It was early April when an Arutz Shiva article by Gil Ronen entitled Arab-American Activist Says Obama Hiding Anti-Israel Stance came to my attention. More than once, it was forwarded to me directly or cited in blog entries claiming they'd found Obama's Achilles heel with Jewish voters. At the core of Ronen's piece was this quote from Ali Abunimah describing an encounter he had with Obama in 2004:
"As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, 'Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.' He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy [and said:] 'Keep up the good work!'"
Ronen goes on to describe Abunimah's apparent close relationship to Obama and flesh out his case for what Obama was "hiding." There was just one major problem: The article he cited by Abunimah arrived at no such conclusions.
Ronen builds his case with:
In an interview earlier this year for the leftist radio show "Democracy Now!," a daily TV and radio news program hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Abunimah said he knew Obama for many years as his state senator "when he used to attend events in the Palestinian community in Chicago all the time."
"I remember personally introducing him onstage in 1999, when we had a major community fundraiser for the community center in Deheisha refugee camp in the occupied West Bank," he recounted. "And that's just one example of how Barack Obama used to be very comfortable speaking up for and being associated with Palestinian rights and opposing the Israeli occupation."
He references a photograph in an Abunimah article, showing Barack and Michelle Obama at a 1998 Arab community event in Chicago. It was this reference that sent me hunting for Abunimah's original piece, which I found to be entitled, How Barack Obama learned to love Israel.
In it, Abunimah describes Obama's early March 2007 speech at AIPAC Chicago:
Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians.
Further, he notes darkly (if one sees things from Abunimah's point of view, that is):
But Obama was not entirely insensitive to ordinary lives. He recalled a January 2006 visit to the Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona that resembled an ordinary American suburb where he could imagine the sounds of Israeli children at "joyful play just like my own daughters." He saw a home the Israelis told him was damaged by a Hizbullah rocket (no one had been hurt in the incident).
With regard to the AIPAC speech, he concludes that Obama never "deviated from the hardline consensus underpinning US policy in the region," and complains about Obama's position that Iran requires tough diplomacy and that the US should not take military action against Iran off the table in such discussions. He fleshes out how Obama rejects a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas, instead calling for Hamas's isolation until such time as they capitulate to the Quartet's "one-sided" conditions.
Further, Abunimah details his personal contact with Obama as a half-dozen meetings over the course of nearly ten years. The best he can muster in his claim that Obama used to support the radical Palestinian point of view is that Obama called for "an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
He goes on to explain that the quote used in Ronen's article was "the last time [he] spoke to Obama," in 2004. And he closes his article with a lament about Obama's "about-face" regarding what Abunimah thought Obama believed, and what he stated in that 2007 AIPAC fundraiser:
Only if enough people know what Obama and his competitors stand for, and organize to compel them to pay attention to their concerns can there be any hope of altering the disastrous course of US policy in the Middle East. It is at best a very long-term project that cannot substitute for support for the growing campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions needed to hold Israel accountable for its escalating violence and solidifying apartheid.
It is, perhaps, no surprise that Ronen gave only a cursory read to Abunimah's article -- couched, as it is, in Abunimah's agenda. However, it behooves us to know all the facts and to be able to refute the claim with quotes straight from the horse's mouth.
For more good discussion on the subject of Obama and Israel, see jlk's diary and the commentary attached, which inspired me to dig up my notes on this.