Strength in Numbers
When the White House asks you to call, you call, even if they don’t tell you why you’re calling. It is, after all, the White House. No comments yet. You can be the first!
Don’t get me wrong — I had an idea as to why. With the falling out between much of the Jewish community and President Barack Obama after his speech on the Middle East on May 19, why else, besides crisis management, would the highest office in the land organize a conference call solely for Jewish community newspapers across the country?
So I dialed in, rather unexcitedly, on the morning of May 27, to have my suspicions confirmed, as I listened to top White House security advisers Dennis Ross and Steve Simon clarify the president’s statements. Ross did most of the speaking, with talking points that included: “We have to have a peace agreement that is based upon borders and security arrangements that do not leave Israel vulnerable or unable to defend itself by itself”; “efforts to delegitimize Israel will continue to be something that we reproach”; and “we see negotiations as the only way to resolve this conflict.”
Yawn. Give me a shout when there’s actual news to report.
I admit I got caught up in the how-dare-you-Obama hoopla. For the duration of the weekend after his speech, I’d made up my mind I was voting Republican in 2012 — and I’m a Democrat. A return to the 1967 borders is absurd.
But, unlike what was reported, that’s not what the president said. Ross explained: “The two sides will negotiate, taking into account the realities of the last 44 years and the different demographic realities and the needs of each side. When they do that, by definition it means that you have a border that’s different than the one that existed in 1967.” The ’67 borders will be a starting point for negotiations.
The conference call got me to take a second look at the speech, which I hadn’t watched live. I’d only skimmed a transcript, and I’d gathered the rest of my information from various media reports. Mistake, mistake, mistake.
I went back and read the transcript carefully. The first thing I noticed? Out of its 10-and-a-half pages, only two were devoted to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Sometimes I find it easy to forget that there are problems in the Middle East that don’t relate to Israel.
My second observation was that Obama wasted very little energy criticizing Israel. At least 95 percent of the time he spent on the Israeli-Arab conflict was used to chide Palestinians, praise Israel or divulge neutral information. This tells me that while Obama is aware that Israel is not perfect and needs to make changes, he knows who is doing the bulk of the instigating.
Am I still wary about the 1967 borders statement? Without a doubt. Even if Israel ends up getting a fair shake in a two-state solution, the breakdown in communications that allowed the president’s message to be so badly misconstrued is nothing short of an embarrassment to the Oval Office.
But before we react to potential borders, let’s wait to see the map. If we as a community can cause enough of a ruckus over one sentence in a lengthy speech that the White House has to set up a conference call to clarify, imagine what the administration will do if we don’t like the map. That strength in numbers makes me feel a lot more secure than anything the White House can say.
And for crying out loud, if you haven’t seen the entire speech yet, you can read the transcript here.
31 May, 2011 >