Will President Obama Drop The Racist Automatic Pass for the Palestinians?

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
Weekly Commentary
27 May '10

Let’s not overstate the significance of the change in President Obama’s treatment of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Yes, camera crews will no doubt record Mr. Netanyahu’s arrival and departure via the front door of the White House and the tool shed tone may be eased up a bit. But let’s make no bones about the situation.

President Obama belief system regarding a “solution” of the Arab-Israeli conflict and how this should be achieved hasn’t shifted a millimeter. And in this case, the “how” may be considerably more important that the “solution” itself, since – talk about the inevitability of the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state within some deadline notwithstanding – it would hardly be surprising if we found ourselves arguing years from now over who should be blamed and/or credit for the failure to create a Palestinian state during the window of opportunity the Obama administration provided the Arab leadership.

So back to the “how.”

And here is where we come back to the fundamentally racist and condescending attitude that the Obama Administration takes towards the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular in everything having to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. Because it is fundamentally racist and condescending to give them an automatic pass.

Consider the following:

If the Israeli Government officially and openly lobbied to bar and/or expel Palestinian representatives from international bodies and forums would Washington be silent? How vocal would the White House and State Department be if the Israeli Government organized a boycott of Palestinian enterprises? If Israel took the position that any and all Jewish terrorists serving time for attacking Arabs should be released would that be ignored?

Of course none of this would be acceptable.

But when the Palestinians do the very same things, the racist and condescending automatic pass goes into play reflecting an unsaid underlying assumption that the Palestinians can’t be expected to behave in accordance with international norms.

In the coming days no doubt a team of Israelis and Americans will try to hammer out the details of the Netanyahu-Obama exchange of words before the press at the White House. Let’s hope that we can progress beyond the standard verbiage about America’s commitment to Israel’s security and get some serious remarks from President Obama regarding grossly unacceptable Palestinian behavior.

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