rocks & hard places

I'm not sure which is worse: that the Obama campaign, judging by Biden's comments during the VP debate, claims that Senator Obama did not support the 2006 Palestinian elections because he knew Hamas would be elected, or because Biden actually lied to say so.

(Note: I am really fond of talking about those elections both because it's kind of the starting point for my paying attention to what was happening in Palestine, and because I was in Jerusalem when they happened. I really like talking about that.)

Obama has had to work hard to convince people that he supports Israel; you can see that at work in this interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. The questions, of course, are always about a secure Israel and denouncing terrorism and having a zero-tolerance attitude towards anti-Semitism. They're not so much about human rights and self-determination for the Palestinians, which of course is the other half of "the peace process," and of course it's the half the U.S. has mostly ignored. And Obama ignores it when he talks about Hamas supposedly supporting him, though he does offer Goldberg a bit of a solid explanation.

But if he weren't running to be elected the president of the United States, and his words didn't have political consequences, he could have given a response like this:

"Hamas? Yeah, of course those guys prefer me to McCain. I've told you about my deep ties to the Jewish community in Chicago, but what I haven't mentioned is that Chicago also has a huge Palestinian population and a very active Palestinian activist community. So I got to know them and the injustices faced by their people in the occupied territories. So I recognize that we need to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip so that we can give the Palestinians a better shot at self-determination and human rights, which is really the key to ending the violence in Israel. Here's the thing about Hamas: of course I denounce their terrorist tactics, and of course I applaud that they now officially recognize Israel, though most U.S. press and politicians ignore this fact. And yeah, I think their fighting with Fatah and claiming power in Gaza is not ultimately in the interests of the people they were elected to represent. But despite their deep flaws, Hamas, like every Palestinian, has a vested interest in seeing the Palestinian people free, and stable, and peaceful. And they recognize that I'm more likely to work towards that than John McCain is. And I think most Palestinians do, but most Palestinians don't have a voice in mainstream U.S. media. So their voices can only be heard, distorted, though what their most famous leaders and groups have to say."

In my dreams, anyway. I want Obama to win this election, and I mostly really liked Joe Biden during the debate. But I'm afraid the Palestinians are going to be stuck where they usually are. And that's a tragedy for them, which should lead a few of us to raise our voices anyway, because it matters, innately, and the Palestinians are going to continue to be this rallying point for people in power in the Arab world- and in Iran- to use to point at the injustices of the U.S. and Israel. And their grievance will be legitimate, whether or not their policies are.

In the meantime, a really beautiful bit of nonviolent resistance: FREE GAZA.