Obama Praises Bibi and Abbas, Notes Elul and Ramadan at the White House

Daniel Jacobs — September 2, 2010 – 12:05 pm | Foreign Policy | Israel | Obama Comments (0) Add a comment

Last night, President Barack Obama welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, His Majesty King Abdullah of Jordan, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House.  At a press conference before dinner, President Obama signified the importance of this week’s Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and recognized the rare simultaneous occurrence of both the month of Elul on the Jewish calendar and the Muslim holiday of Ramadan:

Tonight, and in the days and months ahead, these are the questions that we must answer. And this is a fitting moment to do so.  For Muslims, this is Ramadan.  For Jews, this is Elul. It is rare for those two months to coincide.  But this year, tonight, they do.  Different faiths, different rituals, but a shared period of devotion and contemplation. A time to reflect on right and wrong; a time to ponder one’s place in the world; a time when the people of two great religions remind the world of a truth that is both simple and profound, that each of us, all of us, in our hearts and in our lives, are capable of great and lasting change.

Obama commended Netanyahu and Abbas for their “courage” and linked them back to their predecessors who sought Arab-Israeli peace:

Each of you are the heirs of peacemakers who dared greatly— Begin and Sadat, Rabin and King Hussein— statesmen who saw the world as it was but also imagined the world as it should be. It is the shoulders of our predecessors upon which we stand.  It is their work that we carry on.  Now, like each of them, we must ask, do we have the wisdom and the courage to walk the path of peace?  All of us are leaders of our people, who, no matter the language they speak or the faith they practice, all basically seek the same things:  to live in security, free from fear; to live in dignity, free from want; to provide for their families and to realize a better tomorrow.  Tonight, they look to us, and each of us must decide, will we work diligently to fulfill their aspirations?

And though each of us holds a title of honor President, Prime Minister, King we are bound by the one title we share. We are fathers, blessed with sons and daughters.  So we must ask ourselves what kind of world do we want to bequeath to our children and our grandchildren.

Obama concluded:

For them to be here, to be willing to take this first step the most difficult step is a testament to their courage and their integrity and I think their vision for the future.

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