Former President Barack Obama has urged Americans to “embrace the whole truth” in weighing Israel’s war against Hamas, saying they are all “to some extent complicit” in the conflict.
“No one has clean hands,” the 44th president said during an interview with Pod Save America, a podcast hosted by former White House aides to his presidency, in an excerpt released Saturday.
“What Hamas did was horrible and there is no justification for it. And what is also true is that the occupation and what is happening to the Palestinians is unbearable,” said Obama, 62, explaining that the only way to resolve the crisis was to accept these seemingly contradictory ideas.
“And what is also true is that there is a history of the Jewish people that can be ignored unless your grandparents or your great-grandparents or your uncle or your aunt tell you stories about the madness of anti-Semitism,” he said.
“And what is true is that right now there are people who are dying, who have nothing to do with what Hamas did. … We could go on for a while,” he said.
Former President Barack Obama has acknowledged that he bears some blame for the conflict. Getty Images Pro-Palestinian protesters march in Brooklyn last month. Corbis via Getty Images
Obama blamed social media for deepening divisions between both sides of the debate and for being a place where people went to defend their own “moral innocence.”
“The problem with social media, TikTok activism and trying to debate this is that you can’t tell the truth. “You can pretend to tell the truth, you can tell one side of the truth, and in some cases you can try to maintain your moral innocence, but that won’t solve the problem,” he said.
“If you want to solve the problem, you have to assimilate the whole truth,” Obama said. “And then you have to admit that no one has clean hands, that we are all complicit to some extent.”
Debates and demonstrations have broken out across the country since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, a bloody sneak attack that left around 1,400 dead and more than 200 taken hostage.
Israel responded with continued bombing of the Gaza Strip. The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry has said that more than 9,000 people have been killed in Gaza so far, although its figures have been criticized as unreliable given that Hamas is a terrorist organization.
Hasidic Jews observe a pro-Palestinian protest in Brooklyn in October. Obama asked both sides to talk to each other. Corbis via Getty Images
Obama noted that he was not exempt from taking the blame for the conflict, explaining that he had been asking himself, “Was there anything else I could have done?” during his presidency to avoid the bloodshed that broke out in October.
The former president had a very tense relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he clashed over the nuclear deal between the United States and Iran and the expansion of Israeli settlements in the region disputed by the Palestinians.
During his interview, the former president urged Americans not to “limit themselves to outrage” but to listen to opposing points of view.
“If you really want to change this, then you have to figure out how to talk to someone on the other side, listen to them and understand what they’re talking about and not ignore them,” he said.
Obama’s full interview will be released Tuesday, according to Pod Save America.
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