FORMER US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has called for people to be able to hold seemingly “contradictory ideas” to find a solution to the Israel-Hamas war.
Speaking to the podcast ‘Pod Save America’, Obama also described what is happening in Palestine as “unbearable” and added that “nobody’s hands are clean”.
“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas; that what Hamas did was horrific and there’s no justification for it, and what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.”
The latest Israeli death toll from the 7 October Hamas attacks, when militants launched an unprecedented attack into Israel, stands at more than 1,400.
Hamas also took more than 200 people hostage, with eight-year-old Irish-Israeli Emily Hand believed to be among them.
Israel responded to the 7 October Hamas attack by relentlessly bombarding Gaza and it has also sent in ground troops.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory has said more than 9,700 people, mainly civilians, have been killed.
Obama told the audience at the podcast recording: “And what is true is that there are people right now who are dying, who have nothing to do with what Hamas did.
“What is also true is that there is a history of the Jewish people that may be dismissed, unless your grandparents or your great grandparents or your uncle or your aunt, tell you stories about the madness of antisemitism.”
President @BarackObama on the violence in Gaza.
— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) November 4, 2023
Full interview out Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/U42Jy2Aa4y
The former US president also questioned if he could have done more during his time in the Oval Office to prevent an attack like that on 7 October.
“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth and you then have to admit, nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree.
“I look at this, and I think back, ‘what could I have done during my presidency to move this forward?’
“As hard as I tried, and I’ve got the scars to prove it, but there’s a part of me that’s still saying, ‘well, was there something else I could have done?’
“That’s the conversation we should be having, not just looking backwards, but looking forward.”
Obama added that these types of conversations “can’t happen if we are confining ourselves to our outrage”.
“I would rather see you out there talking to people, including people who you disagree with,” said Obama.
“If you genuinely want to change this, then you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about, and not dismiss it because you can’t save that child without their help, not in this situation.”
Obama also hit out at people debating the issue on social media and criticised what he referred to as “TikTok activism”.
“The problem with the social media and trying to TikTok activism and trying to debate this on that, is you can’t speak the truth.
“You can pretend to speak the truth, you can speak one side of the truth and in some cases, you can try to maintain your moral innocence, but that won’t solve the problem.”
The full podcast recording with Barack Obama will be out tomorrow.
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