Rabat – Former US President Barack Obama said what is happening to Palestinians in Gaza is “unbearable,” adding that the war is killing people who “have nothing to do with what Hamas did.”
Describing the October 7 attack on Israel as “horrific,” Obama called on all sides to acknowledge the “complexity” of the situation and all parties’ “valid grievances.”
Speaking on the Save the Pod podcast, with the full episode set to be released on Tuesday, he also said an escalated ground offensive by Israel could “backfire,” arguing that civilian deaths would increase “extremism” and threaten Israel’s security in the future.
“There is a history of the Jewish people that may be dismissed unless your grandparents or your great grandparents or your uncle or your aunt tell you stories about the madness of antisemitism,” he also explained.
“And what is true is that there are people right now who are dying who have nothing to do with what Hamas did,” Obama added.
The remarks echo what the former president said during a 2013 speech, when he was still president of the US.
“It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day,” he stated at the time.
Despite his remarks, many have drawn attention to the fact that Obama’s own administration displayed the same unrelenting support for Israel that is seen today.
In 2014, the US – led by Obama at the time– supported Israel during an operation that killed over 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them civilians.
“I look at this and I think back, ‘What could I have done during my presidency to move this forward?’ As hard as I tried — I’ve got the scars to prove it — but there’s a part of me that’s still saying, ‘Well, was there something else I could have done?’” he said during the recent podcast.
“That’s the conversation we should be having, not just looking backwards, but looking forward,” he added.
