Obama’s Silence on Gaza Has Already Tarnished His Halo: Rue 89 of France

This op-ed from France’s Rue 89 belongs to a branch of the growing corpus of global reaction to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which could be entitled, ‘Why Doesn’t President-elect Obama Say Something.’

Pascal Riché of the Rue 89 writes in part:

To fight a war, one must perform many calculations. The enemy forces, the weather, the distance, the stockpiles of munitions. And the electoral calendar. That of the United States has played a role in the Middle East conflict: war has been engaged between the death of one presidency and the birth of another. For the Israelis, there was no more favorable moment to “go too far. … In the short term, there will be no Obama miracle. Of course we suspected this, but even before the 44th president takes his seat in the Oval Office, it has become something explicit.”

By Pascal Riché

Translated by L. McKenzie Zeiss

January 9, 2008

France – Rue 89 – Original Article (French)

To fight a war, one must perform many calculations. The enemy forces, the weather, the distance, the stockpiles of munitions. And the electoral calendars. That of the United States has played a role in the Middle East conflict: war has been engaged between the death of one presidency and the birth of another. For the Israelis, there was no more favorable moment to “go too far.”

George W. Bush espoused, unsurprisingly, the position of his predecessors. He has always done so, while disassociating himself (knowingly?) from the politics of his father. At the end of his presidency, this has been, in a way, a kind of gift. As for Barack Obama, he has missed out on a fine occasion not to keep quiet.

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