It is Obama's way to try to bridge all differences through the great pacifying medium of himself--his willingness to reach out to the Other Side, and his hypnotic oratory.
Certainly his oratory has its charms, and even its surprises; but, as many have by now observed, it's not enough, especially when what Obama does turns out to be some miles away from what he says (or said out on the campaign trail). But at times his oratory also has its gaps, despite his grand strokes of inclusionary rhetoric. And there was one such big gap in his recent speech in Cairo--a bracing speech in many ways (especially its acknowledgement of Ike's subversion of Iran's first democratically elected government), but not enough, of course, to end the fray throughout the Middle East. You just can't talk such things away, and the piece below makes clear. MCM The Exodus Obama Forgot to Mention By ANDRÉ ACIMAN , Published: June 8, 2009 , <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/opinion/09aciman.html?em>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/opinion/09aciman.html?em PRESIDENT OBAMA'S <http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/>speech to the Islamic world was a groundbreaking event. Never before has a young, dynamic American president, beloved both by his countrymen and the nations of the world, extended so timely and eager a hand to a part of the globe that, recently, had seen fewer and fewer reasons to trust us or to wish us well. As important, Mr. Obama did not mince words. Never before has a president gone over to the Arab world and broadcast its flaws so loudly and clearly: extremism, nuclear weapons programs and a faltering record in human rights, education and economic development - the Arab world gets no passing grades in any of these domains. Mr. Obama even found a moment to mention the plight of Egypt's harassed Coptic community and to criticize the new wave of Holocaust deniers. And to show he was not playing favorites, he put the Israelis on notice: no more settlements in the occupied territories. He spoke about the suffering of Palestinians. This was no wilting olive branch. And yet, for all the president's talk of "a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world" and shared "principles of justice and progress," neither he nor anyone around him, and certainly no one in the audience, bothered to notice one small detail missing from the speech: he forgot me. The president never said a word about me. Or, for that matter, about any of the other 800,000 or so Jews born in the Middle East who fled the Arab and Muslim world or who were summarily expelled for being Jewish in the 20th century. With all his references to the history of Islam and to its (questionable) "proud tradition of tolerance" of other faiths, Mr. Obama never said anything about those Jews whose ancestors had been living in Arab lands long before the advent of Islam but were its first victims once rampant nationalism swept over the Arab world. Nor did he bother to mention that with this flight and expulsion, Jewish assets were - let's call it by its proper name - looted. Mr. Obama never mentioned the belongings I still own in Egypt and will never recover. My mother's house, my father's factory, our life in Egypt, our friends, our books, our cars, my bicycle. We are, each one of us, not just defined by the arrangement of protein molecules in our cells, but also by the things we call our own. Take away our things and something in us dies. Losing his wealth, his home, the life he had built, killed my father. He didn't die right away; it took four decades of exile to finish him off. Mr. Obama had harsh things to say to the Arab world about its treatment of women. And he said much about America's debt to Islam. But he failed to remind the Egyptians in his audience that until 50 years ago a strong and vibrant Jewish community thrived in their midst. Or that many of Egypt's finest hospitals and other institutions were founded and financed by Jews. It is a shame that he did not remind the Egyptians in the audience of this, because, in most cases - and especially among those younger than 50 - their memory banks have been conveniently expunged of deadweight and guilt. They have no recollections of Jews. In Alexandria, my birthplace and my home, all streets bearing Jewish names have been renamed. A few years ago, the Library of Alexandria put on display an Arabic translation of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," perhaps the most anti-Semitic piece of prose ever written. Today, for the record, there are perhaps four Jews left in Alexandria. When the last Jew dies, the temples and religious artifacts and books that were the property of what was once probably the wealthiest Jewish community on the Mediterranean will go to the Egyptian government - not to me, or to my children, or to any of the numberless descendants of Egyptian Jews. It is strange that our president, a man so versed in history and so committed to the truth, should have omitted mentioning the Jews of Egypt. He either forgot, or just didn't know, or just thought it wasn't expedient or appropriate for this venue. But for him to speak in Cairo of a shared effort "to find common ground ... and to respect the dignity of all human beings" without mentioning people in my position would be like his speaking to the residents of Berlin about the future of Germany and forgetting to mention a small detail called World War II. André Aciman, a professor of comparative literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center, is the author of the memoir "Out of Egypt." Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="image001.jpg" Content-ID: <[email protected]> X-Attachment-Id: 0.1 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to [email protected] OR go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
