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Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor’s going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.
Well, this is a bit of a non-story, with a bunch of Palestine supporters saying they think Obama’s a sympathiser, but no end of Obama statements saying the opposite. And yet, given his background, it seems almost impossible that Obama isn’t significantly more even-handed on the Middle East question than most of his (white) senate comrades. Indeed, given that even the most left-wing Democratic presidential contenders of recent decades have held positions more associated with the right wing in Europe - Robert Kennedy’s stauch support for Israel got him killed - it’s reasonable to conclude that only someone brought up in the urban black community, where support for Palestine is more common, might bring a more two-handed perspective to the presidency. The chances that Obama will risk softening of his pro-Israel rhetoric, though - at least before the election - seem slim. Whatever he thinks, he knows what he has to say if he is to have any chance of winning.
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