Former President Barack Obama cautioned against ignoring the complexities of the Israel-Hamas war, warning that “all of us are complicit.”
“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth. And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree,” he said in an excerpted interview with Pod Save America released on Saturday.
Reflecting on his presidency, Obama posed the question, “Well, was there something else I could have done?”
The former president argued that it was important to acknowledge multiple seemingly contradictory truths: Hamas’ actions were “horrific,” but “the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians” were also “unbearable.”
Obama previously spoke out on the conflict, saying in a statement that any actions by Israel that ignore the human cost of the war against Hamas “could ultimately backfire.”
In an address to the Democracy Forum in Chicago on Friday, the 44th president said that “it is impossible to be dispassionate in the face of this carnage. It is hard to feel hopeful. The images of families mourning, of bodies being pulled from rubble, force a moral reckoning on all of us.”
“All this is taking place against the backdrop of decades of failure to achieve a durable peace for both Israelis and Palestinians, one that is based on genuine security for Israel, a recognition of its right to exist, and a peace that is based on an end of the occupation and the creation of a viable state and self-determination for the Palestinian people,” he added.
As president, Obama had a famously frosty relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including over the nature of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
President Joe Biden has strongly supported Israel in its war against Hamas, providing significant military assistance. However, the administration recently called for humanitarian pauses and warned against inflicting outsized harm on Palestinian civilians.
