Former President Barack Obama has urged Americans to “accept the whole truth” when weighing Israel’s war against Hamas, saying everyone is “involved to some degree” in the conflict.
“No one is clean,” the 44th president said during an interview with Pod Save America, a podcast hosted by former White House aides from his presidency, in excerpts released Saturday.
“What Hamas is doing is terrible, and there is no justification for it. And what is true is that the occupation, and what is happening to the Palestinian people, is intolerable,” Obama, 62, said, explaining that the only way to resolve the crisis is to embrace the seemingly conflicting ideas.
“And the truth is that there is a history of the Jewish people that can be dismissed unless your grandparents or your grandparents or your uncle or your aunt told you about the madness of antisemitism,” he said.
“And what is true is that there are people who are dying now, who have nothing to do with what Hamas did. … We can go on for a while,” he said.
Former President Barack Obama has admitted he bears some of the blame for the conflict. Getty Images Pro-Palestinian protesters march in Brooklyn last month. Corbis via Getty Images
Obama blamed social media for deepening the divide between the two sides of the debate and becoming a place where people go to defend “their own moral innocence.
“The problem with social media, TikTok activism and trying to debate these things is that you can’t tell the truth. You can pretend to be telling the truth, you can tell one side of the truth, and in some cases you can try to maintain your moral innocence, but that will not solve the problem,” he said.
“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to accept the whole truth,” Obama said. “And then you have to admit that no one is clean, that we are all complicit on some level.”
Debates and protests have raged across the country since the Palestinian terror group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, a bloody sneak attack that left some 1,400 people dead and more than 200 hostages.
Israel responded with continuous bombardment of the Gaza Strip. Gaza’s Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health says more than 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza so far, although the figure has been criticized as unreliable, given that Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Hasidic Jews see a pro-Palestinian protest in Brooklyn in October. Obama asked both sides to talk to each other. Corbis via Getty Images
Obama noted that he was not exempt from blame for the conflict, explaining he had asked himself, “Is there anything else I could have done?” during his presidency to avoid the bloodshed that erupted in October.
The former president has a notoriously strained relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he has clashed over the US-Iran nuclear deal and the expansion of Israeli settlements in territory disputed by the Palestinians.
During his interview, the former president urged Americans not to “limit themselves to anger” but to listen to opposing views.
“If you really want to change this, then you have to figure out how to talk to someone on the other side and listen to them and understand what they’re talking about and not dismiss it,” he said.
Obama’s full interview will be released Tuesday, according to Pod Save America.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
