Oct 9, 2009
Obama and Hamas
Whether Obama deserves a Nobel Peace Prize only really matters as long as the belief that high-profile, well-capitalized awarding bodies actually represent reality persists. More accurately, what they truly represent is the self-absorption and self-flagellation the West uses to legitimize what it perceives as its overwhelming desire for tolerance and peace throughout the world. If there were any doubts about that, one only need point out that Henry Kissinger once won it.
What this does illuminate, however, is what Barack Obama epitomizes in the eyes of the secular world outside the USA: that he is NotGeorgeBush. In that respect, Barack Obama and Hamas have a lot more in common than one would expect or even care to anticipate.
As Saree Makdisi recently pointed out:
The corruption of the PA and the narrow circle of Fateh party officials running it, clinging to it, and benefiting from it, is one of the main reasons why Fateh was swept from office in the 2006 Palestinian elections in favor of Hamas: most people then were voting against Fateh and its corruption and general hopelessness, rather than for Hamas (which had, and has, little to offer other than simply not being Fateh: a credit which goes only so far).
As far as the world is concerned, Obama is NotGeorgeBush.
As far as Palestinians are concerned, Hamas is NotFateh.
Those are both characteristics that may deserve recognition in the short term, I suppose, but will certainly fade in relevance and importance in the long term.
