My blogging has been sparse of late due to the cast on my right hand. In the meantime, though, the new international news site, GlobalPost, is marking its launch with a series on Barack Obama’s inauguration as seen from around the world. Here’s my contribution:
The photograph of Barack Obama covered the entire front page of Ha’aretz. He stood with one hand held high, facing what looked like a distant pillar of cloud. Forget comparisons with Abraham Lincoln. This picture said that Obama was Moses, leading the Israelites out of Egypt. The headline – in English, not Hebrew – proclaimed, “Yes We Can.”
Let’s be clear: Hebrew papers do not run English headlines. Ha’aretz is a remarkably staid paper, aimed at people who regard themselves as smart, educated and unemotional. It does not wallpaper its front page with iconic photos – except for this time, when the skeptics in the newsroom were apparently swept away. They were also impatient: That front page was dated Nov. 4, election day. It was printed before any votes were cast, much less counted.
What made all this more remarkable was that through the campaign, the newspaper’s U.S. correspondents had subtly echoed the conservative critique of Obama as insufficiently pro-Israel. On the day of decision, doubt was vanquished by awe: America was defying its history. And Israelis are aware, perhaps too aware, of how the past can imprison people.
That front page was an accurate mirror of the Israeli public mood. Early in the campaign, Obama inspired a mix of curiosity and suspicion here. He was not a known entity, like Hillary Clinton or John McCain. He did not tell the story about the world that George W. Bush had told for eight years, about the forces of good waging unending war against the axis of evil. (Bush’s story reassured many Israelis, because it counted us among the forces of good, and because it confirmed the familiar sense that the conflict in our region was inescapable.) By election day, suspicion gave way to the spectacle of the charismatic outsider marching to victory, and of America showing that it could still do that American thing: reinventing itself.
Yet, I don’t think most Israelis have noticed the aspect of Obama’s victory that is most important for us and our neighbors. He was able to overcome America’s history of racism because he deliberately rewrote that history…
Read the rest here; comment at GlobalPost or and come back to SoJo.
I have lived the past 8 years in the Bush American Southwest. Only our enemies died. Only dangerous people where “rendented.” Only the guilty were imprisoned. There were no mistakes. Protecting America meant there could be no mistakes.
We wanted, I fear still want, a perfect enemy of evil. We want a Nazi Germany or Fascist Japan to destroy.
We thrilled at the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia as right destruction of Islamists (the Islamic Courts there), then promptly forgot about them. We see only enough to justify the next use of force.
Obama was tipped to the Presidency through the economy. Polls even nearing election day continued to show that, on foregin policy, McCain held a majority. This country is still contending with itself. Perhaps because of where I live, I think this internal struggle far from over. Perhaps if I had lost people to all this violence I would think differently that I do. I like to think that we all need people not direct victims of violence. Maybe I am just trying to legitimize myself.
Thank you for your blog.
I feel some sympathy for you, Gregory – the scale of Bush’ failures has left you, as too many other conservatives, afraid to look where the facts may lie to see how bad things really are.
Your statement about only the guilty being imprisoned has been contradicted by headlines for years now. It can’t be squared with the fact that several prisoners have been released because no evidence against them can be found, including one, a taxi driver driving in the wrong place at the wrong time, who was tortured despite the lack of evidence.
The fact is that many innocents died in Iraq in an increasing spiral of violence because the Bush Administration ignored some pesky generals pointing out that invaders must provide internal security until new internal security forces are healthy enough to succeed them. That’s been part of Greek and Roman and Western military doctrine right up until W.
I hope you and more righties can find it in youselves to look soon into the chamber of horrors Bush II’s bequeathed you. Best of luck. Good coverage of war-related mistakes can found in Fiasco, which I’ve known at least a couple of righties to make it through and come to agree with.
I am hardly a conservative, Jon. If you’ve examined the web site, try looking harder. “Only the guilty were imprisoned” was meant as a counterfactual I have heard where I live. Your readiness to label me as a conservative shows all of us exactly how frozen–all of us–are. Try again. You’ve gotten it totally wrong.
Israel has reinvented itself. It dallied in post zionism. It subscribed to Marx dictum “The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.” Needless to say, Israel’s attempt to ingratiate itself hasnt paid off. I miss the Israel before 1993, when it was united and understood its purpose in the world. Israel should not bend over to please every Gregory Pollock in the world, because in the end, it will never succeed
I didn’t know there were so many of me! I’m not certain I should be depressed with my commonality or pleased that I have supporters.
Herbert Kaine, you say in another thread: “The core issue is that Israel has been contructed on Islamic Waqf, and the Palestinians were defeated by apes, pigs, and dogs, rather than a worthy foe. Honor requires the Palestinian people to regain Palestine using force.” You seem to hold that the world is starkly zero sum. I do not think it has to be. But the Gazan operation hopefully just past makes a zero sum world mor plausible. If the Gazan economy continues to be starved–you may well get your wish fullfilled. Anti-Semitism has certainly grown in Gaza these last three weeks. And, as certainly, the economic blockade has had the same effect. “Let my people go”–but only my people. Unfortunately for you–and me, for that matter–“people” is now a word beyond all of our controls. You will never be rid of the monster you make–unless you decide not to make it anymore.
You’ve nailed it in this article. The Arabic slogan (my Arabic is lousy so I’ll loosely translate, and welcome your or a commenter’s proper Arabic): “Il fa-at ma-at — The past is dead.” OK, it lives on in memory and in the scabs we can endlessly pick and thus avert possible healing and moving on. And the injunction “Zachor, remember” serves to teach us to learn… not to become frozen in thinking, responding, and re-imagining.