In his upcoming memoir, former US President Barack Obama expands on his often-strained relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that while "Netanyahu's vision of himself as the chief defender of the Jewish people against calamity," his ambitions were "dangerous" in the sense that his convictions have "allowed him to justify almost anything that would keep him in power."
"A Promised Land," said to be the first of two memoirs Obama is writing about his time in office, goes on sale on Tuesday. According to the Jewish Insider, the book delves into, among other things, the two leaders relationhsip going back to 2009, when both took office.
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The former US leader describes Netanyahu as "smart, canny, tough and a gifted communicator" who could be "charming, or at least solicitous" when it benefited him. He further notes that his chief of staff at the time, Rahm Emanuel, warned him that "You don't get progress on peace when the American president and the Israeli prime minister come from different political backgrounds."
According to the Jewish Insider, Obama writes that he "sometimes wondered whether things might have played out differently" in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which came to a screeching halt during his time in office, had there was a different president in the Oval Office, someone other than Netanyahu represented Israel, and were Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas younger.
The book recounts Obama's visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem as a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008 and the publication of the prayer note he stuffed into the cracks of the wall by an Israeli newspaper.
"The episode was a reminder of the price that came with stepping onto the world stage," he wrote. "Get used to it, I told myself. It's part of the deal."
The Jewish Insider noted that Obama also accuses Netanyahu of mounting an "orchestrated effort" to put his administration on the defensive, "reminding me that normal policy differences with an Israeli prime minister exacted a domestic political cost" that didn't exist in relations with other world leaders.
Obama further tries to refute what he calls an image of being "hostile" tward Israel and the Jewish people, noting that while in college, he was "intrigued" by the influence of Jewish philosophers on the civil rights movement.
He noted that some of his "most stalwart friends and supporters" came from Chicago's Jewish community and that he admired how Jewish voters "tended to be more progressive" on issues than any other "ethnic group.
Obama further writes that a feeling of being bound to the Jewish community by "a common story of exile and suffering" made him "fiercely protective" of the rights of the Jewish people to have a state of their own, though these values also made it "impossible to ignore the conditions under which Palestinians in the occupied territories were forced to live."
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