How to move forward from Obama’s Jerusalem Speech: Three Proposals for Renewed Work
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- Written by Gilbert Schramm Gilbert Schramm
- Published: 26 March 2013 26 March 2013
How to move forward from Obama’s Jerusalem Speech: Three Proposals for Renewed Work
(An action link to a “signon” petition appears at the end of this article and here: http://signon.org/sign/a-petition-to-president?source=c.em.mt&r_by=5439069)
By Gilbert Schramm, March 24, 2013
This week saw a courageous speech by President Obama in Israel. In it he said many things that, as a historian and a longtime student of the problem of Palestine, I take serious issue with. These issues are important and will doubtless be revisited along the way, but now is not the time to get sidetracked by them. Now is a time for renewed action.
Leaving all of its faults aside, I believe that Obama’s speech can be a new starting point towards a just and comprehensive peace in Palestine. I believe that all of us who are concerned with US security, with Israeli security and with security, human rights, and peace and justice for the people of Palestine, should now come together and use this moment (that President Obama has taken great political risk to create) to rethink our strategy and try to re-energize ourselves to help finally achieve a viable Palestinian state. To simply attack the weak points of his presentation would be immature and a waste of time. Let’s try to see what we can build on.
The point is not so much that Obama took the risk of bringing the imperatives of peace and justice up in such a pointed way and before such an unpredictable audience. The real point is the overwhelmingly positive response he received from the Israeli audience—an audience that has lived with the obsolete, confrontational, dead-end rhetoric of Benjamin Netanyahu and other “hardliners” for so long. Clearly these people are tired of the policies of Likud and their allies. So, Obama’s speech clearly suggests that there is an opening for rebuilding a seriously viable Israeli peace movement. We, in America, should try to open channels through which can communicate our support for them.
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