A view on Obama from Tel Aviv

[sabra]

http://lisagoldman.net/2008/11/10/a-view-on-obama-from-tel-aviv/

I did not expect to cry while watching Barack Obama’s election night speech. But I did. It was amazing to see a black man elected president only one generation after the civil rights movement. And it was inspiring to see how he succeeded in making individuals, who for their entire lives had believed themselves disenfranchised by much-fabled big business interests, feel empowered and hopeful as a result of having participated in the democratic process.

Sure I rolled my eyes at the giddy BBC World news anchors, whose live coverage of the election results could easily have been confused with a tent revival meeting (do I hear a hallelujah and a praise the Lord?); and of course I don’t really expect one man to fulfill the near-messianic expectations projected onto him. I also wish it were possible for an American politician to make a speech without mentioning his wife, his children and God, which always strikes me as inappropriate and falsely intimate. Still, I could not be unmoved by a man who so eloquently expressed the possibility of making things better.

November 4 is a significant date in Israel for another reason: it is the day that Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated while leaving a Tel Aviv peace rally, which was attended by hundreds of thousands of then-hopeful Israelis who believed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had been resolved.

Thirteen years later we find ourselves in a period of political stagnation and hopelessness that shows no sign of ending. So no wonder the Israeli media cheered for Obama: he represents a vision of hope that we claim we are too cynical to believe in, but long for nonetheless. Take a look at the following headlines:


Yedioth Aharonoth’s headline is, “The Hope” (Hatikvah), which is also the name of Israel’s national anthem. Notice that the letters are in blue, like the Israeli flag.



The headline on Maariv, Israel’s second-largest mass-circulation daily, is: “He has a dream.”



And here’s Haaretz on election day, with a self-explanatory headline in English on the front page of Israel’s most prestigious Hebrew-language daily broadsheet.

[rockymountaindem]

1. That Hatikvah headline is very nice n/t

[Up2Late]

4. What does it say?

All that text just looks like random symbols to those of us who don't read Hebrew.:shrug:

[sabra]

5. top headline "Obama first black president in the White House"

below: "the hope for America"

[Up2Late]

2. Oh, yea, the whole World is very impressed that we managed to get him elected...

...mostly because very few countries, in the history of the modern world, have managed to elect someone from a so-called "minority group" in their countries. His election really is a much bigger deal than most of us can even imagine.

[MikeNearMcChord]

3. Hatikvah is a very beautiful anthem.