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)

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Column notes and Links:

Wye and Camp David

A history of financial compensation to Israel

Obama’s Cairo Speech of June 4, 2009

Obama $38 billion aid package

Dennis Ross, American Jews “must be advocates for Israel”

Barak proposal to Arafat 2000, Camp David

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rayhanania

Op-Ed writer, author, radio host, podcaster at The Arab Daily News

Ray Hanania is an award-winning columnist, author & former Chicago City Hall reporter (1977-1992). A veteran who served during the Vietnam War and the recipient of four SPJ Peter Lisagor Awards for column writing, Hanania writes weekly opinion columns on mainstream American & Chicagoland topics for the Southwest News-Herald, Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers, and Suburban Chicagoland.

His award winning columns can be found at www.HANANIA.COM Subscribe FREE today

Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.

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