Obama’s Moral Blunder

In the final weeks of Barack Obama’s presidency, the nation’s attention was understandably riveted on the arrival of Obama’s successor. The shock of Donald Trump’s election had not yet subsided, and while his unconventional approach to the presidency would become more familiar over the next four years, the American people and their elected representatives were just beginning to understand how dramatically our politics were about to change.

It certainly did not go unnoticed that December when Obama instructed his United Nations’ Ambassador not to veto the latest Security Council resolution demanding that Israel immediately cease all settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Without the typical U.S. veto, the resolution became official United Nations policy, delivering a rebuke of Israel and labeling the existence of the settlements as “illegal” for the first time in U.N. history.

Under more typical circumstances, Obama’s action would have been the subject of intense scrutiny and heated debate both in this country and around the world. But because his decision became public two days before Christmas, on the eve of the Trump presidency, the outgoing chief executive was able to avoid the type of political and media frenzy that his non-veto deserved.

Almost seven years later, in the aftermath of the most horrific extermination of Jews since the Holocaust, Obama has again roiled the geopolitical waters of the Middle East with his analysis of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In a podcast last weekend hosted by two of his former advisors, Obama engaged in a particularly tortured moral equivalency exercise when he summarized the generations of violence with this extraordinary phrase: “Nobody’s hands are clean”.

“Nobody’s hands are clean”? The sentence implies that everyone’s hands are equally dirty, which suggests that we are all equally at fault. (The appalling subtext essentially states that if only those irritating Hamas terrorists and those equally annoying Israeli children, grandparents and infants would be willing to move beyond their incessant bickering, perhaps we could make some actual progress in Gaza.)

 The former president’s declaration suggests that we are all equally complicit, whether innocent civilians (both Palestinian and Israeli) or rapists, murderers and kidnappers. 

“Nobody’s hands are clean.” The former president’s declaration suggests that we are all equally complicit, whether innocent civilians (both Palestinian and Israeli) or rapists, murderers and kidnappers. And on the world stage, those Israeli leaders and their successors who willingly accepted a two-state solution in 1948 and then fought a series of wars to defend the sliver of land they had been given are just as culpable as the “from the river to the sea” fanatics who have continuously waged war against the Jewish state and its people ever since.

“Nobody’s hands are clean.” Critics argue that Israel must immediately stop its airstrikes and ground military activity. And then perhaps at some point Hamas might also decide to release the more than 200 hostages it still holds. Obama seems to be exasperated that everyone – on both sides – won’t just be more reasonable.

In the days ahead, we can expect the former president to clarify his comments to make it clear that he is not holding Israelis and terrorists to the same standard. But this is a moment in which world opinion has been turning precipitously against Israel for not agreeing to a ceasefire that would allow Hamas to rearm itself for additional attacks. So Obama’s words were particularly ill-timed and especially damaging. 

Not only has he given Israel’s opponents political cover to escalate their criticism, he has also undermined his former vice president. Joe Biden has been attempting to navigate an emotionally fraught political landscape both domestically and internationally, shifting from a full embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu to gradually increasing pressure on Netanyahu to adopt a more measured set of military options. 

Biden’s efforts to steer this crisis in a less catastrophic direction has been met with full-throated anger and unbridled contempt from the progressive base of his own party, the same voters he desperately needs to win reelection. Obama has now made that task much harder for his former running mate.

Obama will surely be forced to clarify his remarkable statement, perhaps even before this column is printed. But the damage has already been done.

Dan Schnur is the U.S. Politics Editor for the Jewish Journal. He teaches courses in politics, communications, and leadership at UC Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. He hosts the monthly webinar “The Dan Schnur Political Report” for the Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall. Follow Dan’s work at www.danschnurpolitics.com.