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Dear Senator Obama:
In your nearly two-year presidential campaign, the words "hope
and change," "change and hope" have been your trademark
declarations. Yet there is an asymmetry between those objectives
and your political character that succumbs to contrary centers
of power that want not "hope and change" but the continuation of
the power-entrenched statusquo.
Far more than Senator
McCain, you have received enormous, unprecedented contributions
from corporate interests, Wall Street interests and, most
interestingly, big corporate law firm attorneys. Never before
has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy
over his Republican counterpart. Why, apart from your
unconditional vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, are
these large corporate interests investing so much in Senator
Obama? Could it be that in your state Senate record, your U.S.
Senate record and your presidential campaign record (favoring
nuclear power, coal plants, offshore oil drilling, corporate
subsidies including the 1872 Mining Act and avoiding any
comprehensive program to crack down on the corporate crime wave
and the bloated, wasteful military budget, for example) you have
shown that you are their man?
To advance change and hope, the presidential persona requires
character, courage, integrity— not expediency, accommodation and
short-range opportunism. Take, for example, your transformation
from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights in Chicago
before your run for the U.S. Senate to an acolyte, a dittoman
for the hard-line AIPAC lobby, which bolsters the militaristic
oppression, occupation, blockage, colonization and land-water
seizures over the years of the Palestinian peoples and their
shrunken territories in the West Bank and Gaza. Eric Alterman
summarized numerous polls in a December 2007 issue of The Nation
magazine showing that AIPAC policies are opposed
by a majority of Jewish-Americans.
You know quite well that only when the U.S. Government supports
the Israeli and Palestinian peace movements, that years ago
worked out a detailed two-state solution (which is supported by
a majority of Israelis and Palestinians), will there be a chance
for a peaceful resolution of this 60-year plus conflict. Yet you
align yourself with the hard-liners, so much so that in your
infamous, demeaning speech to the AIPAC convention right after
you gained the nomination of the Democratic Party, you supported
an "undivided Jerusalem," and opposed negotiations with Hamas—
the elected government in Gaza. Once again, you ignored the will
of the Israeli people who, in a March 1, 2008 poll by the
respected newspaper Haaretz, showed that 64% of Israelis favored
"direct negotiations with Hamas." Siding with the AIPAC
hard-liners is what one of the many leading Palestinians
advocating dialogue and peace with the Israeli people was
describing when he wrote "Anti-semitism today is the persecution
of Palestinian society by the Israeli state."
During your visit to Israel this summer, you scheduled a mere 45
minutes of your time for Palestinians with no news conference,
and no visit to Palestinian refugee camps that would have
focused the media on the brutalization of the Palestinians. Your
trip supported the
illegal, cruel blockade of Gaza in defiance of international law
and the United Nations charter. You focused on southern Israeli
casualties which during the past year have totaled one civilian
casualty to every 400 Palestinian casualties on the Gaza side.
Instead of a
statesmanship that decried all violence and its replacement with
acceptance of the Arab League's 2002 proposal to permit a viable
Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in return for full
economicm and diplomatic relations between Arab countries and
Israel, you played the role of a cheap politician, leaving the
area and Palestinians with the feeling of much shock and little
awe.
David Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, described your
trip succinctly: "There was almost a willful display of
indifference to the fact that there are two narratives here.
This could serve him well as a candidate, but not as a President."
Palestinian American commentator, Ali Abunimah, noted that Obama
did not utter a single criticism of Israel, "of its relentless
settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life
unlivable for millions of Palestinians. …Even the Bush
administration recently
criticized Israeli's use of cluster bombs against Lebanese
civilians [see
www.atfl.org for elaboration]. But Obama defended Israeli's
assault on Lebanon as an exercise of its 'legitimate right to
defend itself.'"
In numerous columns Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, strongly
criticized the Israeli government's assault on civilians in
Gaza, including attacks on "the heart of a crowded refugee camp…
with horrible bloodshed" in early 2008.
Israeli writer and peace advocate— Uri Avnery— described Obama's
appearance before AIPAC as one that "broke all records for
obsequiousness and fawning, adding that Obama "is prepared to
sacrifice the most basic American interests. After all, the US
has a vital interest in achieving an Israeli-Palestinian peace
that will allow it to find ways to the hearts of the Arab masses
from Iraq to Morocco. Obama has harmed his image in the Muslim
world and mortgaged his future— if and when he is elected
president.," he said, adding,
"Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC
conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for
peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the
Palestinian people."
A further illustration of your deficiency of character is the
way you turned your back on the Muslim-Americans in this
country. You refused to send surrogates to speak to voters at
their events. Having visited numerous churches and synagogues,
you refused to visit a single Mosque in America. Even George W.
Bush visited the Grand Mosque in Washington
D.C. after 9/11 to express proper sentiments of tolerance before
a frightened major religious group of innocents.
Although the New York Times published a major article on June
24, 2008
titled "Muslim Voters Detect a Snub from Obama" (by Andrea
Elliott),
citing examples of your aversion to these Americans who come
from all
walks of life, who serve in the armed forces and who work to
live the
American dream. Three days earlier the International Herald
Tribune
published an article by Roger Cohen titled "Why Obama Should
Visit a
Mosque." None of these comments and reports change your
political
bigotry against Muslim-Americans— even though your father was a
Muslim
from Kenya.
Perhaps nothing illustrated your utter lack of political courage
or
even the mildest version of this trait than your surrendering to
demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy
Carter
from speaking at the Democratic National Convention. This is a
tradition for former presidents and one accorded in prime time
to Bill
Clinton this year.
Here was a President who negotiated peace between Israel and
Egypt,
but his recent book pressing the dominant Israeli superpower to
avoid
Apartheid of the Palestinians and make peace was all that it
took to
sideline him. Instead of an important address to the nation by
Jimmy
Carter on this critical international problem, he was relegated
to a
stroll across the stage to "tumultuous applause," following a
showing
of a film about the Carter Center's post-Katrina work. Shame on
you,
Barack Obama!
But then your shameful behavior has extended to many other areas
of
American life. (See the factual analysis by my running mate,
Matt
Gonzalez, on
www.votenader.org). You have turned your back on the
100-million poor Americans composed of poor whites, African-Americans,
and Latinos. You always mention helping the "middle class" but
you
omit, repeatedly, mention of the "poor" in America.
Should you be elected President, it must be more than an
unprecedented
upward career move following a brilliantly unprincipled campaign
that
spoke "change" yet demonstrated actual obeisance to the
concentration
power of the "corporate supremacists." It must be about shifting
the
power from the few to the many. It must be a White House
presided over
by a black man who does not turn his back on the downtrodden
here and
abroad but challenges the forces of greed, dictatorial control
of
labor, consumers and taxpayers, and the militarization of
foreign
policy. It must be a White House that is transforming of
American
politics— opening it up to the public funding of elections (through
voluntary approaches)— and allowing smaller candidates to have a
chance to be heard on debates and in the fullness of their now
restricted civil liberties. Call it a competitive democracy.
Your presidential campaign again and again has demonstrated
cowardly
stands. "Hope" some say springs eternal." But not when "reality"
consumes it daily.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
November 3, 2008
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