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A Lot of Israelis and a Lot of Saudis for Barack Obama?
Share / Recommend - Comment - Print - Wednesday, Sep 24 2008, 4:39PM
Senator Jeff Bingaman's support group in New Mexico used to be called (and may still be) "A Lot of Folks for Jeff Bingaman." I always liked how unpretentious the name of his PAC was.
Well. . .I have stumbled across "A Lot of Saudis and Israelis for Barack Obama." They aren't a single group -- but it's clear Obama is popular across the Middle East.
I haven't received an email video of Israelis for McCain, though I know there are some -- and I haven't received graphics that are pro-McCain and anti-Obama from Saudi Arabia. If I do, I'll consider posting them.
But I have to share the video above -- which is powerful and gripping -- of many in Israel who support Barack Obama. Beware, it triggers tears in some.
And because I don't believe in false trade-offs between the interests of Israel and its Arab neighbors, I will also post these graphics that were done by a blogger in Saudi Arabia, Bandar Raffah.
More soon.
-- Steve Clemons
Update: I just learned that CNN Arabic covered the Obama support initiative in Saudi Arabia.
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Reader Comments (10) - post a comment
Identity Politics will Save The World.
It's interesting how much disdain you can have for identity politics until you're seduced by a certain identity.
"One of the things I'm good at is getting people in a room with a bunch of different ideas who sometimes violently disagree with each other and finding common ground, and a sense of common direction." -- Barack Obama
Can I get some examples of this (without mentioning "nuclear security" or "ethics reform" -- neither of which required any political courage or involved violent disagreement, as far as I know).
Is that too much to ask? If you're an Obama supporter, do you believe this just because he says it while emitting that Kum-Bay-Ah aura? Or can you really point to some instance in the past where this actually happened? This is supposedly one of the things he's good at -- please, give me an example!
This seems to me like playing identity politics for all its worth and promising the moon. When and where has he actually found common ground with those who "violently disagree"? Saying doesn't make it so. What happens when he has his tea parties and then everyone walks away and does his own thing? I don't want to have to file this away with "this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal" and "I'm qualified to be president because my campaign staff is so huge" -- but until someone shows me the proof in the pudding, it just looks like an act to me. And a bad, dangerous one at that.
Yup, I've got the flowing tears. I need to send this to my mother, so she can share it with all her older-woman friends who think McCain would be "better for Israel." It is identity politics, but that's OK.
Thank you for sharing this video. It gave me hope and enthusiasm
to actively support Obama's campaign.
This marvelous film brought me to tears. Thank you for posting it. Let's all try to get word around the Internet so others see it, too. I'm a 60+ white female, raised as a Lutheran, but my hopes for peace in Israel and the entire region are as intense as anyone's. This just reaffirms my strong support for Obama, and I hope it opens the eyes of many others.
OK, Tahoe Editor, here goes: today, in the Cabinet Room.
By most accounts I have seen, it was Barack Obama who attempted to draw out Boehner with more details, and then test the soundness of those House Republican ideas by questioning Paulson. It didn't work, but not for want of trying.
Remember, this is a guy who became President of the Harvard Law Review when it was so faction ridden that the election went 17 ballots before he was finally selected--and his main skill there was his ability to mediate between the factions.
Also see his work in getting legislation mandating the videotaping of interrogations in capital cases passed in Illinois.
More than anything else, these mediation talents are his prime skill.
If you can lead Harvard Law Review in a round of Kum-Bah-Ah, then you can lead the world? That's uh ... that's not even a stretch. That's absurd.
If I remember correctly, that was when Harvard Law School was being torn apart by the Critical Legal Studies wars.
I also note that you do not respond to my other, more recent examples, including this week's.
The electorate didn't follow Harvard's Critical Legal Studies wars. Even so, ivory tower peacemaking can't be considered credible credentials for solving the Middle East conflict.
This is saying-it's-so Identity Politics at its finest.
And Senator McCain's credible credentials for solving the Middle East conflict are...? Oh, that's right, his staffers have already signaled that he is going to basically ignore it--just as Bush did, and that has worked oh so wonderfully.
Good ideas, better judgment and the ability to bridge differences DO matter. (BTW, guess who proposed, to Senator Obama, the joint Obama-McCain statement on the bailout?)
I again note that you do not respond to my other, more recent examples, including this week's.
The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston calls Shepard Fairey as one of today's best known and most influential street artists. But inspite of that, he has been involved in some controversies. Fairey is said to have used an image of Barack Obama, registered to the Associated Press, which was plastered all over the place for his art. It was the media saturation of his graffiti art, using the famous portrait of the President and the word hope – what his campaign was supposed to represent – that may have done him in. He has countered that his usage of the image is protected by Fair Use, in which images that are well known can be manipulated as art, and a form of free speech. It seems an image of the most high profile man in the world is off limits to the constitutional right to expression, the one Shepard Fairey tried to use.
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