2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumDon't Be Naïve. That Speech Was a Revolution
http://prospect.org/article/dont-be-na%C3%AFve-speech-was-revolution
Don't Be Naïve. That Speech Was a Revolution
Gershom Gorenberg
March 25, 2013
Obama told Israelis last week that the occupation is destroying their country's future.
flickr/AJstream
Barack Obama acknowledges the crowd after his speech last week at the Jerusalem Convention Center.
After a couple of days for careful reflection, it's clear: Barack Obama gave an amazing speech. The president of the United States stood in a hall in Jerusalem, and with empathy and with bluntness that has been absent for so long we forgot it could exist, told Israelis: The occupation can't go on. It's destroying your own future. And besides that, Palestinians have "a right to justice" and "to be a free people in their own land."
If you don't think this is a breakthrough, you are letting naïve pessimism overcome realism. Yes, it's true that one speech will be worth nothing if not followed by intense American diplomacy. That comment has become banal. A realistic assessment is that Obama's visit, and the speech, were the opening act of an American diplomatic efforta near perfect opening.
The first breakthrough was in method: Obama started by negotiating with the Israeli public. The choice of venue, an auditorium full of university students rather than the Knesset, was not a glitch, as many people thought beforehand. The venue was the message: The politicians have been too slow, so I'm stepping around them to talk to normal Israelis first.
snip//
Yet even the first piece of the speech wasn't quite the shmaltz it seemed to be. Obama told Israelis that he understood their fears. That was necessary before challenging the fears. But when he said in Hebrew, "You're not alone," he was not just offering support. He was directly challenging the narrative of fear on which Benjamin Netanyahu's politics are built. "Chill," Obama was saying. "It's not 1938. You are not about to be wiped off the map." And therefore, he was saying, you can consider the internal threats to Israel's future, the damage done by occupation, and you can make peace.
The most direct, powerful part of the speech was when Obama said that the Palestinians' "right to justice must also be recognized," when he told Israelis that settlement, and roadblocks, and settler violence are unjust. No American president has dared state that stark message before an Israeli audience beforeor before an American one. To underline it, he borrowed the line, "to be a free people in our land," directly from the Israeli national anthem. "Palestinians," he said, "have a right to be a free people in their land." The words that define your story of yourselves, that move you even when you are tired of them and think they are kitsch, Obama suggested to Israelis, are the words that should help you empathize with Palestinians.
snip//
One speech doesn't make a peace process. But as the beginning of a process, this speech was a revolution.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)babylonsister
(171,070 posts)not in Israel or here...
No American president has dared state that stark message before an Israeli audience beforeor before an American one.
Benton D Struckcheon
(2,347 posts)Kinda like when he mentioned Stonewall in the Inaugural, eh? Looks like there were a few times in that speech when he must have had heads spinning.
Politicub
(12,165 posts)long after they are delivered.
The Seneca Falls, to Selma to Stonewall line has reverberated in my mind from the moment I heard it.
proverbialwisdom
(4,959 posts)Pirate Smile
(27,617 posts)expanded Civil Rights.
His post-New Hampshire primary Yes We Can Speech was like that too.
Social Studies teachers should use it.
iandhr
(6,852 posts)loyalsister
(13,390 posts)"We coach little league in the blue states, and yeah, we've got some gay friends in the red states."
Politicub
(12,165 posts)msongs
(67,413 posts)emulatorloo
(44,131 posts)RedstDem
(1,239 posts)until they change their apartheid policies....
ellaydubya
(354 posts)How simple, how easy....directly to those that can make a real difference, not a political one. One smart man, our president.
oldhippydude
(2,514 posts)it seems to me that this should be viewed at least in some part, with President Obama's speech to the Muslim world... building on diplomacy and events from he first Obama term..
while the jury is still out.. President Obama will go down in History as a one who united.... we are fortunate to have a leader with such foresight, and ability
cheapdate
(3,811 posts)Bolo Boffin
(23,796 posts)There are not many places in the Middle East where anyone could give a similar speech, not even the President. When he spoke before the Turkish parliament, he was able to broach the subject of the Armenian genocide, but he couldn't speak about it directly.
Israel, whatever faults and flaws we can agree are there, is a place where such a speech can be made. Barack Obama also showed that to the world in this speech.
liberal from boston
(856 posts)Lawrence O'Donnell did an excellent analysis of President Obama 's Israel speech last Thursday & then followed it with an in-depth discussion w/ EJ Dionne & Alex Wagner. I do not have the link but it is on MSNBC Last Word Blog!!! This speech was the one that President Obama was heckled & majority of the audience were college students who gave the President more than one standing ovation.
Hekate
(90,714 posts)Take that, Bibi Netanyahu and Neocons!
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)not themselves. For them the Holocaust is a reality but a historical reality.
For the young in Palestine, living in what is now Israel is not part of their conscious memories. They do not recall the layout of the streets, the life there.
In this country, immigrants lose the memory of where they came from in a couple of generations. That happens everywhere.
cprise
(8,445 posts)I can't image what his words have to do with his actions.
bhikkhu
(10,718 posts)...looking at the long civil rights movement, the history of the votes for women movement, the sea-change in workers rights a hundred years ago, etc. One person can't "do" much, but can act as a catalyst inspiring others to action.
iandhr
(6,852 posts)... to get involved in THER countries future and that a two state solution is essential to Israel's survival as a jewish and democratic state.
ZRT2209
(1,357 posts)MynameisBlarney
(2,979 posts)But the question is, is are childerns larnin?
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)And young people in Israel are the most racist age group--they are not going to give a crap what a dark-skinned American with a Muslim/Arab name tells them about justice. Yeah that sounds brutal but Israel was the only country on the planet rooting for Mitt Romney.
Nearly half of Israel's high school students do not believe that Israeli-Arabs are entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel, according to the results of a new survey released yesterday. The same poll revealed that more than half the students would deny Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/poll-half-of-israeli-high-schoolers-oppose-equal-rights-for-arabs-1.264564
The survey, supervised by Tel Aviv University statistician Camil Fuchs (who also supervises Haaretz-Dialog polls), found that 21 percent of Jewish students starting their last year of high school, and 2012 high school graduates, believe that refugees already in Israel should be granted residency status, compared with 58 percent who think refugees should be deported and 46 percent who think their children should be. Ultra-Orthodox teens were not included in the survey.
There was a stark difference in the degree to which various segments of the Jewish population expressed an interest in living next to an Arab family, with 86 percent of religious seniors saying they would not want to do so - nearly double the figure for other Israeli Jews.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/most-israeli-12th-graders-support-deportation-of-african-refugees-1.459813
Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)Let us also bear this in mind for perspective:
Majority of Americans believe illegal immigrants should be deported
By Rachelle Younglai, Reuters
WASHINGTON More than half of U.S. citizens believe that most or all of the country's 11 million illegal immigrants should be deported, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday that highlights the difficulties facing lawmakers trying to reform the U.S. immigration system.
By Rachelle Younglai, Reuters
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/20/17035190-majority-of-americans-believe-illegal-immigrants-should-be-deported?lite
And this is perhaps the most on point information. Note the shift came after the President's words favoring equality.
Recent polls show increasing support for same-sex marriage among blacks. A national exit poll by Edison Research shows that black voters favored their state legalizing gay marriage, 51 to 41 percent. Pew polls have also showed an increase from 36 percent in 2011 to 44 percent last month supporting gay marriage.
http://www.christianpost.com/news/polls-show-sudden-increase-in-black-support-for-gay-marriage-84738/
So in 2011, 64% opposed equal rights for gay people. Would you have used the same very strong characterizations of them, as well as the certainty that their opinions were unalterable? Of course you didn't and wouldn't.
Facts are funny because the more we deal in them, the more we see that humans are very alike all over the place.
Stuart G
(38,434 posts)libodem
(19,288 posts)In my heart.. in a good way.
Hell Hath No Fury
(16,327 posts)And illustrated it perfectly on last night's show. It only sounds new if you haven't been paying attention for the past 20 years.
Generation_Why
(97 posts)Go shit on another thread.
AnotherMcIntosh
(11,064 posts)hue
(4,949 posts)This is a masterful message! Let's hope it gathers momentum and becomes actualized!!!
Dark n Stormy Knight
(9,760 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)...just sayin' I just wish I felt this way a bit more often.
I am genuinely happy that Obama stood up to the right-wing
Mossadnic Zionists. The Islamic nations need to see the USA
doing and saying what Obama is saying. Now for the doing,
the more challenging aspect of good statesmanship, or
"StatesPersonShip", if you prefer.
Cha
(297,285 posts)Also thanks to Gershom Gorenberg for analyzing his speech and letting it be clear exactly what happened.
Let it Open The Door