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BOB ABERNETHY, host: This past week in Washington, the administration’s top political, military, and diplomatic leaders gathered to think through US options in Afghanistan. On October 7, the US will have been involved militarily in Afghanistan for eight years. What’s our mission there? Can it be achieved, and what are the moral dimensions of the debate? William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He brings to the discussion a strong grounding in the just war tradition. Bill, welcome.

WILLIAM GALSTON (Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution): Good to be here.

ABERNETHY: What can we say about what the mission in Afghanistan should be?

GALSTON: Well, we have to understand the mission in light of 9/11. The attack on the United States, which killed thousands of civilians, was conceived and launched by Al-Quaeda using Afghanistan as a base, with the Taliban government sheltering them, and the piece of the mission on which everyone agrees is the importance, the urgency, and the moral justification, the defensive justification, of making sure that Afghanistan cannot again serve as a base for terrorist attacks on the United States.

ABERNETHY: Okay, so what are the means to that end? How do we do it?

GALSTON: That’s one of the questions that’s being debated in Washington right now, and there are two basic options. Option number one is to try to create an Afghan government that is legitimate, enjoys the consent of the people, and has the capacity to prevent Al-Quaeda and other terrorist groups from acting on its territory. The other possibility is to abandon the hope of creating such a government on the grounds that we don’t have the capacity to do it, and focus instead on direct attacks on Al-Quaeda and other terrorists, using drones, using bombs…

ABERNETHY: In Pakistan as well as …

GALSTON: …and special forces, in Pakistan as well as Afghanistan, absolutely.

ABERNETHY: And so can we do either of those?

GALSTON: That is a very important question, as we learned so painfully decades ago in Vietnam. It is wrong not to ask the question at the threshold, can we do what we want to do? It is immoral to send young people, young American men and women, to die in pursuit of an end that cannot be attained, and it is even worse if political leaders have good reason in advance to believe that the end that they are publicly declaring is unobtainable, and the worst of all is to use American troops for the immediate political advantage of the party of the administration in power.

ABERNETHY: One of the issues here is whether we can create the trust of the Afghan people in our ability to stay and do what’s necessary. Can they trust us to see it through?

GALSTON: That is a critical question, because by having anything to do with us in these remote villages they are risking their lives, and it would be wrong of us to send a signal that we’re in for the long haul and then leave our local allies in the lurch. Unfortunately, we have done that from time to time since the Second World War, and the results are never pretty, and the policy is never justified. If we tell people that they can depend on us, we’ve given a solemn promise on which they are wagering their lives, and we better honor that promise.

ABERNETHY: And so how do you come out, quickly? How do you come out on it?

GALSTON: I think that we have to go forward, and I have reluctantly concluded that an investment of additional troops represents the best way forward. Others that I respect differ with that conclusion.

ABERNETHY: William Galston of the Brookings Institution, many thanks.

GALSTON: My pleasure.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: In Jerusalem’s Old City, the Spafford Children’s Center is a welcome oasis from the turbulence that is all too present here. Both Israelis and Palestinians claim Jerusalem as their capital, and the ongoing conflict can take a heavy toll on the city’s children. Located in the Arab section of Jerusalem, the Spafford Children’s Center tries to help Muslim and Christian Palestinian kids deal with the trauma.

DR. JANTIEN DAJANI (Spafford Children’s Center CEO): I always say there is hardly anyone in the Palestinian society that is not traumatized.

LAWTON: The center is run by Dr. Jantien Dajani, a Dutch pediatrician who came here 35 years ago. Back then, the center provided medical services for East Jerusalem’s children, as it had since the 1920’s. But center leaders realized they were dealing with problems that went beyond the physical. David duPlantier, dean of Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral in New Orleans, is on the Spafford Children’s Center board.

REV. DAVID DUPLANTIER (Spafford Children’s Center Board Member): So it was a chance to really strengthen the health of the children, not just in the medical sense, but in the psychological and social sense.

LAWTON: About 400 children up to age 18 come through the center every week for after-school activities and Friday sessions. The center also sponsors summer camps and special cultural programs. The children learn skills to help them in future jobs, things like computer and English. Everything has an educational component, even the most uproarious game. There’s play therapy, art therapy, and drama therapy, all designed to help the children deal with trauma and stress they may not even realize they have. A psychologist comes in several times a week for one-on-one sessions, and there is also group counseling.

Dr. DAJANI: And what we try to do is to create in the center several safe areas, safe rooms where they can say anything, and it will not come back to them.

LAWTON: Dajani’s philosophy is to keep the kids busy with positive activities so they won’t get pulled into drug abuse or violence, common problems among Palestinian youths. She tries to teach them to make the best of their circumstances, no matter how difficult those circumstances are.

Dr. DAJANI: I always say I cannot change for you the situation we are living in. That’s impossible. That needs political solutions from high up. But at least what I can try is to change a bit your perception of the situation.

LAWTON: The center itself has a colorful past, tracing its roots to Horatio and Anna Spafford, an evangelical couple from Chicago. After suffering heavy losses in that city’s Great Fire of 1871, Horatio sent Anna and their four daughters to Europe. While en route their steamship, the Ville du Havre, sank after colliding with another ship.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: Before the Titanic, I think it was the most significant cruise ship disaster, and the daughters all perished.

LAWTON: Anna sent Horatio a telegram which said, “Saved alone. What shall I do?”

Rev. DUPLANTIER: He’s heartbroken to find out his daughters have perished, and so he takes a boat over to meet Anna, and when the captain shows him roughly the place where the shipwreck had taken place, he was inspired to write a poem that later became the hymn “It Is Well With My Soul.”

WINTLEY PHIPPS (singing): “When sorrows like sea billows roll…”

LAWTON: “It is Well” remains one of the most popular Christian hymns, sung in churches around the world and recorded by multiple gospel artists.

Mr. PHIPPS (singng):  “…it is well with my soul.”

LAWTON: After their tragedies, the Spaffords decided to move to the Holy Land. They believed the end of the world was near and that Jesus would soon come back to Earth on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. The Spaffords and a small group of fellow believers called the Overcomers wanted to be close by when that happened. As they waited, they established a commune in East Jerusalem that became known as the American Colony.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: They weren’t there to try to convert people. That was one of the unique things about them. They didn’t proselytize. They said their prayers, they welcomed people, they offered food when they had it. But they were not there to try to convert other people, which was very different than especially evangelical Christianity in that period.

LAWTON: The American Colony eventually moved to the former palace of an Arab pasha. Jews, Christians and Muslims were all welcome there.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: From the absolute beginning they were generous, they were known to share their food. They really were thought to be a place of hospitality and, you know, Christianity at its core, it really is a faith of hospitality.

LAWTON: But there was also controversy. After Horatio died in 1888, Anna took over leadership of the colony. Her style was authoritarian, and she imposed a rigid set of rules.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: She kind of dictated how life would be. Certainly they were unique and different than mainline Christianity of today in how they lived. They were very disciplined. There was a period of time where men and women, even if they were married, apparently lived separately.

LAWTON: DuPlantier says after Anna died in 1923 the religious zeal of the colony changed.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: In any kind of community like that it’s always going to be a challenge to sustain that over a period of time. So I think partly that’s why the religious fervor fell away in the next generation, because you know it was very much based around the personal faith of Anna and Horatio.

LAWTON: But the charitable work of the colony continued. Anna’s daughter Bertha focused on caring for children.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: That began kind of the ministry that evolved, from taking in orphans to helping with health care and, you know, over a period of time turned into a hospital and then evolved over time into the Spafford Center as it is now.

LAWTON: The Spaffords’ compound has become the famous American Colony Hotel, which has been named one of the leading small hotels of the world. The hotel provides key support to the children’s center. The Spafford Children’s Center is just inside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City near the Damascus Gate. It’s in the house where Horatio and Anna Spafford settled after they arrived here from Chicago in 1881. The house eventually became the headquarters for the Spafford family’s charitable works. Today, the center is not explicitly religious, although it has many faith-based connections. Dr. Dajani says, like their predecessors, they serve people of all faiths, and they try to teach the children religious tolerance.

Dr. DAJANI: We want them to be tolerant for each other and for different opinions. We take them to the mosque, we take them to the Holy Sepulcher and to other holy places. They are always amazed at each other’s beauty.

LAWTON: For duPlantier, the lasting legacy of the colony is the joy he sees in the children who come to the center, a testament of hope, he says, that turmoil and tragedy need not prevail.

Rev. DUPLANTIER: To see the joy that is just prevalent in the folks really has renewed and continues to renew my knowledge that God finds a way. No matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, God finds a way to redeem them if we look.

LAWTON: And that, he says, makes things well with his soul.

I’m Kim Lawton in Jerusalem.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: It’s a common observation that one of the most important paths to peace between enemies is to learn to see others not as demonized stereotypes, but as unique human beings. When she was in the Middle East last month, Kim Lawton learned about the Parents Circle-Families Forum — Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims who have lost loved ones in their long conflict but have learned to replace hate with reconciliation, even friendship. Here is Kim’s special report.

KIM LAWTON: Since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank have been hotbeds of unrest and often scenes of angry confrontation between displaced Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. Because of the continuing military and political conflict, few Israeli civilians ever venture in. But don’t tell that to Rami Elhanan. On this day, he and his wife Nurit have come to the Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem to visit their friend, Mazen Faraj. It’s is an unexpected friendship. Both have lost family members in the conflict. Yet their grief has brought them together.

MAZEN FARAJ: Today it’s our responsibility for our children and for our families to build something new.

RAMI ELHANAN: We put a crack in this wall of hatred and fear that divide these two nations, and we show another way. We show another possibility. We show the ability to listen to each other’s pain, which is essential if you want to get to any kind of reconciliation.

Mr. FARAJ: This was the first room for our house.

LAWTON: Faraj has lived in Dheisheh his entire life. During the early part of his childhood, fifteen people in his family lived in this one crowded room.

Mr. ELHANAN: This is the place he’s always talking about—that you don’t need someone to hate you to teach you how to hate when you grow up in a room like this.

LAWTON: In April of 2002, there was a violent confrontation between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians fighters outside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the site where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was born. Palestinian fighters holed up in the church, and Israeli soldiers laid siege. During a lull in the fighting, Faraj’s 62-year-old father went out to Jerusalem to get groceries. He was shot and killed by Israeli soldiers.

Mr. FARAJ: He got killed in April 2002 when he was coming back from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. The Israeli soldiers, they started shooting him and without any reason. No one can kill his soul. They succeeded to kill his body, but without his soul. His soul’s still around us and give us like the power every day, how to keep going in our lives.

LAWTON: But there is great pain on the Israeli side as well. Elhanan had 14-year-old daughter, Smadar. Of four children, she was the only daughter, and the family had called her “the princess.” On September 4, 1997, the first day of school, Smadar went to a popular shopping area in Jerusalem.

Mr. ELHANAN: And she went down the street with her girlfriends to buy new books for the new year. Two suicide bombers blew themselves up, killing five people that day, including three little girls. One of them was my 14-year-old Smadar.

LAWTON: Elhanan says he was overwhelmed by anger and despair.

Mr. ELHANAN: It took me almost a year to understand who I am, to try to recover, and to understand that I have to choose a way for myself and translate these feelings of anger and despair into something constructive and create some hope out of it. And I joined the Parents Circle and I found a meaning for my life.

LAWTON: The Parents Circle-Families Forum was launched in 1995 as a way to bring bereaved Israelis and Palestinians together. The group now has several hundred participants who’ve lost immediate family members because of the violence in this region. Organizers believe it’s the only project of its kind in an area where conflict is still ongoing. The nonprofit group sponsors face-to-face dialogue meetings for bereaved family members and public lectures about reconciliation.

Mr. ELHANAN: The minute I saw in that meeting the first bereaved Palestinian families as human beings I was completely shocked. It was the first time ever in my life that I meet Palestinians as human beings after so many years of demonizing each other. So this was the turning point.

LAWTON: Faraj, who was dealing with his own feelings of anger and revenge, went to one Parents Circle meeting where Elhanan spoke.

Mr. FARAJ: And it was this man talking about his suffering and his pain, too. But I told him, “What do you know about suffering and pain? You just live in Jerusalem. ou are Israeli, you are the occupier, you are everything.” And then he starts to talk about his daughter, and then really I found out that, whoa, it’s the same pain.

LAWTON: The two men became close friends. Elhanan was drawn by Faraj’s humor.

Mr. ELHANAN: He’s the only guy in the world that makes me laugh.

LAWTON: Faraj couldn’t believe that Elhanan was willing to visit him in the refugee camp. They built a deep mutual respect.

Mr. FARAJ: He’s just a human being, and you can deal with him in an easy way, and you can build a discussion with him with easy way, and you can build the fight also in easy way, too. But the most important thing’s that he’ll respect the other.

Mr. ELHANAN: What he’s doing needs a lot of guts, and his ability to face the world, tell his truths after all the things that he’s been through, I think it’s admirable, and I really respect him for it.

LAWTON: Faraj and Elhanan started doing joint lectures for the Parents Circle.

Mr. ELHANAN: We use this enormous respect that the two societies have for people who paid the highest price possible to convey this message, to convey the message of dialogue, of reconciliation, of peace.

LAWTON: Elhanan and Faraj have given more than 1,000 joint lectures in Palestinian and Israeli schools. They say most of the kids have no idea that Palestinians and Israelis can be friends.

Mr. ELHANAN: If there is only one kid at the end of the class who nods his head with acceptance to this message, we saved one drop of blood. According to Judaism, this is the whole world.

LAWTON: The Parents Circle is nonsectarian, but is supported by several Muslim, Christian, and Jewish groups. In 2008, Catholic Relief Services brought Faraj and Elhanan on a speaking tour across the United States.

BURCU MUNYAS (Program Manager, Catholic Relief Services): They are giving a message of hope in the midst of hopelessness in the Holy Land. So we thought that this would be a strong message to bring to our US Catholic audiences.

LAWTON: For their part, Elhanan and Faraj try to keep the focus on relationship, not religion.

Mr. FARAJ: It’s the important things that we don’t want to make this conflict like a religion conflict.

LAWTON: Their work isn’t always easy. Both men have received sometimes strong criticism from within their respective communities.

Mr. ELHANAN: People tell me that I’m a traitor or a — but I think more people are impressed by my ability to translate the pain into hope.

Mr. FARAJ: I really believe in what I’m doing and — but not all the people they really accept that, but anyway, if you believe in something you have to continue.

LAWTON: Parents Circle supporters hope these relationships can be a model for others, which they believe will help further the political peace process.

Ms MUNYAS: By building trust with each other they become more and more ready to trust the other side, to compromise, and to tell their leaders that they are ready, that they can move ahead, they can compromise, and they can sign the peace agreements.

LAWTON: Faraj and Elhanan agree.

Mr. FARAJ: We have a different culture, a different religion, and different, also, conditions on the ground, too. So how we can find a way? This the problem. It’s not about that’s it, I found the solution for the conflict. No. But the first step, we have to know each other.

Mr. ELHANAN: I devote my life to go everywhere possible to tell the very simple truth that we are not doomed. It’s not our destiny to keep on killing each other, and we can stop it by talking to one another — that simple.

LAWTON: Simple in theory, much more elusive to work out. But they hope their relationship proves it is possible. I’m Kim Lawton in the West Bank.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, guest anchor: Extraordinary scenes from Iran this week as hundreds of thousands took to the streets in protest over the disputed presidential election. Iranian officials say President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won by a landslide. But supporters of the main opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi claim the election was rigged. The Islamic Republic of Iran has a quasi-theocratic government, and the protests put new pressures on the cleric-run establishment. Kim Lawton has more.

KIM LAWTON: In the week of mass demonstrations, many supporters of opposition leader Mir Huessein Moussavi did something almost unthinkable. They challenged Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

GENEIVE ABDO (Iran Analyst, The Century Foundation): It’s believed that he more or less gave — authorized — the rigging of this election.

LAWTON: Geneive Abdo is an Iran analyst at the Century Foundation. She says some of the protesters went so far as to call the Ayatollah a dictator.

Ms. ABDO: This is really, really unprecedented in Iran, where people on the streets in such great numbers are shouting against the Supreme Leader. It’s actually illegal to do that. People are imprisoned for doing that.

LAWTON: In an unusual sermon during Friday prayers, Khamenei called the election “definitive” and said there was no fraud. He urged Iranians to unite behind their Islamic government. Still, he’s ordered the Guardian Council, a body of 12 clerics and Islamic law experts, to look into the situation.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has strong support from religious conservatives.

Ms. ABDO: He is considered to be a very spiritual person, and this is also something that he capitalizes on, which is one way that he makes sure that this base of religious conservative Iranians living in the provinces continue to support him.

LAWTON: But Ahmadinejad also has religious opposition, including from some clerics.

Abdo says it would be a mistake to see this as a secular-religious dispute.

Ms. ABDO: If you watch television you’d think that society is sharply divided between secularists supporting Moussavi, religious people supporting Ahmadinejad. The reality is much more complicated than that. Those supporting Moussavi are also religious.  It’s not they don’t want clerics involved in politics, they don’t want clerics involved in their lives, it’s just certain clerics.

LAWTON: Abdo doesn’t believe the Islamic republic is in danger of toppling, but she says some structural changes may be inevitable.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: As the US tries again to broker a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, American Jews are speaking in unusually diverse voices about what Israel should do. Generally, older Orthodox Jews are strongly opposed to anything they think might weaken Israel’s security. But more and more younger, less religious American Jews are publicly critical of some of the policies of the Israeli government. Betty Rollin listened to the full range of opinions.

BETTY ROLLIN: This year’s New York Salute to Israel parade honored the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv. Unsurprisingly, the spectators included many fervent supporters of Israel.

UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: I just went and I was in love with it. The people are amazing, the spirituality and everything about it, you can’t find it anywhere else.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: I think it’s important for my kids to know their tradition, their history, and for them to grow up with that love of Israel that my parents instilled in me and I would pass it on to them.

Rabbi Avi Weiss

Rabbi AVI WEISS (Hebrew Institute of Riverdale): The history of the Jewish people is wed to the land of Israel. The Bible talks about a special mission that the Jewish people have, and whenever it talks about the covenant, which is our contract with God, it talks about children, people, and land, and from the very beginning that land as defined is the land of Israel. That’s where Abraham and Sarah walked.

ROLLIN: Rabbi Avi Weiss, an Orthodox rabbi in Riverdale, New York, has strong personal ties to Israel. Two of his children live there with their children. He travels there often, and Weiss’s spiritual connection to Israel runs deep.

Rabbi WEISS: As wonderful as I feel in America, in Israel I feel like I’m spiritually flying. I can’t explain it. It’s like asking someone why they’re in love.

ROLLIN: Many American Jews are very moved by the concept of Israel. What’s behind that?

Professor STEVEN COHEN (Hebrew Union College): In part, they are reacting to Israel as a response to the Holocaust. For years, Jews have suffered from persecution. That persecution never reaches the height that it did in the destruction of six million Jews in Europe, and American Jews are very aware of that narrative from ashes to the glorious, miraculous state of Israel and that really cements the American-Jewish relationship with Israel.

ROLLIN: Whereas American Jews overwhelmingly support the state of Israel, there is more and more criticism of its policies, even on the part of some rabbis. Rabbi Michael Paley is a scholar in residence at the UJA Federation in New York. Although a strong supporter of Israel, Rabbi Paley is troubled by its treatment of the Palestinians.

“American Jews are very aware of that narrative from ashes to the glorious, miraculous state of Israel, and that really cements the American-Jewish relationship with Israel.”

Rabbi MICHAEL PALEY: We’re now in control of other people, and sometimes we’ve been too aggressive. Sometimes we haven’t listened to their rights. Sometimes we’ve blotted out their voices. Sometimes they made us blot out their voices.

ROLLIN: Philip Weiss is a nonreligious American Jew who writes a blog that is very critical of Israel.

PHILIP WEISS: Israel is pursuing disastrous policies on its own that, as a Jew, I have to stand up and say this goes against all my training as an American. This goes against the civil rights struggle in which I took a part. This goes against the Vietnam War struggle in which I took a part, and so I’m going to stand up as a Jew, as a proud Jew, and denounce these policies and say you have to find a new path.

Israel came out of a movement that responded to horrific conditions for Jews in Europe. Those conditions don’t exist anymore, and that is why this summoning the Holocaust—which is what the Jewish leadership is reduced to again and again in order to maintain support for Israel in the American Jewish population—that has run its course.

ROLLIN: Abby Bellows is a young Jewish American who is sympathetic with the Jewish need for a homeland, but she also has reservations.

ABBY BELLOWS (Community Organizer): I feel complex in my feelings towards Israel. My grandmother escaped from Germany, and a lot of our family was killed there. So I get the need for a Jewish state from that kind of visceral level, and I recognize that anti-Semitism still exists in the world. But at the same time I feel that there’s something fundamentally tense for me about having a state that by definition gives preference to one group over others, because my Jewish values taught me about egalitarianism, and I feel like they are not being represented necessarily in the policies of Israel.

A lot of my friends are into progressive Israel activism. But I have a lot of other friends who just feel really alienated from the state. I’m a community organizer, and a lot of left-Jews really don’t connect or are embarrassed by Israel or feel really alienated.

ROLLIN: Professor Steven Cohen has studied the wide range of opinions American Jews have on Israel. He found that non-Orthodox Jews over 65 are far more committed to Israel than those under 35.

Prof. COHEN: In large part that’s because younger people are more likely to marry non-Jews, and it’s the result of that marriage that their attachment to Israel is lower than older people. Among non-Orthodox Jews, most young Jews marry non-Jews.

ROLLIN: And many non-Orthodox young Jews feel they can fully express their Judaism in America without reference to Israel. In contrast . . .

Prof. COHEN: . . . Orthodox Jews, as opposed to everybody else, have become more attached to Israel: more travel to Israel, more study in Israel, more settlement in Israel. They are more conservative, some say hawkish, about Israel’s conflict with its Arab neighbors, and their approach to Middle East politics will come to more and more influence the way American Jews relate to that part of the world.

Professor Steven Cohen

ROLLIN: The Orthodox, among others, are greatly concerned that the two-state solution, which Obama favors, would result in a loss of land — and security.

Rabbi WEISS: We withdrew from Lebanon, and what happened was suddenly the rockets came in. We withdrew from Gush Kativ, from Gaza, and the rockets came into Sderot, and I have great fears at this point if we are going to withdraw from the West Bank, from Samaria and Judea, then Tel Aviv is right there in the line. I desperately want to live in peace with Palestinians. Rabin used to say you have to make peace with your enemy—which you can only make peace with an enemy who wants to make peace with you. Having Gaza which is controlled by Hamas, by terrorists, or withdrawing from the West Bank, which could then be taken over by Hamas or Hezbollah, that’s not good for Israel and it’s not good for America.

ROLLIN: However American Jews feel about Israel, the important thing, according to both sides, is that they feel.

Prof. COHEN: Criticism of Israel indicates engagement with Israel. American Jews should be worried when their children stop criticizing Israel.

ROLLIN: The question is whether the growing criticism in America will affect US policy toward the state of Israel.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Betty Rollin in New York.

Rabbi Avi Weiss

Rabbi Avi Weiss, Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, New York:
America is my home. I’m grateful to the US forever and ever. Israel is my homeland and that’s where my family lives, literally and figuratively. When I think about existentially who I am I think of Israel. My roots, I’m grounded, my ancestry all there.

The biblical narrative, and even if one doesn’t buy into the biblical narrative, the history of the Jewish people is wed to the land of Israel. The Bible talks about a special mission that the Jewish people has, and whenever it talks about the covenant which is our contract with God, it talks about children, people, and land, and from the very beginning that land is defined as the land of Israel. That’s where Abraham and Sarah walked.

As wonderful as I feel in America, in Israel I feel like I’m spiritually flying. I can’t explain it. It’s like asking someone why they are in love.

When you love something there could be different opinions, and I think those different opinions aren’t a bad thing. I think it’s a good thing. I think a consensus is being reached, and we are at a point now where there is an interdependence within the Jewish community. Israel is not going to make it with the political right alone or the political left. It’s not going to make it with the religious alone or those who couldn’t care less about religion. It’s only going to make it with the both, and there has to be a sense of interdependence between the two.

The political right has to understand that it has no monopoly on loving the land of Israel. The left loves the land just as much, but it thinks you’ve got to give away land for the sake of peace. The left has to understand that it has no monopoly on wanting peace. The right wants peace just as much. If both sides would stop impugning each others motives then that unity, interdependence, will be able to allow us to move forward.

Blessed be the nation that has as its army the Israeli defense forces, not only a strong army but, I believe, one of the most moral armies on the face of this earth. I know the families of the soldiers who fought house to house in Jenin at a great price, because when we went into Jenin back a couple of years, Israel could have taken out Jenin from the air but wanted to minimize loss of civilian life. Look, I mourn the loss of innocent Palestinian life. I mourn that. It’s a Jewish concept. But one must talk about intentionality. The intention of the Israeli defense forces to limit civilian losses, it’s only to target military who, unfortunately, they hide themselves amongst the civilian population. The intention of the other side: to murder as many men, women and children as possible. Are there aberrations? Of course, but it’s not part of the mainstream. It’s not part of the very system which Israel is about. Unfortunately, on the other side terrorism is very much a part of their whole motif.

I feel for Palestinians. The fault lies with Palestinian leadership. It lies with Hamas. It lies with Hezbollah. This is not a Ghandi-Martin Luther King movement. If the rockets stop lobbing into Sderot, if they are going to stop the terrorism Israel is the first one to want peace. Unfortunately, the more Israel has given, the weaker Israel is perceived from the other side, and the more the other side wants.

All I can say that whenever we have withdrawn up to this point, it has precipitated the other side wanting more. We withdrew from Lebanon and what happened was suddenly the rockets came in. We withdrew from Gush Kativ, from Gaza, the rockets came into Sderot, and I have great fears if we are going to withdraw from the West Bank, from Samaria and Judea, then Tel Aviv is right there in the line. And I think America has to understand that Israel today is the frontline against the spread of terror. I think this is one of the most important debates. Some people think that Israel’s war on terrorism is kind of isolated to the Middle East. I say no. Israel’s war against terrorism is America’s war against terrorism. I believe with all my heart when an Israeli soldier falls fighting terror, he is not only fallen in the defense of Israel and the Jewish people, he has fallen in the defense of the West, of the free world.

Israel is alone and Israel needs as much support as possible, and so it’s critical that there ought to be support not only from Jews, but from non-Jews as well. But as much as American Jewry helps Israel and as much as America helps Israel, I think it’s reciprocal. I think Israel is America’s greatest friend in the Middle East. I think today Israel really stands strong, being the bulwark against the spread of terror as it was the bulwark against communism during the cold war era.

I see the grassroots as being front and center and being in absolute solidarity with the people of Israel. There are of course those who would criticize, but by and large the support is overwhelming, and what I would do is, I think, it’s important for American Jews to visit Israel. I think it’s important for them to live in Sderot. If you live amongst those wonderful people you will see how peace-loving they are. I take second place to no one when it comes to an understanding the spirituality and potential holiness of all people, including Palestinians. I desperately want to live in peace with Palestinians. Rabin used to say you have to make peace with your enemy. You can only make peace with an enemy who wants to make peace with you. Having Gaza which is controlled by Hamas, by terrorists, or withdrawing from the West Bank, which could then be taken over by Hamas or Hezbollah— that is not good for Israel, and it’s not good for America.

I walk the length and the breadth of Israel. I don’t only see Israel being involved in a political kind of equation. I see Israel as a place of spirituality. I see it as an extraordinary place where people reach out for the vulnerable. I see a medical system; I see a social service system. Yes, I see Jews and Arabs in many, many places doing everything they can to find a language to talk peacefully and embrace each other. I see it as an extraordinary light, as Isaiah would say, to the nations of the world.

I take second place to none of those critics when it comes to concern for the Palestinians. Where we part company is where you place blame. They are placing blame on the state of Israel, on the army. I place the blame squarely on the heads of Hamas, and I will say it clearly. I would say to the Palestinians, if they had a Martin Luther King, nonviolent disobedient movement, they would have had a state many years ago. But when you’ve got a movement where you go bomb buses and you go into restaurants lobbing rockets and you maintain that it can be justified—nothing justifies terror.

We have to find some kind of way of making peace with the Palestinians, which I believe the settlers desperately want, while allowing people who have lived in these places to continue doing so. I can only tell you this: If from the other side there would be a show of trust in real peace rather than terrorism, the history of Israel is that Israel made peace with every Arab country who wanted to make peace with Israel. I believe it’s very fair for there to be natural growth [of the settlements]. Imagine someone turning to an American family saying you can’t have more children, or if you have more children you can’t add a home. What I find very difficult is when America and an American administration starts bullying Israel and starts pushing Israel around. Israel is a sovereign state, and I believe Israel knows best what is in its best security interest. From my perspective Israel knows more about security-wise in the Middle East than America knows. It’s got the experts, it is on the ground, and in that sense it makes an extraordinary contribution to America as well.

I think the mission [of Israel] is to be in a place where one has sovereignty and autonomy and can develop a society that really cares for the oppressed and for the vulnerable. It does so in its own place, in its own land, and does its share to set an example for others. That’s the Israel that I know. That’s the Israel that I love. That mission, I think, is ultimately going to evolve with people of all political persuasions and all religious backgrounds.

In the rabbinic literature Israel is compared to a dove. A dove can’t fly with one wing. You need both wings, and they may have disparate ideas, but there’s got to be a blending together and a consensus and a coming together. I think that’s the most critical challenge Israel faces today.

Rabbi Michael Paley

Rabbi Michael Paley, scholar-in-residence and director of the Jewish Resource Center of the UJA-Federation of New York:

I stand with Israel, and I love Israel. I love the Jewish people, and I love Israel. It’s been one of the most important aspects of my whole life. I came of age at 1967, and it fired my identity. But Israel has to make a choice: a democratic state, a Jewish state…and my particular flavor is a Jewish democratic state with territorial compromise. This does not take away my love for Israel or my hope for its security.

Because I love Israel, because I stand with Israel, I believe and hope and pray in its destiny. I believe its destiny is probably better within or closer to the 1967 borders. I’m not critical of Israel; it’s a democratic state. I don’t want to take away the rights of the voters who live there, like my brother, or my nephew who is in the Army now, are people who live and vote in Israel.

The 20th century for Jews was a difficult century, and we had to, for morality reasons, take power, and power is more difficult. We haven’t been very good at it. We haven’t had to decide the fate, as a Jewish people, of other people who are not Jews. We haven’t been in control of even the Jewish faith. We are in control of other people and sometimes we’ve been too aggressive, sometimes we haven’t listened to their rights, sometimes we’ve blotted out their voices. Sometimes they made us blot out their voices. Sometimes our trauma of the last century comes out and bites us and we say, “oh, what, are you crazy, you are not going to have any compromise at all? You know what happened the last time.” Of course, I’m conflicted. I don’t like to see these things. But still I stand with Israel. That’s the unique contribution of the Jewish people right now, and it’s a place in which our destiny is going to be wrapped up. It comes from our deep history, and it will also be our future. I hope we can do it with vision and understanding, even prophetic wisdom.

Abby Bellows

Abby Bellows, Jewish activist and community organizer:
I grew up in the Havurah movement. It was founded in the early ’70s as a breakaway from the Conservative movement and the Reconstructionist movement. It was people who wanted a more vibrant, more social justice-oriented Judaism. There were rabbis who were part of the movement but weren’t presiding over it. I grew up in one of the original Havurot in DC, Fabrengen. I’m involved in a lot of independent minyanim in New York—independent prayer communities. My Judaism has always been kind of free-form.

I feel complex in my feelings towards Israel. My grandmother escaped from Germany. A lot of our family was killed there. I get the need for a Jewish state from that kind of visceral level, and I recognize that anti-Semitism still exists in the world, but at the same time I feel that there is something fundamentally tense for me about having a state that by definition gives preference to one group over another, because my Jewish values taught me about egalitarianism, and I feel like they are not being represented necessarily in the policies of Israel.

The lack of Palestinians being able to get permits for building homes easily or the challenges with civil rights for a lot of Arab Israelis, Bedouin Israelis. Those things really concern me. The way that the Orthodox community is privileged over other types of Jews in Israel is really concerning to me and in a lot of ways I feel doesn’t reflect the Jewish values that I have been taught.

A lot of my friends are into progressive Israel activism. They are post-Zionist or they are progressive Zionist. They find some way with organizations like the New Israel Fund, J Street—organizations that are trying to better Israel with a progressive bent. But I have a lot of other friends who just feel really alienated from the state. I’m a community organizer, and a lot of left-Jews really don’t connect or are embarrassed by Israel or feel really alienated.

For a lot of people in my generation, we are struggling to understand the connection to Israel, the relevancy of it. For a lot of us anti-Semitism isn’t a daily reality, although the attempted attacks in Riverdale brought it close to home for a lot of us in New York. We still question how our values are reflected in the world, given Israel. For a lot of us what comes up more often than not, people in my circle at least, is friends of our who are on the left saying disparaging things about Israel or saying things that are particularly critical. I think a lot of people my age aren’t equipped to respond in a way that’s not just total right-wing-they-can-do-no-wrong, and I think that the path to fighting anti-Semitism is not only about drawing inward and protecting the Jewish state. It’s about educating and building relationships with people who are different than us. It’s painful for me to see Israel activists who are only in the paradigm that my grandmother told me: “Jews need to care for the Jews.” That’s not the interpretation that I’ve taken from the Holocaust and from the history of persecution of our people. Yes, we need to have a fall-back position of protection. What’s really going to change our future is building relationships that are interfaith, intercultural, and reflect the best of Jewish tradition, which is about being questioning and critical and open-minded.

For me it’s about the treatment of Palestinians. It’s also about the treatment of Bedouins, the Arabs who have become Israeli citizens. It’s also about Jews who aren’t Orthodox in Israel. I have friends who have made aliyah and had to do an Orthodox conversion, when previously they were very strong, practicing Conservative Jews.

I think Israel has to be much more upfront about human rights as a first, bottom-line priority, and that is something we can be proud of because Jews believe in human rights.

The most recent time I went, last summer, I went for my cousin’s wedding, who made aliyah. It was a feeling of home culturally. I love the feeling of walking down a street that’s called Hillel and the feeling of integration, of having the words that I use to pray be the words I hear on the street. The last trip I was on was a narrow trip. My vision was within my family and my friends, and it was pretty easy to not see what was happening in the West Bank, at the checkpoints, at other sites of contestation in Israel.

My Judaism has always been fully expressed in this country. I have never been raised with a Judaism that is referential to Israel necessarily, and when I was the president of Hillel I remembered having a conversation with the other leaders about taking down a sign in the entry way of Hillel that said “Wherever we stand, we stand with Israel,” which was Hillel’s motto, because it turned off a lot of my friends who didn’t feel comfortable coming into the space. I always try as a Jewish leader to create a Judaism that doesn’t have to be about Israel for the sake of the continuity of our people, celebration of all the richness of our heritage. I think right now for young Jews, it’s really important to have a Judaism that can be a Jewish home where people can feel comfortable even if they don’t put out their credentials about their support of Israel.

Steven Cohen

Professor Steven Cohen, Hebrew Union College:

In 1948, the State of Israel is born and American Jewish involvement with Zionist and other organizations is at its peak; it will never be as high as it is then. It plummets in 1949 and kind of putters along. There is a blip in 1956 with the Sinai campaign and still Israel is not a major part of the American Jewish consciousness until 1967. In 1967, we have the Six Day War. American Jews are mobilized and because they are coming out and becoming full-fledged Americans and proud Jews and ethnic Jews Israel will play a major role in their consciousness from ’67 probably through the 1980s. And since the 1980s there has been a declining American Jewish interest in Israel, in large part because of changes in the identity of American Jews. They are becoming more personal, less collective, more religious, and less ethnic, and Israel is a very unusual symbol for a religio-ethnic group in America. American Jews regard it as their homeland, but hardly any have ever lived there. Israel is their quasi-national symbol. They love the country. It represents ethnicity, nationality, culture, pride, heart, soul to the vast majority of American Jews.

In part, [American Jews] are reacting to Israel as a response to the Holocaust. For years, Jews have suffered from persecution. That persecution never reached the height that it did in the destruction of 6 million Jews in Europe. A fragment of those Jews joined other Jews who had been in the land of Palestine, then Israel. Before that Israel is born as a result of a Zionist movement and the return of Jews to Israel and American Jews are very aware of that narrative from ashes to the glorious, miraculous state of Israel, and that really cements the American Jewish relationship with Israel starting with 1948.

Both Jews on the left and Jews on the right want to blame Israeli politics for the alienation of some American Jews from Israel. The right says the left is too critical of Israel, the left says Israel deserves to be criticized. If it had better policies, it would hold the attention of American Jews.

The real engine of declining American Jewish interest in Israel is changes in American Jewish identity, the way American Jews think of themselves as Jews, and in particular intermarriage. The more Jews marry non-Jews, the more they adopt a definition of being Jewish which is very much like American Protestant Christianity, and American Protestant Christianity is spiritual. It’s about faith, it’s about religion, and there isn’t an automatic place for a national homeland.

On measure after measure, older people outscore middle-aged people, middle-aged people outscored younger people. Older people are more attached to Israel than younger people. Why is that? In large part, younger people are more likely to marry non-Jews, and it’s the result of that marriage, that their attachment to Israel is lower than older people. Among non-Orthodox Jews, most young Jews marry non-Jews. Were we to only look at the in-married, we would find that in-married Jews today are as if not more attached to Israel than in-married Jews of yesterday.

The Orthodox is a growing segment of American Jews. Eight percent of Jews my age, I’m in my 50s, twenty-three percent of American Jewish children are being raised in Orthodox Jewish homes. They are the China of American Jewish life, the growing force. Orthodox Jews, as opposed to everybody else, have become more attached to Israel. More travel to Israel, more study in Israel, more settlement in Israel. It may be that one-fourth of American Jewish Orthodox people will move to Israel in their lifetime. That is an amazing number, and it reflects the deep commitment of Orthodox Jews to the land, state, and people of Israel.

Orthodox Jews will come to exercise even more influence over the ways of which American Jews relate to Israel politically, culturally, religiously and in other ways. They are more conservative, some say hawkish, about Israel’s conflict with its Arab neighbors, and their approach to Middle East politics will come to more and more influence the way American Jews relate to that part of the world.

Left of center American Jews—and let’s remember Jews are the most left of center group in America—left of center American Jews are adopting more dovish stances towards the conflict, pretty much in keeping with the current American administration’s approach to the conflict. They want a two-state solution to the conflict, Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. They want peaceful negotiations, and they want the withdrawal of settlements from the West Bank.

We have more left-of-center Jews than Orthodox Jews, but we have more Orthodox Jews who are deeply involved with Israel. Most Jews see themselves as progressive, liberal, left-of-center sorts of people. Israel is very unpopular in the American left, and in fact the world left. The same principles which make the non-Jewish left unhappy with Israel make the Jewish left uncomfortable with Israel. So they are attached to Israel as a family matter, but they are unhappy with this member of the family, and they somehow would like this member of the family to behave a little better.

American Jews who would like Israel not to be there are a very small number. They get a lot of attention from the press, they get a lot of attention from American Jews, but when we go to the surveys we find very few Jews are in opposition to the Jewish state of Israel. The vast majority like the fact there is a Jewish state in Israel. They care about Israel; they care about the Jews who are there.

Israeli officials recognize that America is Israel’s primary strategic ally, and in that equation American Jews play a vital role. If American Jews don’t support Israel, then America won’t support Israel, and Israel will stand alone in the world against all of its enemies. Most Israelis think that way.

One of the problems that highly engaged Jewish young people have is that right now they have a choice either to be advocates for Israel or to be apathetic, and by creating other ways and other spaces in which Jews can be pro-Israel these people can be engaged with Israel and still, like many Israelis, take issue with particular policies of the Israeli government.

I have long been what we call a Labor Zionist. I believe in partition, the 1947 resolution that divided the land of Israel into an Arab state and a Jewish state. I would like to see a return to partition, a Palestinian state and a secure democratic Jewish state of Israel, and I think the way to get there is through serious negotiations with our Palestinian counterparts and a strong American and European presence in those negotiations and guarantees for the state of Israel. Without security, I am not willing to countenance significant withdrawals. But I believe that withdrawals from the West Bank will enhance Israeli security in the long run.

From our surveys we know that American Jews are widely concerned about the Iranian threat to Israel and to world peace as well. They, like our leaders, are unclear about what is the appropriate response, what will work to prevent Iran from becoming a serious nuclear threat to world peace and to the very survival of Israel.

America is an exceptional country. It has made Jews different from Jews everywhere else in the world, including Canada, Argentina, the UK, France. American Jews have adopted a more religious, faith-oriented definition about what it means to be Jewish. Jews in those other countries are still more cultural, more national, more ethnic, and therefore, in certain senses, more patriotic about their connection to Israel.

I’m very concerned about changes in American Jewish identity. The lack of interest in Israel among Jewish young people is important in and of itself, and important for what it says about changing Jewish identity. I’m a Jew who happens to believe that Jews need to be fully Jewish, religiously and ethnically Jewish. I’m very concerned that the ethnic aspect of being Jewish is in decline.

If secular Jews are angry at Israel for the way their way of being Jewish is being treated, by definition they are Israel-engaged. My concern is with secular Jews who don’t even know that secular Jews in Israel from their point of view are getting a raw deal.

No one is more critical of Israel than Israelis. Criticism of Israel indicates engagement with Israel. American Jews should be worried when their children stop criticizing Israel.

Philip Weiss

Philip Weiss, writer and blogger:

I didn’t have much of a relationship with Israel until after the Iraq war. Close friends of my family moved there when I was young, but it didn’t really interest me, and it was only after the Iraq war when I really began to look at my country’s relationship with Israel. My best friend told me, “oh they just destroyed the air force in Egypt and Syria on June 5th, 1967, and I was somewhat indifferent to that, I confess. I was 12 years old; it just did not mean that much to me. My family were secularized, academic Jews and they were tempted—because they thought anti-Semitism was an important factor in American life, a belief I don’t share with them—they certainly thought about moving to Israel. But I think the importance of opportunity for their children in the US came before that.

Israel is pursuing disastrous policies on its own that, as a Jew, I have to stand up and say this goes against all my training as an American, this goes against the civil rights struggle in which I took a part, this goes against the Vietnam War struggle in which I took a part, so I’m going to stand up as a Jew, a proud Jew, and denounce these policies and say you have to find a new path—the Jim Crow policies in the West Bank, the 600-700 checkpoints, the destruction of all hope for Palestinians for one-and-a half million Palestinians under occupation, for the Palestinians who were blockaded in Gaza, this sort of contempt for Palestinian human rights for certainly the last 40 years. It’s not just Jewish in my view. I come to this as a very proudly identified Jew. I grew up, that was my whole identity of being Jewish, and I developed a more diverse, American Jewish identity. As I became an adult I intermarried, I broke Jewish law in that respect. I don’t keep a kosher household, so there are many ways in which I represent sort of a typical kind of integrating Jew. I’m not very religious. I’m certainly not an observant Jew and I’m—no other religion calls to me. I go to synagogue a couple of times a year. I define myself as a Jew because apart from the fact that my mother and father are Jews, that I was raised Jewish and I feel Jewish all the time, I would say the ways in which I’m Jewish are that I’m a very bookish person. Books and reading are very important to me. I think of myself as Jewish because I bring a kind of an intellectual sensitivity to issues that I think is very Jewish. This sort of universal tradition in Jewish life of “rachmanes,” concern for others, is something that is part of me.

There is a little bit of love. I think about that often, because I criticize Israel night and day. I spend a lot of time criticizing Israel, just as I think I would have been criticizing the American South when it was segregated in the 1960s, I would have been criticizing it night and day. I would have been a Freedom Rider. The things that I love about Israel, and I’ve only spent a week there, but the things that I love, and I study the place, I think that journalism is wonderful journalism. Right now, the best journalism in the world is coming out of Israel. You have very brave Jews who are exploring things in a very open way. I think that intellectual tradition that I associate with Jewish life is very alive in Israel. When I’ve walked in Jerusalem, when I walked in small towns on my one visit, it was very pretty and beautiful.

I have been frequently been accused of being disloyal, and I think it is—I don’t care about that. I think that I’m being very loyal. I respect the power of communities to define themselves, and so in the 1600s the Jewish community in Amsterdam defined itself in such a way that Spinoza was outside. He was excommunicated, he was considered disloyal, and I respect that religious communities can do that, and today the religious community and the Jewish leadership of the US is trying to exercise a monolithic orthodoxy. In some ways it is reminiscent of the Soviet Union in terms of its tolerance of heretical ideas. What are my heretical ideas? They are that one man-one vote, all men are created equal. These are values I was given by Abraham Lincoln, by the civil rights struggle, by my American experience. So I think they have Jewish roots, too. I actually feel very strongly that I am trying to help my people. I feel a real, as assimilated as I am in many ways, I feel a great loyalty to the Jewish people, and I think the leadership, especially when it exercises these loyalty oaths or any prohibition on open discussion on this is making a very bad call. And so I assert myself as a Jew, and I say Jews have to talk about these things.

What I think is intolerable is a state that is oppressing a minority to the degree the Jewish state is doing so now. So I think Israel is facing a choice right now, that the two-state solution which Obama is pushing is truly its last opportunity to save the Jewish state, and if it fails, if it fails to take the two-state solution, it’s going to be involved in governing a majority population of Arabs in a Jewish state.

A million Jews have left Israel. They are living in Europe, they are living in the US. They don’t want to live there, and these are largely secular Jews, and they are Jews like me, who seek opportunity in a diverse society that respects minority rights. So I think Israel, which has taken a very sharp turn to the right under Netanyahu and Avigdor “Loyalty Oath” Lieberman, Israel faces a choice what kind of society it wants to be. I think it should grab the two-state solution.

Israel should learn from its Jewish cousins in the US that minority rights are essential, and diversity is essential, and these things make Jews safe.

You will notice Netanyahu has not said one word against the settlements. There is now a move to close down outposts. He can’t say he’s going to close down settlements because his coalition falls apart, and those settlements include these people of a fanatical religious character.

Take down the checkpoints in the West Bank is the first thing they should do. I think they should start taking down the wall, I think they should lift the blockade on needles and cloth and everything else that can’t get into Gaza.

I am obviously a minority and a very distinct minority. I represent a fringe of American Jewish life and yet the concern of the American Jewish leadership in the US is the concern that my fringe is getting bigger by the moment, and it is getting bigger because of the Gaza slaughter which woke up a lot of American Jews, thinking what kind of society is this? By the election of Avigdor Lieberman, of Netanyahu. There are many demographic changes that are going on in American Jewish life that is giving me more and more company by the day.

The tradition that I cherish in Judaism is respect for man in God’s image, the words “bitzalem,” which the human rights organization in Israel has, that God created man in his own image. That means all men, and so that kind of respect for all human beings, regardless of their ethnicity, I see as Jewish and is it true that many Jews do not accept my definition? Absolutely, but do we also understand in America that identity is fluid? Yes. I think that I represent a strain in Judaism. If Judaism is going to survive as a sort of a meaningful, moral presence, which I want it to be, then it’s going to have to embrace my views, and it’s why I have so much company now.

Under 35, 60 percent of American Jews are doing what I’m doing. They are intermarrying. They are fully enjoying their minority freedoms in the US, and I think many of them do not see Israel as sort of necessary. Israel came out of a movement that responded to horrific conditions for Jews in Europe. This is something that I think everyone has to remember, that I have to bear in mind whenever I’m criticizing Israel. If it were 100 years ago, I think I would have been a Zionist. If I were living in Vienna or Berlin, which is what I would have been doing, trying to be a journalist in the early 20th century, I would have been a Zionist, because there was a glass ceiling for Jews and worse, there were programs that my ancestors fled in Russia. Those are all real conditions that Zionism came out of. It’s why it captured the Jewish people, and those conditions don’t exist anymore and that is why summoning the Holocaust, which is what the Jewish leadership is reduced to again and again in order to maintain support for Israel in the American Jewish population—that has run its course. And for Jews under 35, I think their attitudes are going to be much more detached about Israel, and that’s the big threat the special relationship faces.

Welcome to you both. Professor Nasr, let’s begin with you. The reaction throughout the Muslim world — what do you hear?

Dr. VALI NASR (Professor of International Relations, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University): Very, very positive. There’s no doubt that the speech exceeded expectations from the vast majority of Muslims all the way from Indonesia to Nigeria. Even though the president did not go deeply into policy, I think the level of respect and empathy and seriousness that he showed in terms of engaging the Muslim world was very well understood by the public and very much appreciated.

ABERNETHY: On the other hand, Kate, there was a lot of criticism, wasn’t there, or some guarded comments from officials?

Kate Seelye

KATE SEELYE (Vice President, Middle East Institute, Washington, DC): Well, there were. I think people are—there are some who are holding reservations. They want to see if he’s going to translate his words into action. There was also some disappointment on the part of democracy activists who wanted him to be tougher, let’s say, on Arab leaders, who wanted to put more pressure on them. And there were some who wanted him to be tougher on the Israelis. But by and large, people were very positive and felt that he went out of his way to try to bridge this gap between America and the Muslim world.

ABERNETHY: What could be the deeds now that would satisfy the people to whom Obama was talking?

Dr. NASR: I think one of the ways to look at this is that the speech or the series of speeches he’s given is a deed in itself. In other words, our habit in this region is that administrations come up immediately off the bat with a plan of action for something, whether it’s Iran, Arab-Israeli issue, Afghanistan. This president understood that there is no point trying a new policy before you change the context in which you engage the other side. So I think his very first policy, his very first deed has been to gain trust, and I think the first way in which he has to be measured is by trust, and I think Kate’s point, which is correct, there are — I think he’s been successful enough that some actors like the Iranian government or Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood may worry that he’s quickly changing the game on them very fast and effectively, and some of the reaction we’re seeing has to do with that.

Bob Abernethy

ABERNETHY: But a specific deed now to follow this, Kate, what could that be?

Ms. SEELYE: Well, I mean everybody’s waiting to see what he’s going to do vis-a-vis the Arab-Israeli peace process. What steps he is going to take to pressure the Israelis perhaps to halt settlement building. This is what Arabs and Muslims are looking for — concrete deeds with regard to the peace process, frankly.

ABERNETHY: Did you feel on that that he was tilting a little bit toward the Palestinians?

Ms. SEELYE: Well, he acknowledged the Holocaust, he acknowledged the suffering of the Jews, and he also acknowledged the suffering of the Palestinians, and this was really a first. Many presidents have acknowledged the need for a two-state solution, but few have said, you know, I feel for the suffering of the Palestinian refugees. He won high marks for that.

ABERNETHY: I was struck by the language, especially the references to the Qu’ran and other phrases that come out of the Islamic tradition. That can’t help but have helped him in the Muslim world.

Dr. NASR: Absolutely. I mean, there are ways of using the Qu’ran and then there are ways of using the Qu’ran. Often Western commentators or leaders usually use the Qu’ran in order to hit the Muslims on the head with it. In other words, use their own scripture in order to preach to them very selectively. This president, I think, has used a very light touch in terms of trying to use the Qu’ran to convince the Muslims that he believes they belong inside the tent — that there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian tradition with the Muslim standing out there. The way he used the Qu’ran, particularly at the end, was to say that there is an Islamic-Judeo-Christian civilization—that your values are the same as our values and our values are the same as your values, and look, here is the example by referring to all three scriptures at the same time, and I think that’s what’s most effective.

ABERNETHY: And as you said, this attempt to build respect with the audience he was talking to is the first step in new policy?

Vali Nasr

Dr. NASR: Well, absolutely. If you looked at the Bush administration, their approach was that you are either with us or you’re against us. It’s either black or white, and the burden was on Muslims to prove themselves innocent. In other words they’re guilty unless proven innocent, and they set down a set of markers which basically meant abandon your faith, change it, reform it, change everything, and then you’ll be sort of acceptable. This president is starting from a very different point of view. First of all, he’s creating a massive gray area in the middle. It is not either us or you, that we have a common arena in which we share, and the burden is not on Muslims to prove that their religion matters or that their values are world values. He immediately off the bat said, “I agree with that, and I’ll give you better examples than you can yourselves.”

Ms. SEELYE: Yes, and if I might add to that, I mean he was very sensitive about language and Muslim sensitivities. He never once used the word “terrorist,” because over the past eight years the word terrorist has become synonymous with the word Muslim and Islam. So he avoided these words, and he used language that people applauded. When he talked about the Prophet Muhammad he said “peace be upon him.” That was very important for Islamists and traditionalists watching his speech.

ABERNETHY: What about nuclear weapons? What can you divine in the speech about how that problem can be addressed now?

Dr. NASR: That’s a problem that has to be solved at the negotiation table, and we will not see where it is going until the day the United States and Iran are sitting at the table and discussing it. But I think the president is trying to make it easier or in some ways compel the Iranian government not to hide behind excuses that Americans are not sincere, they’re not serious, there’s no point talking to them. To say that you — look, there is a pathway for you to come in, and the United States is going to engage Iran over these very serious issues from a position of respect.

ABERNETHY: Kate, did you hear anything from people you know in the Muslim part of the world about what we’re talking about? Did anybody say anything to you?

Ms. SEELYE: Oh, absolutely. I had some blogger friends from Saudi Arabia say that they were thrilled by this speech because it wasn’t directed toward Arab leaders. Obama never once mentioned the name of Hosni Mubarak, the host. He was speaking to the youth, to the women, to the people of the Arab world, and that’s very rare in a region where people don’t feel like they’re being addressed by their leaders. Here was this leader of the world superpower saying, “I care about you. I want to help you. Your education is important. Let’s invest in you.” That was profoundly appreciated.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks to you, Kate Seelye, and to Professor Vali Nasr.

Yvonne Haddad is professor of the history of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations at Georgetown University’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding:

President Obama’s address to Muslims has been received quite enthusiastically by many, particularly those in the audience in Cairo as well as American Muslims who finally heard a president who did not reiterate stereotypes of Islam and Muslims or make reference to “Islamo-fascism” or “Islamic terrorism.” They welcomed his respect and recognition of Islam’s contribution to human civilization. They were specially impressed by his statement that Islam is part of America, after suffering from abusive language and derision for the last eight years. They also welcomed his support for religious freedom and the wearing of the hijab.

Many gushed over the president’s use of the Islamic greeting and his quotations from the Qur’an. His speech has been described by the Council on American Islamic Relations as “comprehensive, balanced, and fair.” He has also been praised as “ambassador for America to the Muslim world.”

Others were not quite as mesmerized by the rhetoric and the oratory of the carefully crafted message. One activist dismissed the speech as “Bush in sheep’s clothing” since it appeared to continue the policies of the Bush administration. These others were concerned that the speech did not break new ground in policy or propose what they consider necessary for resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Those who have been expecting a new Obama Doctrine were disappointed by the lack of concrete policies to resolve the problem. While some may dismiss their peeves as maximalist demands of short-sighted ideologues unwilling to engage in resolving the outstanding issues except on their terms, they did question several of Obama’s statements. For example, he talked about the slaughter of the innocent in Bosnia and Darfur, but failed to include among the innocents the 1400 Palestinians recently killed in Gaza.

While Obama justifiably condemned the perpetrators of 9/11 for killing “innocent men, women and children,” he made no reference to the peeves of the perpetrators who justified their deed as avenging the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent children in Iraq as a consequence of America’s policy of containment put in place after the first Gulf War.

While Obama talked about Palestinian Christians and Muslims who have “suffered in pursuit of a homeland,” he did not recognize that they had been expelled from their homeland due to Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing. He noted that “Palestinians must abandon violence” and made no reference to Israeli violence that has placed Palestinians within what some refer to as the “apartheid wall.”

While Obama made reference to the Arab peace initiative, he dubbed it as “an important beginning but not the end,” in a sense sanctioning Israel’s perpetual demands for continued concessions.

While Obama reiterated his stance that Israel should freeze the building of settlements, he failed to note that all settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law. He did not outline how he will proceed to implement Israeli compliance with the road map peace plan.

Obama’s speech broke new ground. It started the process of helping American Muslims feel once again at home in the United States. It also reassured Muslims overseas that Americans are not after Muslim resources, nor are they engaged in a new Crusade. It put the Muslim world on notice that there is new leadership in America. The world’s Muslims now await the implementation of policies that demonstrate good will and evenhandedness.

Omid Safi is associate professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:

Historic. Brilliant. Nearly perfect.

The tone of President Obama’s speech in Cairo was most reminiscent of his masterly speech on race in America: acknowledging open wounds on all sides while laying out a hopeful vision for a shared future. It was a narrative rejecting the neoconservative nightmare of the past eight years that perpetuated the fallacy of the “clash of civilizations.”

Obama began by mapping his hope for a “new beginning between United States and Muslims around the world.” He then offered “the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive…they overlap.…” He went on to identify the common principles between Islam and America: “justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

Words have power, and Obama spoke powerful words. He offered the Muslim greeting of peace (al-salam alaykum) to his audience and acknowledged the reality of Western colonialism, as well as his hope for a shared vision of coexistence and peace.

Powerful is the vision of an American president approvingly citing from the Qur’an [chapter 5, verse 32] that to save one human life is akin to saving the life of all humanity, and taking one human life is akin to taking the life of all humanity.

Obama hit many of the right notes. He conveyed to his audience that he is familiar with the vast and glorious history of Islam, such as the long periods of religious tolerance in Andalusia, where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in peace under Islamic rule. He praised Muslim contributions to science, philosophy, and learning. His mention of “timeless poetry and cherished music” was a nod to the rich aesthetic tradition of Islamic cultures.

The nuanced position Obama took on Palestine/Israel was the most closely watched component of his speech. The tone was expected, affirming America’s allegedly “unbreakable” bond with Israel while also acknowledging that Palestinians suffer in “intolerable” conditions. Yet the specifics offered were bolder: two states living side by side, a rejection of illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank, and Jerusalem as a city shared by Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

Many Muslims were offended that there was no mention of the recent Israeli atrocities in Gaza. Furthermore, it is maddeningly frustrating for Muslims to be repeatedly told they have to recognize Israel’s right to exist when the borders of the state they are being asked to recognize are not specified. Would it be the 1967 borders? 1973? 2009? In addition, this overlooks the multiple times Arab and Muslim states, including Palestinian authorities, have in fact recognized Israel.

As incomplete and, indeed, flawed as that portion of the speech was (delivered under intense preemptive pressure from the Israel lobby), there was a magical, Obama-at-his-best appeal to the Night Journey (Isra) of the Prophet Muhammad, when he prayed together with all the prophets, including Moses and Jesus, in Jerusalem. This is Obama at a level of rhetorical brilliance and inclusiveness that is simply unmatched in American politics.

There were other missed opportunities. There were no critiques of Egypt’s own violations of human rights, something Muslim human rights activists were eager to hear. As a committed Christian, Obama knows all too well the biblical challenge (Matthew 7) “you shall know them by their fruits.”

Obama’s words were historic, brilliant, almost perfect. Now comes the hard part of following up on the beautiful intentions and the inclusive words: righteous and courageous action that brings all those of good will together. He—and we—shall be judged, on Earth and in Heaven, by those actions.

Tariq Ramadan is professor of Islamic studies on the faculty of theology at Oxford University and visiting professor at Erasmus University in the Netherlands:

We are used to nice words, and many in the Muslim majority countries as well as Western Muslims have ended up not trusting the United States when it comes to political discourse. They want actions, and they are right. This is, indeed, what our world needs. Yet President Obama, who is very eloquent and good at using symbols, has provided us in his Cairo speech with something more than simple words. It is altogether an attitude, a mindset, a vision.

In order to avoid shaping a binary vision of the world, Obama referred to “America,” “Islam,” “the Muslims,” and “the Muslim majority countries.” He never fell into the trap of speaking about “us” as different from or opposed to “them,” and he was quick to refer to Islam as being an American reality and to American Muslims as being an asset to his own society. Talking about his own life, he went from the personal to the universal, stating that he knows by experience that Islam is a religion whose message is about openness and tolerance. Both the wording and the substance of his speech were important and new: he managed at the same time to be humble, self-critical, open, and demanding in a message targeting all of “us,” understood as “partners.”

The seven areas Obama highlighted are critical. One might disagree with his reading and interpretation of what is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine (and the US role in these conflicts), but he avoided shying away from addressing these issues and called all the parties to take their share of responsibility by putting an end to violence and promoting respect and justice. He clearly acknowledged the suffering of the Palestinians and their right to a viable and independent state.

It is a necessary first step. The future will tell us if the new president has the means to be strong and consistent when dealing with the Israeli government. He left open some channels to dialogue with both the Palestinian Authority (calling for unity without sidelining Hamas) and Iran. These remain critical issues, and there will be no future without addressing them with consistency and courage. Expectations are immense, and Obama still has to show his true, practical commitment to justice and peace.

President Obama made an important distinction between democratic principles and political models. The rule of law, free choice of the people, and duty of transparency are universal principles, while political models depend on historical and cultural factors being taken into account. I hope the Obama administration puts this vision into practice by both promoting democratization everywhere and scrupulously respecting the choice of the people. It would be good to start with Iraq and Afghanistan. As to the undisputable principles of democracy, this is a good reminder to utter in Egypt, to the Egyptian government.

President Obama started his speech with the more political issues and quite intelligently ended with the critical areas of women and education. This is where, he recalled, we all have to do much better. In these two areas he came to Cairo with practical solutions and presented future interesting projects. Facing economic crisis, doubts, fears, and global threats, the world needs women to be more involved and education to be promoted everywhere. These common challenges helped the president, once again, to talk about an inclusive us, a “new we,” so to say, where we are partners sharing the same concerns, facing up to similar challenges, exposed to common enemies.

This speech was not only directed to the Muslims around the world. The West and non-Muslims should listen. President Obama acknowledged the historical Islamic contribution to scientific development and thought. He wants his fellow American citizens to learn more about Islam, to be more humble, and he expects all “liberals” not to impose their views on practicing Muslims, men and women. No one can impose a way of dressing or a way of thinking, and we should learn from one another. The implicit reference to the French controversy around the headscarf was indeed quite explicit.

The president quoted religious texts from the three monotheistic faiths, everyone of them delivering a universal message, as if true universalism is about educating one’s self, listening to and respecting the other.

Two days before his speech in Cairo, Obama surprisingly stated that America was a great “Islamic country.” It was a way for him to remind Americans, as well as all Westerners, that Muslims are their fellow citizens and Islam is a religion that is part of their common national narrative.

This was a powerful speech that was not only a speech: it embodies a vision both positive and demanding. Something has surely changed. Just as Barack Obama went from personal to universal principles, so we are waiting for him to go from the ideal to the practical. He is young, he is new, he is intelligent and smart. Has he the means to be courageous? For it is all about presidential courage as one wonders if it is possible for the United States to be simply consistent with its own values. Could one man tackle and reform this extraordinary tension that inhabits the contemporary American mindset, on the one hand promoting universal values and diversity while on the other nurturing a spirit that still has some features of imperial attitude intellectually, politically, and economically?

President Obama will not be able to achieve it alone, and maybe his greatest challengers so far are more the Indians and Chinese than the Muslims. Yet it remains critical to acknowledge the positive sides of a speech announcing “a new beginning.” It is imperative for Muslims to take Obama at his word and, instead of adopting either a passive attitude or a victim mentality, to contribute to a better world by being self–critical and critical, humble and ambitious, consistent and open. The best way to push Obama to face up to his responsibility in America, the Middle East, or elsewhere is for Muslims to start by facing up to their own without blindly demonizing America or the West or naively idealizing a charismatic African-American US president.

A personal note: President Obama wants us “to speak the truth.” It happens that once I spoke the truth about the illegal American invasion of Iraq and the blind unilateral support of America towards Israel. I have been banned from the United States and still remain so. It may be one of these inconsistencies that make some of us still doubt the very meaning of political words. Once again, a question of consistency.

Marc Gopin is the James H. Laue Professor and Director of the Center for World Religions, Diplomacy, and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution:

One of the most interesting comments in the speech reflects what the president said in an interview with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman about his strategy for the Middle East: “We’re just going to keep on telling the truth until it stops working.” This is brilliant as a strategy. It makes every party face up to its private acknowledgments of what is true, and it challenges them to go public. It makes everyone responsible, including America. It is balanced and reasonable. A great start!

Amir Hussain is professor of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles:

As an American Muslim who is also a scholar of Islam in America, I was eagerly anticipating President Obama’s speech in Cairo. I couldn’t be more delighted with what he said. In January of this year, I was in Cairo for a conference sponsored by Al-Azhar University on “Bridges of Dialogue with the West.” That President Obama opened with a mention of Al-Azhar, one of the oldest universities in the world and still the seat of Sunni Islamic learning, will certainly be noted by Muslims around the world. That he opened with the basic Muslim greeting, al-salaamu alaikum, and quoted several times from the Qur’an will also be noticed.

There is so much to praise about this speech. First is the historical connection with Muslims and America. This is something dear to me, as I’m currently working on a book for Baylor University Press entitled Building Islam in America. My work in the past dozen years has looked at how American Muslims have adapted to being in a minority, multicultural, multiethnic, multireligious setting in America, where they also have to deal with issues of Western modernity (for example, reactions to gay marriage). The book I am writing turns that question on its head and asks not how have American Muslims changed to accommodate living in America, but how has America been changed by the presence of American Muslims?

President Obama addressed that eloquently, talking about the history of Islam in America. Second, he talked of the mutual misperceptions many Americans have about Islam and many Muslims have about America. The natural bridge here, of course, is American Muslims, who as American Muslims have not just survived but thrived in America. Third, the speech did talk about sensitive issues such as nuclear weapons in Iran and the Israeli/Palestinian peace process. While some may be critical about President Obama not going far enough on this, his words resonated with me about the need for a secure Israel but also a Palestine where Palestinians can live in safety and dignity.

It has been a long time since a speech by a politician resonated so deeply with me. God bless President Obama, and God bless us all.

Ali S. Asani is professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic religion and cultures at Harvard University:

One day after President Obama’s historic address to the world’s Muslims, every word, every phrase, every sentence of his speech is being carefully parsed. The aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror have created a noxious atmosphere rife with misunderstandings, mutual hatred, and stereotypes. For many Americans, Islam and Muslims have become the “other,” while many Muslims have come to perceive America and Americans as a mortal enemy.

How will this speech impact the polarized relationship of the United States government with Muslim communities and nations around the world? What are its implications for US foreign and domestic policy? Worldwide reactions to the speech are also being analyzed. The verdict is mixed. Some loved it, some thought it did not go far enough, and a few objected to it as being apologetic, full of niceties but no real substance. What is easy to lose sight in all this analysis is that, for many Muslims, Barack Obama embodies in his person someone they admire and can relate to and, yes, perhaps even trust.

During a recent visit to Saudi Arabia, a Saudi guide told me that when he heard Americans had elected Barack Hussein Obama as their president, tears of joy welled up in his eyes. “If the great American people can elect a man with Obama’s background to be their president,” he said, “then there is hope that anything is possible. Change can happen, perhaps even in Saudi Arabia itself. I admire that man and what he stands for.”

I have heard similar comments from Muslims in Egypt, Dubai, Pakistan, Kuwait, Bahrain, and India. Such remarks remind us that the United States has in its current president a man with an uncommon background and personality who is uniquely qualified to deliver an unprecedented message of hope and understanding to a world characterized by globalization, interdependence, and diversity. As the Christian son of an African Muslim father who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, and members of whose family are Muslims, the American president has lived and engaged with many kinds of differences –- racial, religious, ethnic, national.

Engaging with those who are different from oneself is not an easy task. It is a struggle that tests one’s patience and humility, but it is a worthwhile struggle, for we learn not only to see the world from another perspective but to respect that perspective. When President Obama spoke to an audience of three thousand at the University of Cairo, he embodied for them the values he referred to in his address — respect for difference, human dignity, humility, and intercultural understanding. When he quoted the Qur’an, “Be conscious of God and speak the truth,” and went on to speak the truth as he saw it, he represented in his person and demeanor that honesty. When he said that it was his responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative and crude stereotypes of Islam and Muslims as well as of America and Americans, he spoke as a pluralist who understood from personal experience the dehumanizing nature of stereotypes. In a different world Roger Ailes would have said, “He was the message.”

Barack Obama’s charisma, so apparent during his address, is based on his humanity and humanism. It is true that one speech cannot change the course of history, but what is becoming increasingly clear is that President Obama is rapidly becoming a hero, if he is not already, for many around the world, regardless of their national and religious affiliation, including many Muslims. In this sense, he is the worst nightmare not only for al-Qaeda but for all those who believe in the clash of civilizations and insist on using difference to dehumanize the “other” – whoever the “other” may be.

The ultimate challenge is: will the world heed his call to join hands for the betterment of “us” all rather than being intent on destroying the “other”? Will it realize the truth that he has come to recognize, a truth echoed in a Qur’anic verse he cited at the end of his speech: God created diversity so that we may learn from one another?

Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Professor of Law at UCLA:

After eight years of boorish, war-mongering speeches and policies by the Bush administration, there is no doubt President Obama’s ecumenical speech in Cairo fell upon warm ears.

Obama spoke to Muslims as human beings, and Muslims who have grown so accustomed to being caste into the archetype of the counterpoint—the archetype that helps define the West by being its antithesis—were jubilant. Once again, Muslims learned that they can never enjoy the kind of privileged “unbreakable bond” that is exclusively reserved for the VIP members of the Western club, but Muslims were jubilant to learn that they are not members of the caste of lowly untouchables.

In his typically dignified and studious demeanor, Obama told Muslims he respects their faith and culture, he does not approve of religious bigotry, and he recognizes that Muslims have made numerous contributions to world civilization. He rightly refused the same old polarizing arguments: no to the clash of civilizations model, no to “cosmic wars” against jihadists or political Islam, and no to other grandiose yet reductionist stereotypes typical of the Bush era which sorted the world into a pile of good guys and a pile of bad guys.

Obama also soundly condemned the trendy pseudo-intellectual practice of professionalized Islam-hating masquerading as national security. He not only acknowledged that it was now part of his job to fight negative stereotypes of Islam, as well as negative stereotypes of the West, but he also had the moral courage to do something that through the agonizing years of colonialism, imperialism, and Western interventionism Muslims have rarely had the privilege of observing a Western leader do: admit to having unlawfully overthrown a legitimate and popular government in a Muslim country (President Musaddaq in Iran).

So it is no surprise that today, all over the Arab media, Arabs and Muslims are excited that Obama openly expressed respect for their faith and culture. After all, as many scholars have pointed out, one of the main grievances of Muslims in the age of modernity is the denial of liberty and dignity.

But the same media outlets that express such high approbation and admiration for Obama are also expressing severe anxiety and skepticism about whether this speech heralds the dawn of a new age or is just a new face for the same old western talk-a-lot, do-little that Muslims have become all too accustomed to since colonialism.

Paradoxes and inconsistencies have been the earmark of the modern age for Muslims—a world of smoke and mirrors. Indeed, the history of modern Muslim nations can be summed up in a dramatic narrative of competing promises by competing superpowers to competing regional powers, and the end result is people with tragic let-downs and broken dreams.

For instance, although President Obama delivered a wonderful speech about new beginnings, human rights, and mutual respect, it doesn’t change the fact that on the way to Egypt he first stopped in Saudi Arabia, the motherland of Wahhabism, the most puritanical, intolerant, and oppressive Muslim state. It leaves one wondering, was President Obama getting their approval? Was he assuring them not to feel threatened by his speech about human rights and the rights of women to equality?

Reminiscent of visits to Egypt by Presidents Nixon and Carter in the past, President Obama’s trip to Cairo was preceded by mass arrests and vast human rights abuses. One of the most influential intellectual leftist critics, Qamdil, disappeared and is believed to have been murdered by security forces. Notably, the Egyptian government’s targeting of dissidents was not limited to those who would be critical of President Obama’s visit to Egypt but actually included many Islamists known for their positive outlook towards the West.

Worst of all, the choice of Egypt instead of Malaysia or Indonesia, for instance, was quite curious. Hosni Mubarak is one of the most detested despots in the Middle East, not just because he has been in power for 28 years, at the very high cost of thousands of opponents tortured, imprisoned, and killed, but more so because many Arabs and Muslims consider him to be a direct partner in the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Mubarak’s government helped and continues to help enforce the embargo even against humanitarian aid to Gaza and has even prevented human rights investigators from documenting war crimes that have taken place in the territory.

Most lay Egyptians believe Mubarak is zealously serving American and Israeli interests because he is agonizingly trying to ensure that the United States will back up his son, Gamal Mubarak, an extremely unpopular, corrupt, Mafioso-type figure, in his bid to inherit the throne. The real policy disaster is that most mainstream Egyptians and, indeed, Arabs believe Obama’s choice of Egypt as the place from which to address the Muslim world is part of a classic smoke and mirrors deal to reward the ailing dictator for a job well done by guaranteeing that his son will inherit Egypt to continue more of the same.