Addressing some 140 world leaders gathered in New York for the 64th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, Obama condemned as an illegal "occupation" Israel's presence in its ancestral homeland. And he roundly rejected the right of Jews to live and build communities in the hill country they believe was given to them by their God.
But while, according to the American leader, Israel's people have no right to possess, dwell in and govern the land of their fathers, the United States must insist that Israel "respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians."
Obama's position indicates his acceptance and intention to champion the Arab narrative - which insists that the "Palestinians" have lived in the land "from time immemorial" and have the right to be formed as a nation in it.
He has thus rejected the Jewish narrative - which holds that this was the Land of Canaan given to Abraham, then Isaac, then Jacob and then Jacob's descendants; that the nation took root here nearly 4000 years ago, growing and developing in this land and ruling as sovereigns over it; that following the Jews' expulsion from the land they kept burning for two millennia the fire of their intended return; that they are not a foreign implant, not a colony, not in the land in order to assuage stricken western consciences following the Holocaust; that the Palestinian Arabs have no national history - neither in this land nor anywhere else, and that the creation of an Arab state in the historical Jewish homeland constitutes land theft and poses an existential threat to Israel.
Critics slammed Obama's speech as the most anti-Israel message ever delivered by a president of the United States. America's former ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, slammed Obama's address as "the most radical anti-Israel speech I can recall any president making."
