Obama s'adresse au monde musulman

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Algeria lauds President Obama's speech to Muslim world

ALGIERS, June 6, 2009 (KUNA) -- Algeria said Saturday that U.S. President Barack Obama's speech to the Muslim world had sent a good vibe through the Islamic sphere. Official representative of the Algerian Presidency and Minister of State Abdelaziz Belkhadem said that the Obama speech, which was delivered in the Cairo University, was good in a sense that it called for opening a new page in the relations between the U.S. and the Islamic nations. He affirmed that such step would help set the course for renewing trust between America and the Muslim world. However, the official said it was too early to feel all positive about the new U.S. policy, saying that time would tell if Obama administration would translate its promises into action.

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Belkhadem :
« L’Algérie pessimiste et vigilante envers les discours d’Obama »

Dimanche 7 Juin 2009 -- L’Algérie a exprimé un pessimisme vigilant quant au discours du président Américain au Caire, destiné au monde Islamique, dans lequel il a appelé à ouvrir une nouvelle page entre les Etats-Unis d’Amérique et le monde Musulman. Le représentant personnel du président Bouteflika et Ministre d’Etat, M. Abdelaziz Belkhadem, a indiqué, hier, dans une conférence de presse que le discours d’Obama inspire le pessimisme quant à la possibilité d’établir des relations rationnelles entre le monde Islamique et les Etats-Unis d’Amérique, basées sur le respect mutuel et les opportunités communes. M. Belkhadem a ajouté que l’Algérie aspire que les grands principes indiqués dans le discours d’Obama au Caire, soient appliqués sur le terrain, permettant ainsi de rétablir la confiance entre Washington et le monde musulman, notamment en ce qui concerne le conflit entre les Arabes et les Israéliens et les Droits du peuple palestinien. M. Belkhadem a affirmé qu’en dépit de cela, on pourrait être pessimiste quant à l’application sur le terrain du discours d’Obama, puisque les antécédents de la politique Américaine nous ont appris que ce n’est pas tous ce qui se dit pourrait être interprété en actes.

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June 5, 2009
The Independent

Words That Could Heal Wounds of Centuries
President Obama reaches out to the Islamic world in a landmark speech
By Robert Fisk

Preacher, historian, economist, moralist, schoolteacher, critic, warrior, imam, emperor. Sometimes you even forgot Barack Obama was the President of the United States of America.

Will his lecture to a carefully chosen audience at Cairo University "re-imagine the world" and heal the wounds of centuries between Muslims and Christians? Will it resolve the Arab-Israeli tragedy after more than 60 years? If words could do the job, perhaps...

It was a clever speech we heard from Obama yesterday, as gentle and as ruthless as any audience could wish for and we were all his audience. He praised Islam. He loved Islam. He admired Islam. He loved Christianity. And he admired America. Did we know that there were seven million Muslims in America, that there were mosques in every state of the Union, that Morocco was the first nation to recognise the United States and that our duty is to fight against stereotypes of Muslims just as Muslims must fight against stereotypes of America?

But much of the truth was there, albeit softened to avoid hurting feelings in Israel. To deny the facts of the Jewish Holocaust was "baseless, ignorant and hateful", he said, a remark obviously aimed at Iran. And Israel deserved security and "Palestinians must abandon violence..."

The United States demanded a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He told the Israelis there had to be a total end to their colonisation in the West Bank. "The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

The Palestinians had suffered without a homeland. "The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable," Obama said and the US would not turn its back on the "legitimate Palestinian aspiration for a state of their own". Israel had to take "concrete steps" to give the Palestinians progress in their daily lives as part of a road to peace. Israel needed to acknowledge Palestinian suffering and the Palestinian right to exist. Wow. Not for a generation has Israel had to take this kind of criticism from a US President. It sounded like the end of the Zionist dream. Did George Bush ever exist?

Alas, he did. Indeed, at times, the Obama address sounded like the Bush General Repair Company, visiting the Muslim world to sweep up mountains of broken chandeliers and shredded flesh. The President of the United States and this was awesome admitted his country's failures, its over-reaction to 9/11, its creation of Guantanamo which, Obama reminded us all again, he is closing down. Not bad, Obama...

We got to Iran. One state trying to acquire nuclear weapons would lead to a "dangerous path" for all of us, especially in the Middle East. We must prevent a nuclear arms race. But Iran as a nation must be treated with dignity. More extraordinarily, Obama reminded us that the US had connived to overthrow the democratically elected Mossadeq government of Iran in the Fifties. It was "hard to overcome decades of distrust".

There was more; democracy, women's rights, the economy, a few good quotes from the Koran ("Whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind".) Governments must respect "all their people" and their minorities. He mentioned the Christian Copts of Egypt; even the Christian Maronites of Lebanon got a look in.

And when Obama said that some governments, "once in power, are ruthless in suppressing the rights of others", there was a roar of applause from the supposedly obedient audience. No wonder the Egyptian government wanted to select which bits of Obama's speech would be suitable for the Egyptian people. They were clearly very, very unhappy with the police-state regime of Hosni Mubarak. Indeed, Obama did not once mention Mubarak's name.

Over and again, one kept saying to oneself: Obama hasn't mentioned Iraq and then he did ("a war of choice... our combat brigades will be leaving"). But he hasn't mentioned Afghanistan and then he did ("we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan... we will gladly bring every one of our troops home"). When he started talking about the "coalition of 46 countries" in Afghanistan a very dodgy statistic he began to sound like his predecessor. And here, of course, we encountered an inevitable problem. As the Palestinian intellectual Marwan Bishara pointed out yesterday, it is easy to be "dazzled" by presidents. This was a dazzling performance. But if one searched the text, there were things missing.

There was no mention during or after his kindly excoriation of Iran of Israel's estimated 264 nuclear warheads. He admonished the Palestinians for their violence for "shooting rockets at sleeping children or blowing up old women in a bus". But there was no mention of Israel's violence in Gaza, just of the "continuing humanitarian crisis in Gaza". Nor was there a mention of Israel's bombing of civilians in Lebanon, of its repeated invasions of Lebanon (17,500 dead in the 1982 invasion alone). Obama told Muslims not to live in the past, but cut the Israelis out of this. The Holocaust loomed out of his speech and he reminded us that he was going to the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp today.

For a man who is sending thousands more US troops into Afghanistan a certain disaster-to-come in the eyes of Arabs and Westerners there was something brazen about all this. When he talked about the debt that all Westerners owed to Islam the "light of learning" in Andalusia, algebra, the magnetic compass, religious tolerance, it was like a cat being gently stroked before a visit to the vet. And the vet, of course, lectured the Muslims on the dangers of extremism, on "cycles of suspicion and discord" even if America and Islam shared "common principles" which turned out to be "justice, progress and the dignity of all human beings".

There was one merciful omission: a speech of nearly 6,000 words did not include the lethal word "terror". "Terror" or "terrorism" have become punctuation marks for every Israeli government and became part of the obscene grammar of the Bush era.

An intelligent guy, then, Obama. Not exactly Gettysburg. Not exactly Churchill, but not bad. One could only remember Churchill's observations: "Words are easy and many, while great deeds are difficult and rare."

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Après le discours du président américain :
Djamila Bouhired répond à Obama

Lundi 8 Juin 2009 -- En réaction au discours du président américain Barack Obama, jeudi dernier au Caire, Djamila Bouhired, militante de la cause nationale, revient dans cette contribution sur la nouvelle politique américaine au Proche-Orient.

Monsieur le Président,

Le Comité populaire algérien de soutien à la Palestine et à sa résistance a suivi avec attention le discours que vous avez prononcé le 4 juin à l'université du Caire. Vous y avez abordé différentes questions sans pourtant aller jusqu'au fond des choses et sans vision d'ensemble prenant en compte toutes leurs dimensions. Cependant, ce discours revêt une importance particulière s'il est un début dans la voie de la révision par les États-Unis d'Amérique de leur politique en direction du monde islamique et de ses questions principales. Nous voudrions, dans cette lettre, rappeler certains faits qui peuvent aider à atteindre ce but.

Premièrement, le monde islamique, auquel vous vous êtes adressé dans ce discours du 4 juin, représente certes une région vitale pour les intérêts américains. Les peuples de cette région le savent et le comprennent. Cependant, les États-Unis d'Amérique veulent préserver ces intérêts en les défendant au lieu d'une négociation honnête à leur sujet. La politique des États-Unis de défense de leurs intérêts est ainsi basée sur l'utilisation de tous les moyens, dont la force militaire et l'occupation. Ceci explique l'intense présence militaire américaine dans de nombreux pays de la région.Nous pensons qu'une telle politique est vouée à l'échec, quels que soient les changements de chefs militaires chargés de son application. Il n'existe pas de chef militaire américain qui puisse faire de cette politique une mission couronnée de succès. La voie suivie par les États-Unis pour défendre leurs intérêts est le nœud gordien des relations de l'Amérique avec le monde arabe et islamique. Le respect que vous avez exprimé plus d'une fois à l'égard de l'Islam et du monde musulman est, sans aucun doute, sincère, mais il perd beaucoup de son sens dès qu'il se heurte à cette réalité.

Deuxièmement, la violence, ou “le terrorisme” dans laquelle l'Amérique range jusqu'à la résistance légitime à l'occupation s'alimente essentiellement à deux sources :

- la politique américaine, et occidentale de façon générale, à l'égard des causes arabes et musulmanes ;
- la défection des gouvernements nationaux dont les peuples attendaient qu'ils s'élèvent contre cette politique erronée.

Troisièmement, la politique occidentale a consisté à gérer la question palestinienne suivant deux lignes parallèles :

- l’une consistant à soutenir l'occupation sioniste :
- l’autre à faire miroiter continuellement des projets de paix et de règlement dont les résultats ont été :

* de favoriser l'expansion continue de l'occupation sioniste et l'aggravation inquiétante de sa nature et de ses orientations ;
* de voiler l'occupation par une succession de projets de paix sans arrêt et sans résultats.

Le moment est-il vraiment venu d'un règlement juste de la question palestinienne qui prendrait en considération les droits légitimes du peuple palestinien ?

Quatrièmement, nous craignons que la solution proposée de deux États recèle, dans son essence, la même politique de deux poids deux mesures et soit construite sur une tromperie sémantique : un État réellement existant, disposant de tous les attributs d'un État, armé jusqu'aux dents, appuyé par les États occidentaux, face à un État n'existant que sur le papier, dont l'existence repose sur le bon vouloir de l'État occupant, et qui serait soumis aux critères et aux concepts de celui-ci en matière de sécurité et de voisinage.

Cinquièmement, les initiatives de paix appuyées par les États-Unis exigent des organisations palestiniennes de renoncer à la résistance avant même la fin de l'occupation qui est, en elle-même, une guerre chronique. Elles exigent aussi la reconnaissance par elles de l'État occupant alors qu'elles ne sont que des organisations que les États-Unis de plus qualifient de “terroristes”. Or le droit international est formel : ce sont les États qui reconnaissent les États.

Sixièmement, il est étrange de demander aux États arabes et musulmans de reconnaître Israël, alors que c'est un État dont on ne connaît ni les frontières ni la nature, et qui, de plus, occupe les terres palestiniennes et celles d'autres États membres des Nations unies. Ne serait-il pas plus raisonnable et logique, dans le cadre de la solution de deux États, que soit d'abord établi l'État palestinien avec l'assentiment de son peuple, et qu'après la reconnaissance réciproque des deux États, vienne celle des pays arabes et musulmans.

Septièmement, le secteur de Gaza représente, dans les circonstances actuelles, le visage dramatique de la question palestinienne. L'établissement de la sécurité et de la paix au Moyen-Orient nécessiterait-il le blocus de Gaza, d'affamer et d'humilier ses habitants ? Est-il concevable, à l'heure où prend fin Guantanamo en Amérique, qu'un autre Guantanamo soit créé aux dimensions de Gaza, et cela avec l'appui et la complicité même des États qui font annonce de la paix et y invitent ?

Avec notre respect, Monsieur le Président, et nos souhaits d'une paix juste et véritable dans notre région et le monde entier.

Pour le Comité, Djamila Bouhired / Lakhdar Bouregaa, commandant de l'ALN

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Obama spoke to Muslims for oil, not humanity

June 9, 2009 -- Obama's speech to Muslims, which he made during his trip to the Middle East last week, may have seemed like it was made to show America shares "principles of justice and progress, tolerance and dignity of all human beings," but more precisely, this was a speech to the Muslim world that Obama made so America could ensure access to Muslim oil.

Ask any foreign policymaker or analyst in America and you will likely get he or she to agree that typically, if you substitute one individual for another and if the setting remains the same, so too does the foreign policy. Additionally, foreign policy has always been about bargaining and compromise, a result of a political process.

Obama, whose campaign slogan could have been “Continuity we can believe in,” is just the right statesman for guaranteeing future access to resources and cooperation with American interests. He has made his actions about finding middle ground on issues so that compromises and bargains which will satisfy as many as possible might be achieved.

Giving a speech to the Muslim world was an act of power - Obama was using what Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye Jr. call “soft power” to get a desired outcome and to lay the foundation for the achievement of goals “through attraction rather than coercion.”

Al-Azhar, the university where Obama gave his speech, claimed it was the “highest Sunni Muslim authority” and asserted that it was “a fortress of Islam” in a statement given to Agence France Presse (AFP) on February 18, 2000.

The university suggested it was a “reflection of true Islam, moderate, tolerant and thoughtful” and an institution “which rejects and condemns fanaticism and terrorism.”

The speech, despite Obama’s heritage, was given in Egypt, not Indonesia, which is the most populous Muslim-majority nation in the world with over 300 million Muslims. (Compare that to the less than 80 million Muslims in Egypt.)

The administration’s decision to go with Egypt over Indonesia simply indicates there was major geopolitical value to giving a speech at a major Islamic forum in that location on the globe.

First off, Juan Cole writes in his latest book Engaging the Muslim World, “Americans on the whole like Egypt, giving it a 62 percent favorability rating in one recent poll. Younger Americans like Egypt even more, with those aged eighteen to thirty-four being 69 percent favorable toward it.” (Contrast that with U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq which receive only 20 to 31 percent and the Palestine Authority and Iran, which earn “14 percent and 8 percent favorable views respectively.”)

If one considers this to be just as much a speech to the Muslim world as it was a speech to Americans skeptical and anxious with Islam. Cole illuminates the reality that Egyptian tourism established largely for Westerners and its actions as a “reliable U.S. geopolitical and military ally” since making peace with Israel in 1978 make it a place of American interest and a starting point for the renewal of reconciliation in the Middle East.

Secondly, Egyptians overwhelmingly (88 percent) think groups like al-Qaeda that attack civilians violate precepts of Islam, according to a World Public Opinion report by the Program of International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

The report also suggests that Egyptians are less likely than Pakistanis, Indonesians, or Moroccans to support attacks on the United States (4 to 7 percent support).

Geopolitics and the favorable opinions Egyptians have toward taking on “violent extremists” explain the location. What explains the fact that Obama ignored Mubarek’s unpopularity and faults as an anti-democratic dictator may be the fact that, in January during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, he shut down the Rafah crossing on the border between Gaza and Egypt and watched “callously as Palestinians starved on his doorstep.”

Egypt allowed for Obama to not stray to far away from being wholly supportive of Israel. It also allowed Obama to make his case to Muslims that they have shared interest in the world.

The Obama Administration needed to calm Muslim anxiety toward the U.S. that was created as a result of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy failures. It needed to convince Muslims that the U.S. will withdraw from Iraq soon, only intends to keep troops in Afghanistan and Pakistan until “violent extremists” are eliminated, and it will no longer “accept the legitimacy of continued Israel settlements.”

This all had to be done to ensure further access and cooperation with countries or allies which America depends on for petroleum.

Juan Cole describes in Engaging the Muslim World how four of the top seven suppliers of oil to the United States are Muslim-majority countries and together they supply “a fifth of all U.S. petroleum imports.” (The top seven in 2008 were Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela, Iraq, and Algeria.)

More importantly is the fact that, according to Oil and Gas Journal list of “World Oil Reserves by Country as of January 1, 2007”, eleven of the top nineteen countries with reserves are Muslim-majority states. (The top eleven were Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Russia, Libya, Nigeria, and Kazakhstan.)

OPEC claims that its twenty-two members have 900 billion barrels. If so, it is likely that Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq have at least 56 percent of that total.

That explains why Obama had to mention the U.S.-backed CIA-sponsored coup in Iran in 1953 which removed Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh from power and gave control of Iran to Mohammad Reza Pahlevi as shah so that Iran would not nationalize its petroleum and thereby threaten major U.S. oil companies’ assets in the region.

America’s history of meddling in the affairs was a sin that had to be atoned for (at least, rhetorically). Decades of CIA covert operations and using foreign policy to help U.S. corporations gain business advantages globally (“neomercantilism”) had to be alluded to so that Muslims might possibly forgive and forget.

The Obama Administration knew it had to abandon the Bush Administration’s Project for a New American Century for a policy that would look less brash and rapacious. The speech was indeed a “new beginning” - an opportunity for ushering in a foreign policy in the Middle East that Obama Administration officials could argue would bring greater cultural understanding and cooperation to America’s international relations in the world.

In Kenneth Waltz’s Anarchic Orders and Balances of Power, Waltz claims that “a state worries about a division of possible gains that may favor others more than itself. That is the first way in which the structure of international politics limits the cooperation of the states.”

Continuing, Waltz adds, “A state also worries lest it become dependent on others through the cooperative endeavors and exchanges of goods and services. That is the second way in which the structure of international politics limits the cooperation of states.”

As Juan Cole says in his book, the United States needs about 12 million barrels of petroleum a day to maintain its present way of life.

America’s dependence on American oil puts unwanted constraints on what America can and can’t do on the world’s stage. And, in the 21st century, with China rising in power along with India, dependency on Islamic oil forces America to go the extra mile so that Muslim oil states will not cut off cooperation in favor of support from another industrial power.

Obama may have said in his speech when addressing “stereotypes” that “America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire,” but on its face, that’s simply not true and difficult for those with knowledge of American foreign policy history to believe.

There existed an opportunity for America to use the speech to press not simply for peace in the Middle East but for support in taking on climate change. Requests for assistance in fostering new technologies and fashioning a post-carbon world of alternative energy could have been made.

But, where in the continuum of U.S. foreign policy would that have fit? Such idealism would have demanded that those pulling the strings of American empire rethink their views of power politics and, in fact, their very understanding of the way foreign policy works.

No doubt, the rulers of America and those tasked with the job of ensuring America’s status as the supreme power in the world feared the future Bush’s actions in the Middle East had created. America’s foreign policymakers now will use Obama’s speech to the Muslim world as a touchstone for enriching relations which will allow for dependency on Islamic oil to continue.

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Obama speech falls short of Muslim expectations

June 12, 2009 -- Eight days ago, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, made what analysts called a historic speech aimed at reaching out to the Muslim world. In his speech Obama, the first American president with Muslim blood, called for major changes in the Muslim world. He called on the Muslims to shun extremism, adopt democracy and respect human rights and women's rights while he urged Israel to stop settlement building.

Has anything changed in the Muslim world or in the attitude of Israel since Obama's landmark speech? Sadly, nothing. It's business as usual for the despots in the Muslim world, while Israel also appears to have not taken Obama's speech seriously. Meanwhile, the carnage continues in Iraq, Pakistan burns and Afghanistan sees no end to its miseries.

One must, however, congratulate Obama for making the speech, which may be a genuine attempt at mending fences with the Muslims who are frustrated with the U.S. foreign policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obama appears to have had some success. A majority of the people in the Muslim world saw the speech as a welcome step in the right direction, though some dismissed the speech as a public relations stunt.

Obama appeared to have done his homework and research before he came to Cairo to deliver the speech. He apparently knew how to please the Muslims. So he included verses from the Quran in three different places in his speech. On each occasion, there was applause. In addition to this, he drew the attention of the audience to his Muslim father and his childhood days in Indonesia where he said he spent several years and heard the call of the azaan (the call for prayer) at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. He also paid glorious tribute to Islam and the Muslims.

"As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith. As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam. It was Islam at places like Al-Azhar that carried the light of learning through so many centuries, paving the way for Europe's renaissance and enlightenment.

"It was innovation in Muslim communities that developed the order of algebra, our magnetic compass and tools of navigation, our mastery of pens and printing, our understanding of how disease spreads and how it can be healed. Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires, timeless poetry and cherished music, elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. And throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality."

It is little surprise that the largely Muslim audience at the Cairo University was overwhelmed by these words. They were so captivated that there were no jeers when Obama said in the same speech that the United States was committed to defend Israel and failed to mention that Palestinians in Gaza also faced holocaust in January this year when Israel massacred more than 1,000 Palestinians in a scorched-earth bombardment carried out with the blessings of the United States.

"America's strong bonds with Israel are well-known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Around the world the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries. And anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented holocaust. Tomorrow I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich.”

Many an analysis has been written since Obama's Cairo speech. Most of them were critical of the United States and they exposed the U.S. duplicity and double standards. There was also praise from some analysts. One such praise came from an unexpected source. Max Boot, a neoconservative advocate of the war in Iraq. He wrote: "I thought he did a more effective job of making America's case to the Muslim world. No question: He is a more effective salesman (of America's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan) than his predecessor was."

World Socialist Web Site analyst Patrick Martin commenting on the speech said Obama was playing the role for which he was drafted and promoted by a decisive section of the U.S. financial elite and the military and foreign policy apparatus. This role is to provide a new face for U.S. imperialism as part of a shift in the tactics, but not the strategy, of Washington's drive for world domination.

In other words, Obama is executing the recommendations of the Project for the New American Century - a Washington D.C.-based think tank that called for America's global domination - in a subtle manner what his predecessor at the White House, George W. Bush, did brazenly.

Though many articles have been written about what Obama said and did not say in Cairo, this column could not resist the urge to comment about just one issue - extremism, which was the first of Obama's seven issues featured in his Cairo speech. If Obama is the intellect he is portrayed to be by his promoters, then he should do some research on why extremism exists and why it is being resorted to by the people who seek independence from the yoke of colonialism and the shame of occupation.

Obama advises the Palestinians to abandon violence. He said resistance through violence and killing was wrong and it did not succeed. "For centuries, black people in America suffered the lash of the whip as slaves and the humiliation of segregation. But it was not violence that won full and equal rights. It was a peaceful and determined insistence upon the ideals at the center of America's founding."

Obama was conveniently citing only a part of the American history to a spellbound audience.

Why did not he say that it was a violent struggle from 1775 to 1783 that finally won the Americans independence from the imperial British? Some 25,700 Americans and 10,000 British soldiers died in this war. Among the dead were thousands of militants that George Washington led. They were perhaps the then equivalent of the present day Hamas militants. But Obama, or, for that matter, any right-leaning American, would not like that comparison.

Will Obama answer this question: If the Vietnamese had not resorted to violence, would they have won their country back from the French and the Americans? If not for the armed struggle, countries such as Algeria, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Iraq would not have received independence from the European colonialists. East Timor would still be under Indonesia and Bosnia and Kosovo under Serbia.

Resistance to colonialism or occupation by a foreign army is the legitimate right of a people living under occupation. This is a right recognized by international law. With every passing day, Israel annexes more and more Palestinian territory by expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The so-called security wall has also swallowed a large swathe of the Palestinian land. If this land robbery takes place in spite of Palestinian resistance, imagine the situation in Palestine if there had been no resistance. The whole of Palestine would have been annexed by Israel long ago and the entire Palestinian population would have been living in exile in Jordan, Lebanon or other neighbouring countries.

Obama should also understand that the Palestinians continue their legitimate armed struggle because justice is denied to them at the United Nations. Every time the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was taken up at the United Nations Security Council, it was the United States which used its veto power and prevented a just solution to the Palestinian crisis. In this context, Obama, instead of finding fault with the Palestinians for resorting to an armed struggle to evict Israel from land that legitimately belong to them, must look inwards and say sorry. This was what the Muslims were expecting when he stood at the podium at the Cairo University. But alas, he disappointed them.

But the defenders of Obama who has a large fan club all over the world, including the Muslim world, would say give Obama a chance. They ask the Muslim world to take Obama's speech as a beginning of a new era. They say America is changing. The mainstream media, which show Israel is always right even when it is doing the wrong thing, are fast losing their credibility. The left-oriented alternate media - the internet-based media - are becoming popular and have begun to shape the U.S. public opinion. So in years to come, the U.S. foreign policy would not be lopsided, they assure.

The Muslim world can wait. But how long?