sources report that the administration insisted that at least 10 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country's chief opposition party, be allowed to attend his speech in Cairo on Thursday.
The brotherhood is a Salafist/Islamist party with branches in many countries, and it does not have a reputation for liberalism and has supported violent campaigns against Israel (and Egypt's own government). It has deep roots in the region and traces its intellectual lineage to Sayyid Qutb, a top American-educated Islamic intellectual who was executed -- or martyred -- by the Egyptian government in 1966. The Brotherhood has direct links with Sunni groups like Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Its standing in Egypt has suffered as of late because of a crackdown by the Egyptian government and a growing frustration that it is too conservative (anti-women's rights, the whole gamut) for a modern Middle East.]
At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's.
[Comment: Barack Obama knows that trumpeting "Israel's right to exist" plays well with American voters, including American Jews. But, should we be particularly grateful to President Obama for championing a mere "right to exist"? A clear answer comes from former Israel Foreign Minister Abba Eban who in 1981 emphasized:
Nobody does Israel any service by proclaiming its ‘right to exist.’ Israel’s right to exist, like that of the United States, Saudi Arabia and 152 other states, is axiomatic and unreserved. Israel’s legitimacy is not suspended in midair awaiting acknowledgement... There is certainly no other state, big or small, young or old, that would consider mere recognition of its ‘right to exist’ a favor, or a negotiable concession.Although here President Obama literally affirms "Israel's right to exist," the context is one in which his words subtly denigrate Israel by comparing its current rights as a sovereign State with those of a proposed country, i.e. a new Arab State to be called "Palestine" that historically has never existed and yet remains to be created. Thus, President Obama's present-tense references to "Palestine" egregiously beg the question. They are purposely intended to undermine Israel's bargaining position which was evidently one of President Obama's principal goals in Cairo.
Does President Obama not know that the principle of partitioning the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has long been favored by Zionists and Israel governments of various stripes? In return for truly suitable security arrangements; an agreed border; and the recognition of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State -- Jews in Israel and the USA would be pleased to welcome a new Palestinian State. However, a Palestinian State that, in its heart is really always dedicated to the destruction of Israel, would be rejected by Jews both in Israel and the USA.
Under natural, international, Jewish, and Israel law -- Israel's Jews have a right to life, i.e. "to stay alive" in their aboriginal homeland. The claims to territory and self-determination of the newly-emerged Palestinian People are neither absolute nor fully-formed. Juridically, these new Palestinian rights have first to be peacefully reconciled with prior Jewish rights, including the aboriginal, treaty, and self-determination rights of the Jewish People. Absent such a peaceful process for the juridical reconciliation of rights, the subsequent rights of the newborn Palestinian People do not automatically cancel the Jewish People’s prior rights, including the right of Jews there not to be killed by their Arab neighbors. This certainly means that the Palestinian People lacks the right to wage a war of national liberation against the Jewish People, which is legitimately sited between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
By ignoring the aboriginal, treaty, and self-determination rights of the Jewish People, President Obama’s speech notably omits any compelling moral and legal rationale for Israel’s existence. Here as elsewhere, the Cairo speech seems to consistently validate the Muslim and Arab narrative, in the context of which there is fundamental justice to the never-ending war against Israel.]
The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. (Applause)
About 722,000 Jews now live in homes beyond the 1949 Green Line, i.e. the Jordan-Israel Armistice Demarcation Line (ADL), which has decreasing political relevance and declining legal weight. Firstly, the 1949 armistice agreements with Egypt and Jordan explicitly say that the ADLs are without prejudice to a final political settlement. Secondly, no Arab government has ever recognized the 1949 ADLs as the legitimate and permanent borders of the Jewish State. Thirdly, the peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) indicate as Israel's international borders, not the 1949 ADLs, but rather to the west the old (1906) Sinai boundary with Egypt, and to the east the Jordan River. Fourthly, the Jewish People's aboriginal, treaty and self-determination rights rest on principles so fundamental that they probably outweigh anything that might be said on behalf of the current legal status of the 1949 ADLs.
President Obama spoke with some caution, finesse and strategy on a topic that is politically controversial, and morally and legally complex. Tactically, he chose not to explicitly reject the legitimacy of all settlements beyond the 1949 ADL, but specifically pointed only to “continued Israeli settlements." So, by what political, moral or legal criteria are such "continued Israeli settlements" to be distinguished from earlier Jewish settlement there? Or is the President still leaving open the likely implication that all Jewish settlement is illegitimate? If so, that implication would collide, inter alia, with written assurances that President George W. Bush made to Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
In 2004, Israel proposed to unilaterally disengage from Gaza, including voluntary removal of Jewish settlements there. In return, President Bush wrote:
As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.The then self-identified, specifically “Jewish” People was born in Eretz Israel around 600 BCE. From that time until today, there was never a year when then self-identified "Jews" were absent from their ancestral homeland. So, can a Jew be an illegal immigrant in Eretz Israel? A resounding "No!" came from USA Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1939, when he roundly condemned, as a violation of international law, anti-Jewish restrictions on entry for settlement between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
During and immediately after WW1, a series of declarations, resolutions and treaties had given explicit recognition to “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” Among those treaties is the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine which provides for creation of “a national home for the Jewish People” from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
In the rest of Mandate Palestine (i.e. east of the Jordan River), the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine says provisions with respect to Jewish settlement do not apply. However, for Western Palestine (between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea), the Mandate document explicitly stipulates for “close settlement by Jews on the land.”
But, what does the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine have to do with President Obama? Well, Article 6 of the USA Constitution says: “all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land.” Is the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine a treaty made under the authority of the United States? If not, no problem, because the full text of the 1922 Mandate document is repeated verbatim in the main body of the 1924 Anglo-American Treaty. This 1924 Treaty formally gives the USA's “consent” to the specific terms of the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, which are fully recited therein. The 1924 Treaty was duly ratified by the USA Senate which means that it ranks as “supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.”
Thus, the 1924 Treaty suffices to now stop a USA President from cogently arguing that Jewish settlement west of the Jordan River is “illegal.” By virtue of doctrines of legal and equitable estoppel, a USA President cannot now lawfully argue against the Jewish People's settlement rights west of the Jordan River that which is the very opposite of what the USA had specifically affirmed in the 1924 Treaty with the United Kingdom.
Instead of questioning the legitimacy of Jews building homes and hospitals in Eretz Israel, President Obama should respect the honor and dignity of the Jewish People in its ancestral homeland. For sure, there may now be need for an agreed peace settlement that takes into account the self-determination rights of the newborn Palestinian People -- but that is far from the whole story there. West of the Jordan River, there are also some Jewish self-determination rights, and also the aboriginal and treaty rights of the Jewish People.
Is there not sly dissimulation in President Obama's words about rejecting "the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements"? Significantly, his precise statement is logically not inconsistent with the Muslim and Arab narrative that regards all Jewish "settlement," including in the State of Israel, to be both illegitimate and illegal. For sure, the Cairo speech openly rejects the legitimacy of "continued Israeli settlements." But, despite what a casual reader might carelessly presume, the speech nowhere compensates by according legitimacy to President Bush's "already existing major Israeli population centers" just east of the 1949 ADL. Nor in Cairo did President Obama offer any specific guarantee for the extent of Israel's territory west of the 1949 ADL -- though he offered vague (and thus probably empty) references to "security" and a "right to exist."
For more than a century, many local Arabs have been pronouncing against the capacity of an individual Jew to lawfully acquire title to a plot of land anywhere in the Jewish People's historic homeland, where then self-identified "Jews" have lived for more than two millennia. Within the framework of modern legal methodologies, such flagrant anti-Jewish discrimination not only offends basic human rights, but nullifies specific Jewish rights -- including the Jewish People's right to self-determination, and its aboriginal and treaty rights. Those who argue that the West Bank and East Jerusalem are “disputed” rather than “occupied” territory do so primarily with reference to such existing Jewish rights.
Pending Israel’s acceptance of a specific list of “renunciation of rights” in an agreed, full-and-final, bilateral peace treaty, the Jewish People retains its aboriginal and treaty rights, potentially applicable to all (or any part) of the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, there are also Jewish self-determination rights pertinent to the places where Jews now live.
During the short time that Jordan ruled East Jerusalem and the West Bank (1948-1967), a significant amount of Jewish property was confiscated and Jews could not hold or acquire title to land there. However, Jews had for centuries been property owners there, e.g., under the Ottomans (1516-1917) and the British (1917-1948). Under Israel law, Jews have legal capacity to acquire and hold lawful title to specific plots of land on the West Bank, and in East Jerusalem which for centuries contained the city's historic Jewish Quarter. Are East Jerusalem and the West Bank without Jewish land titles antedating the 1948 Jordanian invasion? And, what about the many Arabs who sold real estate to Jews in the decades since 1967? During that time, there was also the lawful use of State land and of the public power of expropriation, both of which are normal features of every legal system.]
This construction violates previous agreements...
[Comment: Sophisticated students of world politics understand that international law is much akin to an ongoing discussion about rights in which every government and NGO has its lawyers and every law professor and layman an opinion. Just as in divorce litigation, there is plenty of "she says" and "he says."
What are these "previous agreements" and what did they actually promise? Is the President here referring to the 2003 Road Map to Peace? Which other agreements and between whom? Is President Obama taking the liberty of making himself a judge to settle disputes about agreements between the Israel government and the Palestinian Authority? Or is he offering purely partisan (ex parte) opinions about alleged violations of agreements between the Israel and USA governments?
Every party has public law experts trained to interpret treaties and other international agreements and to advise whether the other parties have lived up to their specific commitments. For example, some agreements are specifically conditional, and others rendered ineffective by fundamental breach of the other party. This means that an obligation to fulfill a specific commitment may depend on fulfillment of a similar or different obligation by another party. Is President Obama referring to agreements touched by such considerations?
The Cairo speech is exceedingly solicitous of the dignity of Muslims and Palestinians, but remarkably careless with the honor of the Jewish People and Israel. Nowhere is there any suggestion that Palestinians might have failed to honor their word. By contrast, here President Obama proclaims that Israel and Jews have "violated agreements." This is a serious charge legally, politically and morally. Here, the clear intent is to once again tar the Jewish People and Israel. As elsewhere, this part of the Cairo speech should be understood as a direct assault on the good name of Jews, the Jewish People and Israel.]
It is time for these settlements to stop. (Applause)
[Comment: a settlement freeze -- President Obama notably fails to provide specific reasons for his dogmatic belief that now stopping Jewish settlement would create conditions for reaching bilateral agreement on a full-and final treaty of peace.
President Obama should be reminded of the long history of Muslim and Arab discrimination against Jews in the Holy Land. Going back many centuries, local Arabs have had a bad case of NIMBY = "Not In My Back Yard." They generally disliked their aboriginal Jewish neighbors and did not want to see any more Jews in the vicinity. But, such stubborn ethno-religious prejudice against Jews should not cause us to imagine that peacefully building homes for Jews is currently an obstacle to negotiating an agreed settlement.
To the contrary, from the subjective viewpoint of the persistent anti-Jewish discrimination of local Arabs, one of the primary incentives for now rushing to sign a full-and-final peace treaty with Israel could be that an early agreement would potentially limit or end further home building by Jews, inter alia, by establishing an agreed border for an independent Palestinian State, with its own citizenship, immigration and land-ownership laws.
Asking the Israel government for an immediate settlement freeze is manifestly unfair, just as the whole Cairo speech is tilted against Israel and the Jewish People. President Obama must know that for critical international negotiations, the normal rule is that "nothing is agreed until everything is agreed." Were the Israel government to now concede a settlement freeze as a precondition for restarting the peace talks, it would thereby lose leverage essential for subsequent negotiation of a treaty that would include essential provisions on Jewish security and recognition of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland.
For precisely this reason, a settlement freeze is likely no step toward a "full-and-final" peace agreement, but rather more probably a poor substitute ensuring that there would never be a "full-and-final" peace agreement. President Obama's peculiar focus on an immediate settlement freeze is thus best understood as a powerful expression of his marked anti-Israel bias, and yet another example of how he significantly contributes to the perpetuation of the conflict.]
And Israel must also live up to its obligation to ensure that Palestinians can live and work and develop their society.
[Comment: President Obama places on Israel an exceptionally extensive and heavy obligation that has no clear moral foundation, though there are some specific obligations in the 2003 Road Map for Peace and some other international instruments.
Generally ensuring life, work and social development is certainly the normal obligation that the State owes to its own citizens, but commonly not to non-resident foreigners or to enemy aliens and combatants. Arab leadership on the West Bank and in Gaza has the primary “obligation to ensure that Palestinians can live and work and develop their society.” And, that is a powerful reason why Arab leaders there should hasten to make peace with their Jewish neighbors.
It would be admirable, and probably also in self-interest, for Israel to continue rendering substantial help. But, such ongoing assistance by Israel has also to be seen in relation to the urgent need for an agreed, full-and-final peace settlement -- including effective security guarantees; the demarcation of permanent borders; and the recognition of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland.]
Just as it devastates Palestinian families, the continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza does not serve Israel's security;
[Comment: Instead of a juridical approach that would hold terrorist organization Hamas and its supporters morally and legally responsible for the consequences of their own intentional misconduct, President Obama prefers the sociological “root causes” model. Here, he seems to validate the Hamas narrative which implausibly claims that Israel-caused living conditions in Gaza significantly justify the continuing rocket and mortar attacks on Israel civilians.
Does President Obama also validate the Muslim and Arab narrative that Israel is responsible for a so-called “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza? Statistical comparisons across countries of nutrition, fertility, infant mortality, and longevity conclusively show that there is no “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, from which Israel voluntarily withdrew in 2005.
The USA State Department and counterparts in some other Western countries officially label Hamas a terrorist organization. Should not President Obama pause to consider whether alleged socio-economic difficulties in Gaza are more properly to be ascribed to serious mistakes made by Hamas?]
neither does the continuing lack of opportunity in the West Bank. Progress in the daily lives of the Palestinian people must be a critical part of a road to peace, and Israel must take concrete steps to enable such progress.
And finally, the Arab states must recognize that the Arab Peace Initiative was an important beginning, but not the end of their responsibilities. The Arab-Israeli conflict should no longer be used to distract the people of Arab nations from other problems. Instead, it must be a cause for action to help the Palestinian people develop the institutions that will sustain their state, to recognize Israel's legitimacy,
[Comment: President Obama here again misses the essential need for Muslim and Arab acceptance of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland.
President Obama must know that the "Arab Peace Inititiative" dovetails with the Muslim and Arab narrative in insisting that any full-and-final peace settlement include the alleged “right of return” to Israel for millions of Arabs claiming to be children, grand-children, even great-grandchildren of local Arabs said to have lost homes, farms and businesses in 1948. This alleged "right of return" is an essential Muslim and Arab war aim, because a flood of "returning" Arabs would cause Israel to lose its distinctive character as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the national homeland of the Jewish People, just as Greece is the homeland of the Greek People. Recognition of Israel as "the" Jewish State is a key litmus test of peaceful intention, exactly because most Muslims and Arabs do not believe that the Jews are "a People" entitled to a State of their own.
As a Columbia University undergraduate, Barack Obama studied under renowned Palestinian nationalist Edward Said, who argued that Jews have for centuries lived as a minority in various countries around the world and should therefore also be a minority in a new country called "Palestine" that would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Later in his public life, Barack Obama kept close ties with Professor Said and with other prominent Palestinian nationalists like Rashid Khalidi who now teaches at Columbia University.]
and to choose progress over a self-defeating focus on the past.
[Comment: Is President Obama here subtly validating the Muslim and Arab narrative by falsely implying that in "the past" there was once a distinct "Palestinian" People, with a specific country of its own called "Palestine"? For sure, today there exists a distinct "Palestinian" People with claims to territory and independence, but before the third quarter of the 20th century, history knows nothing about any population that generally self-identified as the distinct "Palestinian" People. Nor historically was there ever a Muslim or Arab or Ottoman "Province" or "State" called "Palestine."
Local Muslim Arabs did not generally self-identify as
“Palestinian” until more than four decades after the 1922 CE creation of a new British
jurisdiction under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. This Mandate
jurisdiction included both the newly-created Transjordan Emirate and “a
national home for the Jewish People,” from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The
1922 CE birth of this "national home for the Jewish People" was
simultaneous to the creation or recognition of several new countries for the
self-determination of the great Arab People.
There is no evidence to show that the people who today self-identify as "Palestinians" have any special genetic or historical links to the ancient Philistines who lived along the Mediterranean coast there around three thousand years ago. A millennium later, the Romans were familiar
with a few bare details of the story of the defunct Philistines, just as the Romans also knew the related toponym "Palestine." But, early Greek and Roman references to
"Palestine" do not necessarily dovetail with the Jewish geographical
understanding of the "Land of Israel" (Eretz Israel).
For example, early in the first century CE, the Greek geographer Strabo provides a complete, detailed description of the broader region (i.e. Syria) without any reference to the toponym "Palestine." And, some decades later, the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus quite typically used the appellation "Palestine" to point to nothing more than the Mediterranean coastal strip around Gaza. Thus, it is easy to understand why there is no reference to "Palestine" in the New Testament. It was only in the first half of the 2nd century CE that the Jewish-inhabited Roman Province of Judea was officially renamed “Palestine” to punish the Jews for their national revolt led by Bar Kochba.
For example, early in the first century CE, the Greek geographer Strabo provides a complete, detailed description of the broader region (i.e. Syria) without any reference to the toponym "Palestine." And, some decades later, the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus quite typically used the appellation "Palestine" to point to nothing more than the Mediterranean coastal strip around Gaza. Thus, it is easy to understand why there is no reference to "Palestine" in the New Testament. It was only in the first half of the 2nd century CE that the Jewish-inhabited Roman Province of Judea was officially renamed “Palestine” to punish the Jews for their national revolt led by Bar Kochba.
In the 4th century CE, the Roman-Byzantine Empire became a
Christian State. For more than a millennium after the Muslim conquest in the
7th century CE, Christians everywhere (including Arabic-speaking Christians)
nostalgically treasured the memory of a "Christian" Palestine that
had extended from the Mediterranean Sea to lands east of the Jordan River. This remembered
"Palestine" was for theological reasons geographically identical with
the earlier Jewish idea of the "Land of Israel" (Eretz Israel) and
also with the Christian and Muslim notion of "the Holy Land."
After the Muslim conquest in the early 7th century CE, the
Caliphate had for a time retained the Roman-Byzantine appellation
"Palestine" (arabicized as "Filastin") for one sub-unit
(jund) of the Muslim Province of Damascus. But, compared with the larger Byzantine
"Palestine" Province, "Jund Filastin" was just a district
straddling the Jordan River.
From the mid-13th century to the early 16th century, no place there was locally called "Palestine" which did not feature among the administrative units of the Mamluks. The subsequent Ottoman Empire (1516-1918 CE) never had a province or unit called "Palestine." Nor did the Ottomans ever have, under some other name, a single administrative entity (or even a collection of entities) that geographically dovetailed with the historic Holy Land. Specifically, the territory
from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River (Western Palestine) that in 1922 CE became
"national home for the Jewish People" had for the previous four hundred years been
an integral part of Greater Syria, generally the Ottoman Vilayet of Damascus.
Before "political" resurrection in the November
1917 Balfour Declaration, "Palestine" was a largely Christian term,
always linked to the Christian understanding of Jewish history as recounted in
the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Gospels. The Jewish People understandably
opted to abandon the "Palestine" trademark in May 1948, when it was
suddenly revealed that the name "Israel" had been chosen for "the Jewish State," creation of which (as such) had been specifically recommended by a November 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution.
Before May 1948, "Palestine" and "Palestinian" had been expressions largely unattractive to most local Muslims, because they generally deemed the terminology to be too intimately connected with the "national home for the Jewish People" launched by the Balfour Declaration and by a consequent series of resolutions and treaties from 1920 to 1923 CE.
Before May 1948, "Palestine" and "Palestinian" had been expressions largely unattractive to most local Muslims, because they generally deemed the terminology to be too intimately connected with the "national home for the Jewish People" launched by the Balfour Declaration and by a consequent series of resolutions and treaties from 1920 to 1923 CE.
Arab leaders had themselves been slow to recognize the
existence of a distinct "Palestinian" People with a right to
self-determination. For example, as principal Arab leader at the 1919 Paris
Peace Conference, the Hashemite Prince Feisal ibn Hussein had specifically
accepted the plan to create "a national home for the Jewish People"
in Palestine.
Nor was a sovereign Palestine for a distinct "Palestinian" People the preference of the most famous local Arab leader of the first half of
the 20th century. Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini was a fan of
both the Holocaust and Hitler whom he met in 1941 CE. Confident of Axis victory in WW2, the Mufti promised close cooperation with Germany and
Italy in return for their support of his plan to create a united, fascist Arab
State to cover all the territory that was then Iraq, Syria, and Palestine (both
east and west of the Jordan River).
After WW2, the Egyptian and Jordanian governments showed how little regard they had for the existence of a distinct
"Palestinian" People and its right to self-determination. First, they
rejected the 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution recommending trisection of the area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, into the internationalized City of Jerusalem and two new countries,
specifically "the Jewish State" and "the Arab State." Second, no independent "Palestinian" State was created
between 1948 and 1967 CE, when Egypt held the Gaza Strip and Jordan had East
Jerusalem and the West Bank.]
America will align our policies with those who pursue peace,
[Comment: Given this speech’s tendency to validate the Muslim and Arab narrative, is President Obama here serving notice that the USA will now champion the Muslim and Arab cause unless the Israel government makes sweeping concessions to repair the harm alleged to have been done by Israel? This passage should be understood as a warning and threat to the Jewish People and Israel.]
and we will say in public what we say in private to Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs. (Applause)
[Comment: Is President Obama here promising that the negative treatment Israel gets in this Cairo speech will also be the ill treatment Israel is to receive within the privacy of the USA-Israel relationship? And, is he promising that just as he appears to validate the Muslim and Arab narrative here in his Cairo speech, so will his administration favor that side with regard to the long-standing dispute over the refusal of most Muslims and Arabs to accept the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State?]
We cannot impose peace. But privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away.
[Comment: Here, it is noteworthy that President Obama curiously fails to take into account the impact of the recent rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran. From Israel's victories in the 1967 and 1973 wars, there had been growing Muslim and Arab awareness, frustration and anger that the "Zionist entity" was an unpleasant, self-sustaining fact on the ground. This factual awareness powerfully contributed to Israel's conclusion of peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994). But, otherwise there has been no general end to the long-standing war against the Jews, in which context most Muslims and Arabs stubbornly refuse to accept the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland.
This strong Muslim rejectionist tendency is now fueled by the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran which is actively waging proxy wars against Israel, and which repeatedly threatens to destroy Israel with missiles. The prospect that the Islamic Republic of Iran may soon have nuclear weapons means that Israel’s enemies can now plausibly imagine one or more scenarios in which "the" Jewish State could be defeated in the foreseeable future. Thus, Israel's chances for peace are now slimmer than in the past.]
Likewise, many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state. It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true.
[Comment: Why did President Obama choose to say "many" Israelis when he could just as easily with truth have said "most" Israelis? For almost two decades, public opinion polls have demonstrated that most Israelis are willing to welcome a new Palestinian State in return for -- suitable security arrangements; an agreed border; and unequivocal Palestinian recognition of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland.
By reading down longstanding Israeli support for the principle of a two-State solution, President Obama was probably trying to leave open the suggestion that peace has not been achieved, partly because the majority of Israelis have yet to accept the principle of permanent partition of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. If that is what President Obama intended to convey, he was clearly mistaken.
Majority Israel support for the principle of a two-State solution has long been available. But, lacking has been Muslim and Arab willingness to accept a full-and-final peace focusing on now implementing the principle of the self-determination of Peoples, while including essential stipulations to ensure that a new Palestinian State could never be a stepping stone toward eventual destruction of Israel as the national home for the Jewish People.]
Too many tears have been shed. Too much blood has been shed.
[Comment: Here President Obama offers cliches. His shallow rhetoric is patently inadequate to address the deepening tragedy of the continuing Muslim and Arab war against Jews, Judaism, the Jewish People and Israel. Prime Minister Golda Meir long ago said that there will be peace when Arabs come to love their children more than they hate Jews. Though intellectually attractive, this principle of a reciprocal end to suffering has practically proven to be an inadequate doctrinal basis upon which to base peace. The principal problem is that most Muslims and Arabs regard the war against the Jews as fundamentally just, not only from a legal and political perspective, but also from a theological perspective. Therefore, Muslims and Arabs generally support the idea of enduring significant suffering to sustain the struggle against Jews, Judaism, the Jewish People and Israel. Thus, by itself, the idea of an end to reciprocal suffering does not suffice.
Reaching peace probably also requires sincere Muslim and Arab acceptance of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel as "the" Jewish State, i.e. as the political expression of the self-determination of the Jewish People in a part of its aboriginal homeland. And, this would be exceedingly difficult to achieve because it presupposes widespread Muslim and Arab understanding that: (1) the Jews are a People within the context of the political and legal doctrine of the self-determination of Peoples; (2) Jews are no longer a minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea; (3) the Jewish People has the strongest claim to be aboriginal to the Holy Land; and (4) from Biblical times, the Mideast has always been home to Jews, including some living in the Holy Land, which for centuries was known to Jews everywhere as "Eretz Israel."]
All of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear; when the Holy Land of the three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims,
[Comment: President Obama here seems to fault Israel with respect to the standards it has met with regard to protection of, and access to, the holy places in Jerusalem. Since June 1967, the three religions have generally had secure and free access to their holy places in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. But, it is well known that Jews were entirely excluded from the Jewish holy places in East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the Jordanian occupation, 1948-1967, when there was also widespread desecration of Jewish cemeteries and holy places there.]
and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra -- (applause) -- as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, peace be upon them, joined in prayer. (Applause)
[Comment: President Obama wants innocent non-Muslims to believe that this is an anodyne ecumenical reference. But, the truth is that this "Isra" remark is a flagrant instance of his practice of dissimulation. President Obama was fairly confident that non-Muslims would not bother to explore this telling "Isra" reference, which is extremely well known to Muslims. In the Koran and the Hadith, "Isra" is the Prophet Mohammed’s (alleged) magical night ride on the horse Burak to Jerusalem. There, in the (then yet to be built) Al-Aqsa mosque, Mohammed's status as the last and most authoritative of the Prophets was (allegedly) validated by his prophetic predecessors, including Moses and Jesus. President Obama's familiarity with the religion of Islam is something that he himself has affirmed and which has also been noted by his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Thus, President Obama probably well understood that Muslims would understand the "Isra" story as endorsing their claim to both Jerusalem and the superiority of their faith over Judaism and Christianity. This sadly neglected passage in the Cairo speech is extremely important evidence of President Obama's arrogance and duplicity. It also reveals the extent to which he adopts the Muslim and Arab narrative.]
[With respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran]
I recognize it will be hard to overcome decades of mistrust, but we will proceed with courage, rectitude, and resolve. There will be many issues to discuss between our two countries, and we are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect. But it is clear to all concerned that when it comes to nuclear weapons, we have reached a decisive point. This is not simply about America's interests. It's about preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East that could lead this region and the world down a hugely dangerous path.
I understand those who protest that some countries have weapons that others do not. No single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons. And that's why I strongly reaffirmed America's commitment to seek a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons. (Applause) And any nation --including Iran-- should have the right to access peaceful nuclear power if it complies with its responsibilities under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That commitment is at the core of the treaty, and it must be kept for all who fully abide by it. And I'm hopeful that all countries in the region can share in this goal.
[Comment: With the phrase "all countries in the region,” President Obama also points to Israel which is generally believed to possess nuclear weapons, but (like nuclear-armed India and Pakistan) never became party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Is President Obama here implying that Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons could also be on the table in potential talks with the Islamic Iran? If so, there is a possibility that President Obama might be considering sacrificing Israel's vital security interests as part of a larger deal to serve his own vision of USA needs in the Mideast.
For decades, there has been a bilateral understanding with Israel that the USA would refrain from publicly addressing whether or not Israel has nuclear weapons. President Obama's remarks here suggest that USA diplomacy should be very carefully scrutinized for any signs of movement in this regard.]
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END
2:05 P.M. (Local)
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