Obama says people need to acknowledge complexity of Israel-Palestinian conflict to move forward
Obama says people need to acknowledge complexity of Israel-Palestinian conflict to move forward
Former President Barack Obama weighed in on the violence in Gaza, saying any constructive action would require acknowledging the complexity of the situation.
Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it. And … that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable,” Obama said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
The former president’s comments come as the Israeli military focuses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City and northern parts of the enclave.
Sadly, there is no way forward. The leaders of both sides want the complete elimination of the other.
So remove the leaders of both sides.
Exactly. I've been recently thinking that maybe Israel and Palestine become a new country run by the world. It becomes a neutral globally enforced and patrolled market or exchange. Almost like a U.N. country, but somehow better because the U.N seems like a fucking joke. I'm not sure exactly what I mean here, but essentially, the world removes the two and force them to be one.
Even though it is complex, there are obvious crimes, let alone war crimes happening there. Looking at you IDF with your repeated bombing of civilians and the wounded.
Take away their toys and put them in time oot.
Ah. Yes. That's the easy way to do it.
Lol not true. Palestine disarmed in the Westbank and got nothing except brutal apartheid and evictions as a result.
And we can stop giving them money unless they start playing nice.
It's not the government who is settling the West Bank. Yes, it is their policy, but it's regular Israeli citizens who are killing Palestinians, burning their homes down or taking their homes from them and driving them away.
I mean, the government is incentivizing it and enabling it.
Settlers wouldn't settle the West Bank if the Israeli military wasn't protecting them. The government is absolutely the problem.
Go try and take someone's home by force. It won't go well. But it will go a lot better when it's sanctioned by an overwhelming military force.
And in turn, Western governments are enabling the Israeli government. If the West sanctioned Israel as hard as they sanctioned Iran or Russia, they'd probably think twice about annexing the West Bank. But instead of sanctions they get weapons.
enact a european style democratic state with no official religious affiliation. problem solved. jews and muslims don't actually hate each other. they live side by side all the time.
He also said:
If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth. And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean
which is something I totally agree on. There is no "good or bad" team in the Middle East...all parties are involved in this conflict and it's cause!
Hey, don't forget those of us who made this mess and walked away, and every country on Earth that continues to keep the whole Middle East area relevant through our continued oil addiction.
Hey, don't forget those of us who made this mess and walked away,
The early 20th century British Empire?
through our continued oil addiction.
Israel, let alone Gaza, don't exactly produce a lot of oil, and I certainly don't know that they sell it.
This whole conflict in Israel is more about land, and the West supports Israel bEcAuSe DeMoCrAcY in an otherwise unfriendly region. The region as a whole might be messy "because oil," but that's rather tangential to this conflict.
“You take my water, burn my olive trees, destroy my house, take my job, steal my land, imprison my father, kill my mother, bombard my country, starve us all, humiliate us all, but I am to blame: I shot a rocket back.”
Could we have this guy back, please?
Nah, he might seem reasonable here but his foreign policy scatterbrain pattern is part of why Ukraine is in such dire straights now. Man hesitated to stand up to Russia when they went into crimea, the point when they could have been stopped, and where Ukraine could have been swept into the EU orbit with far less bloodshed.
The “lead from behind” guy who delivered $4 billion in cash by US military to Iran? No Thanks
The guy whose quantity of melanin drove Bubbas insane?
"It's the WHITE HOUSE!"
The guy who doesn't understand that genocide is not at all complex? The guy who bombed a wedding and a hospital? And intentionally targeted American citizens with drone strikes? No thanks.
The drone strike guy who didn't close gitmo?
What israel is doing in Palestine is what oBomber did during his entire presidency.
Let's judge people on their actions instead of hollow words. Even the walking orange did better than Obama when it comes to foreign policy by withdrawing from Afghanistan.
High school never ends [for now]. Remember that, people.
And when you distill complex conduct into easy bites about said high schoolers, the other high schoolers of the world will take high schooler level actions.
Perhaps we need a more educated world to move forward...
We certainly are catering to the least intelligent among us in almost every respect. Oddly enough I was thinking about this earlier tonight.
I went to use the bathroom at a restaurant and they had some framed newspapers hanging up in there that were run by the local newspaper in 1918. The whole front page was news about WWI but it looked very different from war coverage in newspapers today. Each article was very detailed and covered distinct parts of the conflict during that week. There were sections on American, Canadian, and English troops detailing whether they had advanced or retreated, how much fighting they had to do, and references to commanding officers, obscure geographic landmarks, and lines from speeches made by foreign leaders. It was clear from the way they were written that the author expected his audience to be familiar with all of this to the point that he could mention them in passing without offering any explanation as to how they were related or what significance they held.
This is in stark contrast to current reporting on the Palestinian conflict and to a lesser degree the war in Ukraine. Journalists rarely mention details in such a way and when they do they offer much more context, assuming the reader is unfamiliar with much of what is being discussed. Of course, they're not wrong in that assessment but I do wonder how much of that has to do with the public being slowly conditioned to expect simplicity in reporting. These articles often read more like a political interpretation than a description of events. Nuance and the expectation of sustained interest in the subject seems almost entirely absent.
During my relatively long life I've witnessed journalism morph from giving information to forming opinion. Sometimes they do it openly, sometimes they try to pass it as the context you mention.
I believe context is necessary now because of how fragmented people's attention is. We used to have 5 tv channels and two main newspapers and that was it. It was easier to keep the focus and remember the context back then.
Or, rather, we were all inside the same information bubble. Now everyone is in their own bubble, and there's no more common understanding of reality.
This conflict makes it super clear, because of its complexity and long history, that people don't have the time or bandwidth to understand the whole thing and end up repeating what they hear inside their bubble.
For example: your opinion is largely influenced by your location and your own history, much more than by the facts of the conflict. I come from Argentina, where most people support Israel, and I live in Ireland, where most people support the Palestinians. There's understandable reasons for that. Argentina suffered two Islamic terrorist attacks against local Jewish institutions, while Irish people identify with Palestinians because of the British oppression.
I personally live in my own bubble of course, we all do. I know my opinion is heavily influenced by my own history.
As a consequence I end up getting involved in online discussions where I argue for nuance and against simplification, but that just puts me on the "wrong side" of both "sides". So for my own mental health I've been trying to stop participating. I only wanted to chime in here because your comment seemed to capture some of what I think.
Education isn't the problem. It's self control. People think they prioritize rational decisions but if that were true, cigarettes would be long gone and global warming would be solved. We prioritize feelings which is why GOP loves to fear monger and push religion. Nothing scarier than a eternal suffering, especially since eternity lasts a long time.
In this case, we have two countries that have held a religious divide for decades based on who believes they're actually worshipping the correct people so they don't get sent to eternal suffering. Except, they're willing to kill for their religious text because they feel so deeply that theirs is superior.
How can we as outsiders possibly take the right actions when the irrational people are willing to commit genocide over their feelings brains?
I would argue education is important, because this isn't actually really a religious conflict, and perpetuating that belief causes harm - namely that this is some intractable millennia old conflict rooted in fundamental beliefs and not one only a hundred years old largely just about lines on a map.
2,000 years ago the region was largely inhabited by Jews, under the Roman Empire, and known as Judaea. With the split of the Roman Empire by around 300AD, the region became known as Palaestine under the Byzantine Empire, and obviously started seeing a lot of Christian activity. By the 800s, the region was conquered by Islamic caliphates, and by the 1500s was part of the Ottoman Empire. For nearly 400 years Jews, Muslims, and Christians all got along perfectly fine in Palestine under the Ottomans.
But with WW1, Britain was fighting the Ottomans. Britain promised the region to the people who by that point came to see themselves as "Palestinians" (largely Muslim but with a sizable Christian minority), as well as to Jewish diaspora if they'd help fight the Ottomans. They did, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and Britain created the state of Mandatory Palestine, but decided to just keep it and rule it themselves. This was an unpopular move, but to make sure they didn't have to fight everyone, manufactured Jewish vs Palestinian antagonism so they'd just fight each other instead of British colonial rule. This unfortunately worked.
After WW2, Britain decided it didn't want all its colonies anymore, especially the mess it created in Palestine, so just left and told the brand new UN to fix it. The UN drew some borders, which the newly created modern nation of Israel was fine with. The people who would inhabit the newly created modern nation of Palestine were not fine with it, nor were the other neighboring nations, so there was a war in '48 and it's basically gone down hill from there.
I'm not a historian and that's a very, very, very superficial explanation of one of the longest inhabited regions in the planet, but it's just worth noting this conflict is not really religious in nature. It's two peoples, of various religions (or no religion at all, since there are secular Jews), who are fighting over land and recognition as a sovereign state due to a manufactured nationalism and border dispute barely more than 100 years old.
A more educated world, or a less educated one. If there is nobody around to teach the tradition of violence in the region, nobody would have any interest in perpetuating it.
maybe I just need coffee but this seems completely incoherent to me
Or did your education stop at middle school?
Reddit probably rotted my brain, but I'm struggling to determine how this is anything but "everyone sucks here." On this matter, I don't think anyone has been truly in the right in a century. Can anyone provide a convincing argument otherwise?
I think he's trying to get around the black and white viewpoints, and bring up the idea that Israel is committing war crimes here, which is outside the Overton window on the subject currently in US politics.
Exactly. One does not do politics and convince their opposition if they don't use conciliating language.
Nah, you can go through the comments here and find people taking the easy, position here too. "Bombing kids is bad, so Israel is bad, so Palestine must be good, therefore I support Palestine." No nuance, no attempts to look at a more complex situation or consider anything other than the most basic information.
Both sides suck, both sides will happily commit war crimes, and civilians on both sides are getting hurt. One side is getting more hurt than the other, but that's just a difference in capability, not belief.
It's the official policy of many of the most powerful nations of the world that only Palestine sucks here and that Israel can do no wrong and must be supported unconditionally. An "everyone sucks here" position would be much closer to the truth.
Palestinians and Israelis are overall fine, except when you have to listen to them talk about each other, it's their governments that are so fucked.
This entire conflict is a story of overstepping state entities victimizing innocent civilians on both sides of this war nobody but them and their cronies wanted.
As much as we all hate comments like this...
"This."
(Well said. Short, to the point, and the best summary I've seen in a while.)
The victims. They are in the right. But they have no voice. Ironically though, as toxic as social media is, governments can't get by with the same shit that they did 50 years ago (Sauce: US in Central America).
That's basically the rational take here. Israel was attacked and is defending itself, but going far and beyond self defense using the extermination of terrorists as an excuse to commit genocide. Palestinian civilians are caught up in the crossfire and are innocent of any wrongdoing, but the Palestinian government knowingly harbors Hamas within their borders and refuses to cooperate with Israel at every opportunity to create a two state system. Finally, there's Hamas, who are bad guys full stop with no redeeming qualities.
So, Obama's take is pretty solid. Nobody has their hands clean in all of this and everybody sucks, but there are still ways to stop the bloodshed, but those solutions are complicated. Especially when nobody really wants to come to the negotiation table right now. Israeli citizens right now remind me of American citizens in the wake of 9/11 - bloodthirsty and hungry for vengeance at any cost. So long as they remain furious, Netanyahu has a clear political motivation to continue the attacks.
This did not start this past October. Israel has been treating Gaza as an open air prison for over a decade. And before that there's all the settler bullshit and decades of war crimes justified by dehumanizing Palestinians.
Of course the Palestinians haven't been peaceful. Neither side has been peaceful since the 1940's.
The government of Gaza is Hamas, elected in 2007.
Israeli civilians have also been caught in the crossfire. You know from the terrorist attack they committed 3 weeks ago that killed 1,400 and then the 200 innocent people they kidnapped and imprisoned as hostages somewhere in Gaza, which is what this is all about?
If Hamas freed the hostages, Israel would have a much harder time conducting this war in the way they are, but you can’t literally kidnap someone’s citizens and expect anything less.
Here is a 2 minute video about being able to hold the idea that Hamas and Israel are both in the wrong and civilians are getting hurt on both sides as a result.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/L0Zb9iUi0JM
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It's not true that civilians are getting hurt in Gaza because of Hamas. They were already being killed off before the attacks.
"It's complicated" is a constantly used rhetorical strategy by those in power to put off moral judgement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxC5HhKQ5ks 80 second video. This situation isn't complicated at all.
Michael Brooks is missed. Great name btw.
I truly do think that Islamophobia and the United States having a lot of historical and economic ties to Israel are why we've allowed this to go on unchecked for decades.
Public opinion is definitely shifting in favor of Palestine though.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=RxC5HhKQ5ks
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I think that's basically what he's saying with more words. You're not wrong in this case, but the "everybody sucks here" line is most often used by people who don't actually know the details of what they're talking about, but need to have an opinion on the record. (Other recent example being the Ukraine war situation)
In my opinion, this whole situation is too drunk guys who got in a fight over something stupid. Palestine got knocked out early, and so Israel is being vilified simply for being the one still standing, but now Palestine has got up and kidney punched Israel while it was turned away, and people are rooting for the underdog since they got back up. The problem with this, and the reason that Obama is speaking the way that he is, is because people seem to be forgetting all of the other horrible things that Hamas has done too, because they're currently the crowd favorite.
So yes, everybody sucks here, and I think people are having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that, sometimes in a fight, there isn't actually a 100% good guy. It's just too drunk guys getting in a fight over something stupid.
the “everybody sucks here” line is most often used by people who don’t actually know the details of what they’re talking about
Agree or disagree with other people's opinions, so be it. But this comment is such a unearned hand waving away of other people's thoughtful comments/opinions made on the subject, and it's not a true representation of what's going on.
Your analogy assumes some sort of equivalency between the two drunk men, but in reality there's a huge discrepancy of power between Israel and Palestine, one so vast that your analogy comes off as reductive. It's not just "two drunk guys in a fight", it's more like a drunk guy and a child, which the drunk guy has been picking fights with since the child was born, and all of the drunk guy's friends keep helping him beat this child up.
It's a tale as old as time. Just like the Hatfields and McCoys. They've hated each other for so long neither side remembers what started it and both sides have a list of grievances longer than they can keep track of and the score can never be settled. It's to the point where there is no right side; both are wrong. You can make arguments that one side is more wrong than the other, but I'm not in favor of a "let the least wrong win" approach. Both sides are objectively wrong and both sides must stop.
Thanks. People want to pretend this started a month ago and not understand the history.
Because the truth is that Israel is WAY worse than Palestine. They're openly calling for genocide. Resistance to oppression is good, actually, and so basically whatever Palestine does while still being oppressed is morally fine, while Israel continuing to oppress them is not. Anything anybody says criticizing palestine's reaction to oppression is whataboutism, because they're literally the victims of genocide.
Hamas is openly calling for genocide too, and they've been doing it longer than Israel.
Also, funny story, Israel is also literally the victims of genocide, (the Holocaust?), which is why their motto is "never again".
There is no "way worse", just ignorant keyboard warriors, and a shitty situation made worse by shitty people.
If the entire holy land was nuked and radioactive, people would still try to occupy the wasteland so they could get back in first. Don't think there is a solution
Honestly, this is nonsense.
They aren't fighting over Jerusalem or Bethlehem or Jericho. This is a war over grazing lands and a beach town.
If you look away from Gaza for a moment to the other Palestinian territory -- the occupied West Bank -- you'll see gangs of a hooligans in pickup trucks with ski masks smashing water wells and killing cattle in small desert towns like it's high noon at the O.K. Corral.
The whole religious component is largely a distraction. There are people living on real estate that other people who have much bigger guns want. The solution is the same as it's always been: give folks a fair deal.
It's not a coincidence that this latest conflict is in Gaza. Gaza isn't religiously significant. It's just the densest, most brutal concentration camp in Israel. This is not over religion.
There is oil just off Gaza's coast. But Israhell already controls that.
Tiktok says this is all about the Ben Gurion Canal Project. I haven't had the time to validate the potential veracity, but it seemed like an interesting rabbit hole.
Flood it. God.did; worked apparently.
*Albeit briefly. So, I reckon we can shift the gulf some.
The radioactive halflife of a nuke explosion is quite short, if we want a long term solution we need...Chernobyl 2.
nuclear boogaloo
how about an agnostic democracy that israelis and palestinians can both live in? like a european country or something...
Yeah, but the whole point of Israel, is that it's a home for Jewish people. That this apparently means an ethno apartheid state, is revolting. I have yet to hear a zionist to provide a good solution.
On that front Obama is correct: how are you going to create a Jewish state surrounded by Muslim states that oppose your existence fundamentally?
But at this point you can argue that living as a Palestinian in Israel and the occupied territories is worse than living in many (but clearly not all) Muslim countries as a non-Muslim.
So religious states, democracies or not, do exist and kinda can make it work in some cases, even if I would prefer a secular democracy for myself any day.
It’s still a good idea.
It's actually pretty easy if you stop requiring support for settler colonialism. The rest of the world left that behind 70 years ago. Israel doesn't get to be special they can either give Palestinians voting rights (which would obliterate the idea of a Jewish state) or submit to a UN peacekeeping force between them and the Palestinians on the 1949 borders.
The only reason this is hard is because we keep bending over backwards to support their Apartheid. We know these answers. They've been done before.
The rest of the world left that behind 70 years ago.
lol
Okay. Where else in the world is settler colonialism actively being practiced? I'd really like to know, because they need to be put on blast too.
The complexity is that Israel (specifically Netanyahu has gone rouge, saying nothing will stop what they are doing) and that is starting to have consequences for Democrats, and the US world image. This, along with Blinkens recent statements, are a subtle way of telling them to stop, without Biden going back on his full support of Israel.
It is the foundations of deniability, so that if the critiques of war crime and genocide come fully to light in the public eye, the US has ground to shift to. Those drones capturing footage over Gaza can quickly be used to support whatever narrative shift the US deems most advantageous. Can the Dems lose support of Arab Americans and their allies? Can/will they lose Jewish support at home if crimes are unmasked and is that number more or less than being on the "right side" of things?
These are likely the questions that are swirling around the White House and State Department as we speak. Time is of the essence, as 2.5 million people are on the verge of succumbing to dehydration and starvation. If those distributions are equal, a heart breaking cataclysm, in the form of a mass casualty event, could occur at any time. 10,000. 100,000. Who knows how many won't be able to be saved even once aid comes through. Medical capacity is needed to reverse these things and none exists any longer. The UN is warning of this.
If it happens, blame will need to be swift to maintain appearances and Israel is running the risk of becoming the "Voldemort" of the Middle East overnight.
He wouldn't be the first powerful guy supported or even brought up by the US going rogue.
We don't talk about what happened with Sadam...
There are complex issues to solve, sure, but there's nothing complicated about the fact that we need to let humanitarian aid in and stop killing children, right this fucking minute. There are no excuses for what is happening right now.
"Stop killing children" should be enforced in both countries, though. It's not like Hamas is protecting the children in Gaza. Quite the opposite really.
No argument there, and I did not intend for my comment to say anything else.
I'm not saying the details of it are not complicated.
History is always complicated
Present events are always complicated
But the way this is reported in the western media is as though one needs a PhD in Middle Eastern studies to understand the basic morality of holding a people in a situation in which they don't have basic rights including the right that we treasure most the franchise the right to vote and then declaring that state a democracy
is actually not that hard to understand.
I'm actually not sure which country you are talking about now. I don't know of anyone who calls Palestine a democracy. I think the reason people call Israel a democracy is that Israeli citizens have free elections and are not oppressed. I don't think they factor in oppression of other countries when they call something a democracy. If they did, the US and UK wouldn't count as democracies either.
Well there are 240 hostages that are held captive in an underground lair by some psychopaths. The PM of Israel may not want to keep those people there any longer than necessary.
Perhaps Hamas should release the hostages so there's no longer a reason for Israel to deny calls for a ceasefire?
Odd that no one is calling on Hamas to do this, isn't it? It's almost like everyone knows Hamas is evil and will continue to keep those people imprisoned. But if we're demanding Israel to do things we know they won't do, why not also demand Hamas to do things we know they won't do?
"Genocide is bad and we should halt donated weapons to countries committing genocide" - very easy policy most people will agree on.
but they won't agree on what constitutes genocide
"We should halt all aid to terrorists and terrorist states." - very easy policy most people will agree on.
Absolutely not. Citizens can be just as much a victim of terrorist states as those they affect beyond their borders, and are just as deserving of humanitarian aid as any other civilian in an active warzone.
Ok, it's get real time: the ONLY reason the US supports Israel is because it's a staging area if shit kicks off in the middle east. That's it. The "Jesus" stuff if just an excuse to appease the zealots. And my opinion isn't anti-Semitism. It's anti-genocide.
Probably one of the most complex issues that I don't see being brought up is Gaza's culture built around Sharia law.
Yeah, there are plenty of innocent people are children suffering. This still doesn't mean that if Gazans had there way, Israel would be a better place.
That said, the US should end all aid to Israel and let them fund their own genocide. They can afford it. They have a fucking intel fab for fuck's sake.
This feels a bit like saying "you know, the trail of tears was bad, but we don't bring up the complex issues of Cherokee slavery".
Sharia law isn't a monolithic belief and is subject to reform. But it's entirely a secondary consideration when you have a state committing genocide.
Yes.
Do you have any understanding of the Palestinian history? Isreal funded religious extremism in order to opposed the leftist secularist political organizing within Gaza.
Do you have any understanding of the Palestinian history?
why would they? it's not like the west has painted muslims and the middle east people as the bad guy for decadessss. From media to hollywood, middle east is a lawless hellhole and they had no hand it making it that way. like at all…
most of them probably can't even find them in a map, but once they see a middle eastern anywhere, they know they have to instantly hate on them.
'we didn't realise they were going to use the weapons like that'
We thought they were going to build schools and hospitals with those bombs!
Christopher Hitchens made an argument regarding the religious undertones of the conflict and why peace cannot easily be found. https://piped.video/watch?v=rc90pcx6kNU
Of course, by this point there's also hate passed on from one generation to the next.
The problem is that no American has any credibility: historically fucking over poor and indigenous communities has been an average Tuesday for the US. There is no path out of this that makes anyone happy. Killing people is never okay and trying to justify it based upon "complexity" is insulting. Fuck religious zealots.
There is no path out of this that makes anyone happy.
I really wish everyone would accept this so world leaders could just buckle down and resolve any sort of permanent solution. Israel would have to make concessions but oh boo-fucking-hoo. The Palestinians don't even have anything they could concede in the first place. Hell, the only thing Hamas would have to concede is "No, you don't get to destroy Israel," since anything else they'd get in a permanent agreement is going to be a step up from the current situation. The UN is fucking impotent though and partially responsible in the first place, but even with the power they do have seem unwilling to use it to try and fix anything. The whole time the US is happy to sell as many weapons as possible to Israel just on the off chance Iran looks the wrong way, but as long as a bomb lands on an Arab we're seemingly not too fussed about it. Wonder how quickly Israel would be willing to make concessions towards a two-state solution if the West told them "no more weapons."
More breaking news. Obama says breathing is good for your health.
And while you say this, this thread is full of people claiming it is actually very simple. sigh
No shit Sherlock! But the keyboard warriors on the internet with dumb takes aren't the ones enabling and funding the killing of civilians though, are they?
This guy has been, since well, he's a US president so it must come naturally.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it.
And … that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable,” Obama said in an interview on the podcast “Pod Save America.”
The former president’s comments come as the Israeli military focuses its offensive against Hamas in Gaza City and northern parts of the enclave.
Behind the scenes, American officials also believe there is limited time for Israel to try to accomplish its stated objective of taking out Hamas in its current operation before uproar over the humanitarian suffering and civilian casualties reaches a tipping point.
If you genuinely want to change this … you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about and not dismiss it,” Obama said.
The original article contains 268 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 32%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Fuck Israel. They get a free pass every time.
How about Hamas? You seem to be willing to give them a free pass while they still have 200 hostages somewhere in a bunker or tunnel?
Hamas are rotten fucking scumbags. Yet, it's crystal clear that Israel has been able to do whatever they want for as long as I remember. Which is decades. Fuck Israel.
Are you going to condem the terrorizing and slaughter of countless Palestinian children by Israel?
If he is talking about the complexity of the human, tribal brain, I agree.
former drone striker in chief trying to remind us of his legacy of absolutely failing to acknowledge, let alone tackle, the role of US imperialism in the middle east.
This specific conflict is more related to early 20th Century Britain promising two different people the same land after the Ottoman Empire collapsed and then being dicks about it for another 20 years. So UK imperialism, not US for once.
The US certainly still arms Israel, but the US arms basically anyone they consider an ally. The US would arm Israel if Palestine were its own state, were part of Israel, or if the whole conflict never happened. But Israel wouldn't have existed at all past '67 without Western equipment.
It feels like Israel uses its own population as a buffer between the IDF and hamas. That and the sheer audacity to have a concert right next to Gaza was a recipe for disaster that Israel took advantage of for its own ambitions. It's certainly short sighted to think Israel and the US can get rid of hamas. The US should have learned this lesson in Iraq when they created a vacuum after they removed sadam. Palestine definitely has the world's favor right now and hamas would be smart to play on that
That and the sheer audacity to have a concert right next to Gaza was a recipe for disaster that Israel took advantage of for its own ambitions.
It's not like the Israeli government intentionally set up a music festival next door to Hamas to get participants killed. Your implication is incredibly nefarious. This was a privately run festival full of people who were advocating for Palestinian rights, set up more than 3km away from the border. How much of a buffer zone between Gaza and Israel are you suggesting there should be? 5km? 10km? For context, the width of Gaza is as narrow as 4.5km.
You're right. What an unpredictable reaction by Hamas. They really went too far that time. How could they not appreciate what those concert goers were doing for them?! They really were about to turn a corner towards peace. Israel was 🤏🏿 from lifting the apartheid but forget it now! All that work out the window coz of what Hamas did October 7. Sorry Palestine, you really messed up this time.
Thank you kind stranger for sparing some wisdom and making me see the light. Ahh thanka youuu
The world needs to stsrting usiing proper words: what Israel is trying to achieve in Palestine is an Holocaust.
No no, its only a Holocaust if it comes from the German Region.
This is just sparkling genocide.
Former President Barack Obama said a way forward for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is only possible if people acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation.
It's a hOlOCaUsT !!!111
Obama, be trolling
he’ll do anything for Iran
Seriously, you Americans had one great president. He also seems plenty young (when compared to other presidents) enough to be one again. Can't you elect him again or something? He needs more time as boss to do his thing.
Sadly, no. If he could run an unlimited amount, then we might have another king like it's 1776 all over again!
He was a pretty good president, but it's probably for the best that there's a 2 term limit.
yeah yeah it's complex. Apartheid in South Africa, Nazism was also rocket science.
To be able to indoctrinate a thousand people into being capable of the atrocities committed on October 7, you have to teach people from a very young age that the enemy is not human, but demons and that no form a violence is unacceptable to use against them. Hamas has been the government of Gaza (and therefore in control of the schools) for enough time to indoctrinate children from a very young age all the way up to adulthood.
If you're looking for comparisons to Nazis, maybe consider applying some of those comparisons to the group whose goal is to kill Jews. Internet contrarianism is fun and all, but this has gotten out of hand.
If you're looking to compare to genocide, maybe consider the group in power that started off saying they just want an ethnostate and they will relocate some people, and when that becomes unfeasible they begin to murder them en masse...
You seem just as biased as anyone else here. If you want to champion Obama's complexity you should be willing to check that bias.
Are you talking about Tsahal? And what about these girls signing isreali bombs?
and if you think it is fake or AI-fied (nbcnews) https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/newscms/2020_02/3174521/200107-kiryat_shmona-mc-11274.JPG
this f**king joke has no right to tell anyone how to move forward
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/jill-stein-2012-debate-arrest-hofstra-university/
his solutions for peace involved chaining people to chairs for wanting equal rights
uh yeah. no. what people need to acknowledge is that israel shouldn't be there and that dipshits shouldn't use the bible to create nations. how the fuck did you think it would turn out. blood blood blood
I'm squarely Pro-Palestinian in this conflict, but I will say it: what you're saying is bullshit.
Israel should exist.
If not due to the fact that Jews in Palestine existed before Zionism and have a right just as much as other Palestinians to want a country.
If not due to the fact that some 60% of Israelis are Mizrahis, i.e., Arab Jews that were kicked out of virtually every other Arab country.
If not due to the fact that the Two State Solution, endorsed by basically the entire international community via the UN (resolution 242), means that ...Israel should also exist.
If not due to any of those things.... simply because 75 years after the founding of Israel, an Israeli nation exists. Entire generations of people have been raised with this self identity. They have the right to exist.
There is no putting the genie back in the bottle. Israel exists, and the Israeli people exists as an entity not exactly the same as the Jewish people. The debate about Israel's existence is a waste of time and it does a disservice to the Palestinian cause.
Why do people claim UN is a democratic organization and not the one for the superpowers benefits? that can veto any resolutions they don't agree with to bully smaller countries into agreement?
Other countries just line up in positions where they get the least amount of economic or political retaliation.
Why do you think no US president or war criminal from US is tried in hague? or why Putin and Xi will live rest of their lives happily without a shred of repercussions?
These cherry picked talking points are getting old.
If Obama was a normal Israeli citizen and said this, he would be in jail right now for "enemy propaganda".
And for those of you saying he would be dead after saying this in Gaza about Hamas, I think Hamas would be a bit busy to cary out that threat.
What kind of bullshit is this. Any Israeli citizen can say this and worse. Don’t be melodramatic.
I am sure Hamas could find the time to kill one more person in their busy schedule.
It's not. The only reason to pretend it is to support Israel's apartheid state.
It is and the only reason to pretend it's not is to support Hamas' terrorists and antisemitism.
They've had 2500 years to work this shit out. The past is dead men's baggage. Stop carrying it.
A bunch of you might not like it, but every heartwarming story about an Israeli and a Palestinian finding love and friendship is because they did exactly this. They clearly need more of it.
Palestine is an Anglicisation. In Arabic it's pronounced Philistine. They have been at each other's throats like this since the Bronze Age. They've had millennia to put the past behind them. This is an ancient, stupid quarrel. Through a continuous vengeance cycle, they made it get this bad. I'm fully aware that European colonialism and American interference (same bloody thing really) only made it worse. I'm sure volumes are written about all I don't understand here.
I wasn't suggesting that a simple policy change of "love your enemy" would fix this complex shitstorm. If I thought I had a solution, I'd write something much longer and still be rightly called stupid, because I'm nobody. I was expressing exasperation with this whole damned situation. I've got nothing else.
What's the complexity?
One country promised a second country a third country's land
It's more like one country took over parts of a falling apart country, people moved into these parts because it felt safer than were they were originally from and their relatives lived there already. So now when the time came to hand over the taken over parts to their residents now you can't just hand it over because the bigger part of the population wants to suppress the smaller part of the population. So the country in charge tries to split the land according to population majority and trying to do everybody right. Majority isn't happy with that, declines every deal, every attempt at a two state solution that would let the minority have a country of their own where they wouldn't be suppressed. Date of handing over passes with no deal, minority declares new country, according to last proposed deal. Neighboring countries and former majority instantly declare war against new country, are should they win prepared to kill and suppress every single member of minority and are already carving up region. They lose, and now everything is "really complex"
If you ask about the complexity of this issue, you tend to get a lot of simplified answer because it's impossible to summarise without cutting out the complexity. It's a story of war and politics, there's no clear cut good guy and bad guy. That's how complex it is.
If not complex how can Israel grab all the land?
If Israelis stop killing Palestinians, then American military contractors can't take billions of dollars from the federal government laundered through Israel in the form of arms deals.
That would make the military industrial complex very sad.
That complexity.
Again, Obama can screw off with these comments because Biden is doing what he would've done in the exact same situation.
Should have acknowledged it as president when he had the chance.
I still can't believe this doofus won a Nobel peace prize for accomplishing nothing of value in Afghanistan.
Obama's in a position where he can say things that he couldn't say when he was president. And it's valuable for him to say it this way.
As a former president, having sat in that seat, having talked to the belligerents, he is incredibly informed. And he now has more political freedom to say what he means
Dude also spearheded the peace talk in 2013-14. Guess who sabotage it? Obama know what's up between this 3 faction, namely Israel, Hamas, and Fatah, and because Israel never wanted to communitcate with Hamas and never really wanted to listen to Fatah, and Hamas Fatah doesn't really like each other, it makes the peace process impossible. It failed because people never wanted to listen.
Obama said he would rather see people “out there talking to people. “Including people who you disagree with. If you genuinely want to change this … you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about and not dismiss it,” Obama said.
