Shattered Hopes
Obama's Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace
-
- $13.99
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
President Barack Obama’s first trip abroad in his second term took him to Israel and the Palestinian West Bank, where he despondently admitted to those waiting for words of encouragement, “It is a hard slog to work through all of these issues.” Contrast this gloomy assessment with Obama’s optimism on the second day of his first term, when he appointed former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell as his special envoy for Middle East peace, boldly asserting that his administration would “actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.” How is it that Obama’s active and aggressive search for progress has become mired in the status quo?
Writer and political analyst Josh Ruebner charts Obama’s journey from optimism to frustration in the first hard-hitting investigation into why the president failed to make any progress on this critical issue, and how his unwillingness to challenge the Israel lobby has shattered hopes for peace.
Written in a clear and accessible style by the advocacy director of a national peace organization and former Middle East analyst for the Congressional Research Service, Shattered Hopes offers an informed history of the Obama administration’s policies and maps out a true path forward for the United States to help achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ruebner, a leader of the coalition U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, charges the Obama administration with playing "a crucial role... in sinking the prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace." Throughout the book, the author makes the idiosyncratic argument that the president is a natural ally of the Palestinians, but that he has thrown them under the bus for personal gain; he is "willing to sublimate his likely true feelings on this issue in order to advance his political career." Unfortunately, the book often reads like an awkward attempt at psychoanalysis couched in shrill, thinly reasoned polemic. Ruebner assigns complex emotions and motivations to Obama, even as he stridently insists that the president's actions are unreasonable and reprehensible. At the same time, he stakes out a maximalist position for himself, asserting that no Israeli concessions can ever be good enough for the Palestinians, and any Israeli concerns are inherently suspect. He argues that Obama's attempt to revive the Oslo "peace process" (scare quotes and all) is "shameful," as is the president's obeisance to Israel's "supposed" security needs. The author places the blame for the 9/11 attacks on American policy toward Israel, and, while magnanimously allowing that "deliberately attacking civilians is never justifiable under international law," he excoriates Obama for insisting that the Palestinians can achieve peace only through nonviolent means.
More Books Like This