Obama believes that the Palestinians are like the blacks in America

Norman Podhoretz is asked by Deborah Solomon if he is

...sounding a note of disapproval in the title of your new book, “Why Are Jews Liberals?”

It’s more in sorrow than in anger. I’ve been asked this question a million times, especially by non-Jews...

Why is it such a puzzle to you? Anti-Semitism and the Nazi Party were invented by the political right.

It’s a little more complicated than that...there’s been a complete reversal of roles. Whereas the right was once full of anti-Semites, since the Six-Day War of 1967, the right — and especially the religious right — has become more pro-Israel, and the left — as exemplified by intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal and a magazine like The Nation — has become more hostile...The ideology of the left, in the last 50 years roughly, has represented the Palestinians as a kind of dark-skinned oppressed people like the blacks in this country. Obama believes that.

You mean that the Palestinians are oppressed by Jewish settlements?

It’s a crazy idea, but the Palestinians have been identified with the putative victims of European colonialism. Obama has now returned to the old idea that Israel is the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East.