In Cairo, Obama Lays Himself Bare Before World Jewry

1. "Addressing Muslims, Obama Pushes Mideast Peace"; By Jeff Zeleny and Alan Cowell; A1
   
2. "The Cairo Speech"; Editorial; A22
   

When he campaigned for the presidency last year, the fairest assessment that could be made about Barack Obama’s view of Israel was that it was an unknown. Campaign statements were concise, even staid, rather than revelatory. Yesterday’s speech in Cairo provides the best material thus far for American Jews to understand how Obama will work with Israel to achieve security & recognition.

As Zeleny & Cowell report, Obama spent a great deal of effort identifying and empathizing with Palestinians, “to get through to his audience," as Paul Wolfkowitz said. The content of Obama’s speech will be analyzed for weeks to come, but, here, a point must be made about how Z&C report on it. 

The speech “infuriated some Israelis and American backers of Israel because they saw the speech as elevating the Palestinians to equal status.” This phrasing is ill and strikes me as – perhaps purposely – misleading. Readers may think Israelis resent that Palestinians, their fellow humans, are being cast as equals. Rather, the issue is the equality Obama presumes between a polity, Israel, and a proto-polity, “Palestine,” as he referred to it. 

Indeed, the use of the word "Palestine" – not, as NYT mentions, a “reference to a future Palestinian state" as President George W. Bush employed it in March 2002 – is problematic; but it is also simply odd. The President of the United States is the great conveyor of the world’s reality, and “Palestine” is a politicized, propagandistic, fantastical, and, most importantly, non-geopolitical term.

The editorial board could hardly conceal its glee about "The Cairo Speech," but, most interestingly, it didn’t mention this oh-so-provocative word. Even NYT, which seeks to be academic, knows that its usage is problematic, and its lack of acknowledgement of Obama’s usage - even as it reminds readers that “words are important" - was a subtle non-endorsement.