Larry Cohler-Esses

Obama Pivots Away From Dovish Past



Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s maiden speech to the pro-Israel lobby last week saw a man described by early supporters as an ardent dove on Israel take flight as a bird of considerably more hawkish mien reports The Jewish Weekly. But Ali Abunimah, a Hyde Park Palestinian-American activist, and co-Founder of The Electronic Intifada “said that until a few years ago, Obama was ‘quite frank that the U.S. needed to be more evenhanded, that it leaned too much toward Israel.’ It was vivid in his memory, said Abunimah, because ‘these were the kind of statements I’d never heard from a U.S. politician who seemed like he was going somewhere rather than at the end of his career.’”