Phyllis Chesler Interviews Carol Gould

carol gould

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Obama-Bashing is not my style
Last uploaded : Wednesday 10th Nov 2010 at 16:12
Contributed by : Carol Gould

 

I have it up to the eye teeth with Jewish and Zionist friends and correspondents writing in hysterical tones to me about ‘Obama bin Laden’ threatening the very existence of world Jewry and of Israel.

Had my native country, the United States of America, had a Jewish president who travelled to Israel and shmoozed the leadership time and again and had 'Israel' as his middle name we Jews would be outraged if headlines emerged about the US president 'pandering to the Jewish World.'

Also, we journalists must not give in to the ugly and wrong use of 'Obama bin Laden,' which is the common parlance of extreme right-wing Americans like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. The American Right who just voted in the Tea Party candidates has a tinge of racism in it; there is also a belief in Washington that Gen McChrystal's mocking of Obama's Cabinet in Vanity Fair was to do with the fact that the Obama team was ‘all Jews.’ Do not underestimate for one moment that the extreme, Obama-hating Right is also devoid of Jews and has been suspected of having a small but significant and loud ex-KKK black-hating element.

Also, I have never quite understood why British and overseas people always spend so much time trashing my country's leaders. (Caroline Glick's uncalled-for condemnation of Obama and of the long-overdue American universal health care a recent example.) Americans admired in equal measure Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair despite their manifold faults and blunders, but when Bush was president we expats never heard the end of it -- including Piers Morgan's obscene anti-American Daily Mirror tableau on July 4th, 2002, the first Independence Day after 9/11, and now it is the turn of Obama to be hated by the same nation. If it isn't Johann Hari trashing Obama for NOT shmoozing the Palestinians, it is the Jewish press trashing him for 'pandering' to the Muslims.

His life in Indonesia meant a great deal to him. Were I a Christian who had had an early childhood period in a cheder (Hebrew school) in Israel or the USA I would also have a deep and abiding feeling about my Jewish experience. the great Founding Father Alexander Hamilton was educated in a cheder (Hebrew School) in the West Indies. He spoke and wrote fluent Hebrew but spent his adult life as a practicing Christian; would we Jews like it if there were disparaging articles written by historians and journalists about his 'pandering to the Jews' because he spent his childhood in a Jewish environment?

Obama has transformed the lives of several of my family members as well as two high school and college friends of mine who lost their jobs and who now CAN EAT, but a pair of shoes, get hospital care and get their eyes refracted. This is due to the Obama Stimulus Plan and to Obamacare. My sister's letter about the rise in her senior care was personally signed by President Obama. He has literally transformed her life in a short eighteen months.
I was a staunch Republican, Bush-lovin conservative myself but I joined with President Eisenhower's granddaughter Susan and President Nixon's daughter Julie to support republicans for Obama. Having seen how he, Joe Biden and Harry Reid are trying to bring compassion and generosity to America's unemployed, sick, homeless and poor of all social classes, religions and races -- amongst whom are some of my own friends and family -- I applaud him.

Obama is a dream come true. He needs to try harder but has the potential to be another FDR. I have followed his remarkable career since 2002 and wrote about him in my 2004 London play examining segregation in the armed forces.

Not one person in Israel or the USA has died because of Obama's actions. The al Aqsa Intifadah, 9/11, Bali, Madrid and 7/7 happened under GW Bush's watch. Numerous terror plots have been foiled since Obama took office.
I could go on and on. He and his beautiful family and mostly-Jewish cabinet make me burst with pride to be an American whose parents worked tirelessly for the civil rights movement.

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