by Jeannie DeAngelis
Fresh off reassuring Michigan senatorial hopeful Abdul El-Sayed that he’d make a campaign appearance, Barack Obama visited Northern Ireland, the country where he and Vladimir Putin once clashed over gym time at the 2013 G8 Summit at the Lough Erne Resort. Thirteen years later, the former president returned to receive an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University in Belfast, where he sat down with journalist Susan McKay at Belfast’s O2 Arena.
While in Northern Ireland, Obama decided to throw verbal bombs at the Jewish state.
Speaking in his usual imperious tone, Obama criticized Israel, saying that Jews, who fled persecution in Europe, “took land“ that belonged to Palestinians. He also argued that Israel “ceded moral ground” through its security policies. The former president argued that Israel’s policy of relying on military strength without offering concessions could produce short-term gains and undermine longer-term prospects for peace.
Obama questioned Israel: “Are you just going to be behind walls and wipe out everybody around you, or are you going to find some just way of defending yourself while still acting in an ethical, moral way?”
These one-sided condemnations are not new. As far back as 2009, Obama made it clear that, as president, he believed that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” The problem is that although he commiserated with how generations of Jews had been treated in Europe, Obama’s strong condemnation of Israel suggests that he believes that historical territorial claims should be treated differently depending on who conquered the land and when the conquest took place.
In the thick of verbal irony, the former community organizer forgot to mention the ancient Jewish kingdoms, the seventh-century Arab conquest, and the fact that whereas the Jews accepted it, Palestinian Arab leaders and Arab states rejected the 1947 U.N. partition proposal. Scholar that he is, Obama forgot the 1948 war and how Gaza came under Egyptian control, the 1967 war, and Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005.
While implying that Israel is the primary aggressor, Obama failed to balance his comments by noting that, in the seventh century, Arab Muslim armies conquered the Levant, including present-day Lebanon, and Byzantine Egypt, while defeating the Persian Sasanian Empire.
Obama, the smartest man in the room, also needs to brush up on biblical history.
In 1948, Israel was re-established in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland, the land God promised to Abraham and his descendants in the biblical covenant described in Genesis 17:8. The animosity we witness today may trace back to Isaac and Ishmael. Could the world as we know it be embroiled in a millennia-old battle echoing the biblical conflict between the descendants of Isaac, the child of promise, and Ishmael, whom the angel of the Lord described as a “wild donkey of a man”?
After hearing the former U.S. president’s Belfast comments, Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu shot back. In a video posted on X, Bibi reminded the Protector of Palestine that Jews are “in the land of our forefathers” and are not an obstacle to peace.
Netanyahu had this to say:
The Jewish people are not foreign occupiers in the land of our forefathers. Our history is not a colonial enterprise. Our land is not stolen land. This is our homeland. It’s called Judea. That’s where Jews come from. We’ve been attached to it for thousands of years. The obstacle to peace is not Israel; it’s not our fight for our very right to exist in our own state ... it’s the refusal of our enemies and America’s enemies to recognize the Jewish people’s right to a state of our own in any boundary.
Taking those words into account, let’s revisit the October 7, 2023 massacre, when approximately 1,200 people were slaughtered and 251 taken hostage, with reports of rape and torture. Obama’s comments in Northern Ireland were troubling because, although he admitted that what happened was an atrocity, his follow-up remarks to Susan McKay conveyed an undercurrent of implied justification.
While acknowledging Ishmael’s grievances, it’s irresponsible to suggest that they excuse brutal, murderous attacks on innocent Jewish citizens.
What’s troubling about Obama feeling the need to express his opinion on Israel while seemingly mitigating Hamas’s culpability is that he has been seen spending time with two outspoken anti-Israel politicians, Abdul El-Sayed and Zohran Mamdani, both of whom make no secret of their disdain for Israel — and Barack Obama knows this.
Is knowing without condemning on par with agreeing?
In May 2026, Mamdani, the man who exempts himself from what he criticizes others for, skipped the Israel Day Parade but in June dropped in on Gay Pride. Play-acting the welcoming face of generosity and acceptance, Zohran exhibited no hesitation in saying this about Saudi Arabia and Israel: “I think any state that privileges one religion over the other is one that I can’t tell you I support.”
Translation: Preferences are frowned upon, except when Mamdani prefers one culture or religion over another.
As for the man Obama hopes to help catapult into the U.S. Senate, Abdul El-Sayed was asked on Morning Joe in August 2026 whether he objected to Netanyahu as an individual or to Israel as a nation. El-Sayed responded, “We’ve been talking about an illegal apartheid regime for a very, very long time. And that supersedes Netanyahu himself.”
Barack Obama, a self-professed feminist, has not yet directly addressed the Hamas practice of gender apartheid.
On this year’s anniversary of October 7, in the concession-and-pivot style of Obama the Older, Mamdani first acknowledged Hamas’s atrocities, but most of the rest of his remarks leveled accusations against Israel.
On October 13, America’s “first Black Irish president,” the Moneygall king of doublespeak, Barack Obama, did a retake on receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for doing nothing when he stepped forward in Belfast to receive an honorary doctorate for his global and local commitment to peace, dialogue, and public service. Then, following up with a journalist, he focused his remarks on the injustices surrounding Israel’s theft of Palestinian land.
So here’s an unanswered question: What happens when someone as influential as Obama presents a selective historical account that most people lack the expertise to challenge? And what happens when that point of view is weaponized to promote a misleading perspective that, in the minds of activists, terrorists, and Islamists, justifies violence against Jews?
Next up, on October 24, Obama is scheduled to round out the month in Michigan campaigning for a man who is not shy about criticizing U.S. military funding for Israel and who has declined to commit to a one- or two-state outcome, the notoriously anti-Israel Abdul El-Sayed.
Is all this an Obama October surprise or a defense of Hamas tour?
One cannot help but wonder whether those who see Obama as a larger-than-life man of global harmony recognize how much dissension he has stirred up over the years and whether Obama is the one who has come dangerously close to being unethical by implying that Israel is the aggressor and needs to find a better way to fight against an enemy that uses terrorism to defend itself.
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