Podcast: Obama follows in Clinton shadow to build “pro-Israel legacy”
Published in the Arab News, Saudi Arabia Sept. 30, 2016
By Ray Hanania
Many Arabs believed newly elected President Barack Obama would re-balance America’s heavily pro-Israel foreign policy, including establishing a Palestinian State.
In fact Obama didn’t disappoint Arab World or Palestinian expectations when he embraced Palestinian rights and acknowledged Palestinian “suffering” during an unprecedented speech in Cairo six months after winning election in November 2008.
Seven years later, though, Obama found himself in the ruins of the two-state solution, doing what his Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton did as his term ended, currying Israeli forgiveness to strengthen his post-White House legacy.
Clinton spent his entire eight years nurturing Palestinian-Israeli peace only to watch it vanish.
In 1993, Clinton convinced Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to shake hands with PLO leader Yasir Arafat. It was a spectacular moment that I personally witnessed at the White House with the naïve hope it would end decades of American anti-Palestinian bias.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, U.S. president Bill Clinton, and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Click here to read the column in at the ArabNews.com
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Column notes and Links:
A history of financial compensation to Israel
Obama’s Cairo Speech of June 4, 2009
Dennis Ross, American Jews “must be advocates for Israel”
Barak proposal to Arafat 2000, Camp David
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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