Hajj Obama and the Aid to Orphans

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Contemporary Arabs have their heroes, but they are nothing like Saladin, or Khalid, or Nur al-Din. They are heroes who appear suddenly, inflated by Arab illusions and speculations, and who soon deflate and vanish without producing for these Arabs a miracle, or a victory, or even keeping them at the level of decline they were already at. For decades now the same scene has repeated itself: in the West and in Israel there appear signs of change in which the Arabs are bound to have a share, so that their affairs will ease and their problems will be solved, after which a life of happiness and contentment will begin, and the mind will finally be put at rest by the resolution of the Palestinian cause and of the Holy Mosque.

There was a time when we waited for the Labor Party to win Israel’s elections, and we even contributed to its election campaign. Labor won, Peres won, Rabin won, Barak won — but our wait only grew longer. And the candidate we favored won the American elections too, yet our hopes remained mere wishes. Clinton came to Gaza and we cheered him warmly; Chirac came and promised us a state; many envoys came and went, and still our dream has not been realized.

Now it is Obama’s turn — a man to whom I have given the title “Hajj” because he descends, even if only partially, from a Muslim family (if he truly has a family at all), and because of the blessings the word “Hajj” may bestow upon everyone. The man may be sincere in some of what he has said, and he may achieve something of what he promised regarding Arabs and Muslims, but that does not justify all this optimism that Arab rulers, and the media, aides, and beneficiaries who follow them, are heaping upon him. Arabs have written and elaborated as they never wrote or elaborated before, to the point that some people came to think Obama was not merely a Hajj but a long-awaited prophet who appeared among the people without revelation — or perhaps that divine providence, taking pity on the Arabs, had, without Obama himself knowing it, commanded that he be placed in the service of the lazy, dependent Arabs, to rescue them from their past and future troubles.

I did not detect anything new in Obama’s speech beyond the approach or the style of delivery. He offered no vision on any subject, and his words were limited to gestures with an emotional resonance in the human soul. Obama did not boast, but neither did he make concessions; he did not speak of terrorism, but he spoke of violence — which, in his telling, only we commit — and of Iran’s nuclear program, and of Hamas’s hostility toward Israel, and so on. He spoke of a two-state solution without offering any definition of the Palestinian state, leaving the matter to drift as it has drifted over the past years amid multiple interpretations that only the question of power can ever settle. He did not affirm the refugees’ right of return, even though the essence of the Palestinian cause is the right of return, not the establishment of a state. Nor did he affirm the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, which is the second of the two fixed Palestinian constants: the right of return and the right to self-determination. He leapt straight to the question of the state without affirming the right to self-determination, which means he has no intention of contributing to a resolution of the Palestinian cause.

Even if Obama were to exert himself to halt settlement building on the way toward establishing a Palestinian state, would his path be easy and his mission crowned with success? There are a number of factors we must take into account before letting our optimism run free, namely:

…and steers their steps, threatening to cut off funding whenever they raise their heads. Optimistic Arabs are weak to such a degree that they have become objects of ridicule and mockery — a laughingstock before the Americans — and they make no attempt to build a standing for themselves that would earn them some respect or bring them into serious consideration. Arabs must realize that the weak cannot help their own supporters, even sincere ones, and Palestinians must realize that their security cooperation with America and Israel will not bring them any closer to statehood — it will only turn them into ever more compliant instruments. This is history, unless the Arabs imagine that history will change its laws for their sake.

Second: America’s defense and security establishment stands by Israel and does not view the Arab rulers as an asset it can rely upon. The Department of Defense, like the American security agencies such as the CIA, sees the necessity of strengthening Israel’s security and arming it, and of encouraging it to take whatever measures reinforce its security, because in that lies the security of the United States itself. There are those now who say that resolving the Palestinian cause serves American national security interests — but that is because of Iran, and because America wants a pretext for Arab rulers to deploy their armies against Iran, not because America has become newly conscious of Palestinian rights.

Third: there are Jewish and non-Jewish lobbying groups that carry great and influential weight on the American scene, and they stand ready to move against a president’s policy the moment they judge that he has overstepped the bounds of Israeli interests, as assessed by them and by Israel.

Fourth: the American media, which contribute enormously to shaping American public opinion, remain quite guarded toward Obama’s approaches, and the vast majority of them are supportive of Israel — some of them have already begun attacking him. Obama will encounter a formidable media wall if he presses Israel in a manner inconsistent with the prevailing media biases in America, and he will need a great deal of effort to counter that influence on American public opinion — effort that could consume the years of his presidency.

Fifth: the single most important factor of all is that Israel has become part of American culture, no longer merely an entity of Jews fleeing European persecution. Israel has embedded itself, through numerous channels including non-governmental organizations, certain church-affiliated schools, and the media, into American consciousness, until it has become part of the cultural life of the people, its educated and its ignorant alike. And when Americans deal with Israel, they are dealing with their own household, with people who are their own; this stands in stark contrast to their dealings with Arabs, who are often looked upon with contempt and disdain.

In the final analysis, I say that whoever insists on playing the role of the orphan searching for a protector will remain stuck spinning in a vicious circle, and his condition will only worsen with time. He who does not stand up for himself will find no one to stand with him, and whoever searches for solutions outside himself will find that solutions are scarce. It is good for a person to benefit from external factors, but he cannot do so if he himself has no wish to benefit from his own resources. And just as the Arabs met with disappointment from their previous heroes, they will find nothing better in Hajj Obama.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الحاج أوباما ونصرة اليتامى” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.