I’m wondering, like many, what to make of Obama’s silence about Israel.  It would have been so interesting to know what his instinctual response would have been. (And Hillary Clinton’s…and then to know how they resolved any differences.) We’re not to know what he thinks yet. And when we do hear from him, I suspect it will be a considered response coming from within the big American machinary.

Will Self says ‘…President-elect Barack Obama’s silence is so depressing at this crucial juncture. True, Obama set out his compliance to the pro-Israel lobby in the US a long way back on the campaign trail, when he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) that under his presidency there would be no negotiation concerning Jerusalem, but still some hoped that he might show more mettle when it came to the actuality. Dream on.’

Obama’s aides say that ‘he is following established protocol that the US has only one president at a time’. This didn’t stop him from condemning the Mumbai attacks though.

Simon Tisdall in the Guardian notes that:

…evidence is mounting that Obama is already losing ground among key Arab and Muslim audiences that cannot understand why, given his promise of change, he has not spoken out. Arab commentators and editorialists say there is growing disappointment at Obama’s detachment – and that his failure to distance himself from George Bush’s strongly pro-Israeli stance is encouraging the belief that he either shares Bush’s bias or simply does not care.

The Al-Jazeera satellite television station recently broadcast footage of Obama on holiday in Hawaii, wearing shorts and playing golf, juxtaposed with scenes of bloodshed and mayhem in Gaza. Its report criticising “the deafening silence from the Obama team” suggested Obama is losing a battle of perceptions among Muslims that he may not realise has even begun.

It’s uncertain where this new war will take the world, and what the outcome will be, perhaps as Will Self says ” the shards of this viciously shattered hall of mirrors will carry on stabbing at us all until the End of Day”.

How depressing.

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