Former President Barak Obama

Former U.S. President Barak Obama released portions of a podcast, “Pod Save America,” on November 6, 2023. While he opened with “What Hamas did was horrific and there’s no justification for it”, he felt compelled to assert that “the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.” He went on: “… all of us are complicit to some degree.” What a sad state of affairs that our former President could not just condemn the Hamas attacks and leave it at that. No. He saw the need to couple the October 7th catastrophe with the “occupation” [of what, pray tell? Gaza?].  Am I paranoid, or am do I correctly read complicity by “all of us” to mean, or certainly include, Israel? And did he choose a reference to “Palestinians” rather than Gazans on purpose? While the plight of the Gazans is very sad, might I remind Mr. Obama that their plight is entirely caused by the Hamas terrorists in their midst. Israel withdrew from Gaza lock, stock and barrel in 2005. From then on, there was no longer an “occupation”. Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 in a violent coup overthrowing the Palestinian Authority. They established Gaza as military base with the goal of ridding the area from the river to the sea of Jews. Nearly all the aid and other relief for the Gazan people went to build their underground military city. So, if you are looking for complicity, there is only one address: Hamas.

I might add that if the former president is drawing the conclusion that the ” “unbearable” circumstance of the Palestinians (as a whole)  is because of the Israeli “occupation” of the West Bank (and Gaza?), then he is making excuses for Hamas which is totally unacceptable.