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| At Memorial, Obama Urges Action Against Racism and Anti-Semitism | At Memorial, Obama Urges Action Against Racism and Anti-Semitism |
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| JERUSALEM – After rekindling the eternal flame and laying a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, a solemn President Obama spoke on Friday of a collective “obligation not just to bear witness but to act” against racism “and especially anti-Semitism” as he wrapped up his three-day visit here with a trio of symbolic pilgrimages. | JERUSALEM – After rekindling the eternal flame and laying a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, a solemn President Obama spoke on Friday of a collective “obligation not just to bear witness but to act” against racism “and especially anti-Semitism” as he wrapped up his three-day visit here with a trio of symbolic pilgrimages. |
| “We have the choice to ignore what happens to others or to act on behalf of others,” Mr. Obama said after a tour of the museum and a brief memorial service. | “We have the choice to ignore what happens to others or to act on behalf of others,” Mr. Obama said after a tour of the museum and a brief memorial service. |
| “Our sons and daughters are not born to hate, they are taught to hate,” he added. “The state of Israel does not exist because of the Holocaust but in the survival of a strong Jewish state of Israel the Holocaust will never happen again.” | “Our sons and daughters are not born to hate, they are taught to hate,” he added. “The state of Israel does not exist because of the Holocaust but in the survival of a strong Jewish state of Israel the Holocaust will never happen again.” |
| The remarks were Mr. Obama’s only scheduled public comments in Israel in a day filled with poignant gestures. He began by laying stones on the graves of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, and Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister assassinated in 1995 while on the brink of making peace. Friday afternoon, he was to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the biblical birthplace of Jesus, before heading on to Jordan. | |
| A windstorm forced Mr. Obama to modify his travel plans to reach Bethlehem. Initially he was to fly by helicopter. Instead, he will travel in a motorcade — a change welcomed by Palestinian officials since it meant the American leader would have to pass directly by Israel’s separation barrier. | |
| After a bold, soaring speech Thursday afternoon encouraging Israel’s younger generation to press its leaders into action on the peace process, Mr. Obama also planned lunch on Friday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pursue their earlier discussions about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Many analysts saw the president’s speech on Thursday as harshly critical of Mr. Netanyahu’s handling of the matter so far. | |
| Israeli newspapers were enthusiastic on Friday about the president’s visit, saying the nation had fallen for him, but cautioning that his prescription for peace would not be easy to follow. Three newspapers used his declaration in Hebrew — “You are not alone” — as a front-page banner headline. | |
| “The most powerful man in the world arrived in the most threatened state in the world to promise love,” columnist Ari Shavit wrote in the left-leaning Haaretz. “He gave us love every single second, in every speech and in every gesture.” | |
| But Mr. Shavit cautioned that “one cannot ignore the naivete of Obama’s speech.” | |
| “The president must still prove that the peace he promises can actually be implemented,” he wrote. | |
| Palestinians, by contrast, were mostly disappointed. The President’s scheduled provided for only brief sojourns in their territory on Thursday and Friday, prompting some to say they felt like an afterthought. Others recoiled from Mr. Obamas frequent use of Hebrew; his suggestion that he no longer sees a settlement freeze as crucial to restarting peace talks; and from his repeated testimony to the United States eternal friendship with the nation they see as an enemy. | |
| “President Obama is eating, sleeping and chatting with people in Israel while he is spending few hours with Palestinian politicians,” said Said Kamal, a shopkeeper in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority government in the West Bank, where Mr. Obama met Thursday with President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. “This visit will result in nothing for the Palestinians.” | |
| Mirvat Mohammad, 47, said that “America considers us as terrorists, therefore we will get nothing from this visit.” And Mohammad Haj Yassin, an architect, said that “since the last visit of the previous president, more land was confiscated, the U.S. administration did nothing about it.” | |
| Yousef Munayer, executive director of the Washington-based Jerusalem Fund and Palestine Center, was one of several analysts critical of Mr. Obama’s speech for presenting “peace as a choice Israelis might make instead of an obligation they must fulfill.” | |
| “Reading between the lines, this speech suggests that President Obama will do little more than pay lip service to an outcome he refuses to put the muscle of his office behind,” Mr. Munayer said. “He has told Israelis is that the U.S. will stand by Israel regardless of what choices it makes – even if that choice continues to be perpetual occupation. That is, to say the least, unbecoming of the leader of the free world.” | |
| On Friday morning, Mr. Obama was flanked as he has been for much of the time since he landed in Israel Friday by Mr. Netanyahu and by President Shimon Peres, who presented him with Israel’s Medal of Distinction at a state dinner Thursday night. At Yad Vashem, he was also accompanied by Yisrael Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor who is chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, and Avner Shalev, the museum’s director. | |
| They first visited the Hall of Names, a huge dome filled with photographs and dossiers describing the individuals who perished, then the Hall of Remembrance. | |
| Wearing a white skullcap, Mr. Obama arranged the wreath of red, white and purplish-blue flowers on a stone slab covering ashes of Holocaust victims, then stayed in a low crouch for a moment, head bowed. As a cantor sang the Jewish memorial prayer, “Eyl moleh rahamim,” the president kept his head low and occasionally closed his eyes. | Wearing a white skullcap, Mr. Obama arranged the wreath of red, white and purplish-blue flowers on a stone slab covering ashes of Holocaust victims, then stayed in a low crouch for a moment, head bowed. As a cantor sang the Jewish memorial prayer, “Eyl moleh rahamim,” the president kept his head low and occasionally closed his eyes. |
| In his remarks, Mr. Obama noted that he had been to the Buchenwald concentration camp and to the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, and that this was his second visit to Yad Vashem, having come as a presidential candidate in 2008. | In his remarks, Mr. Obama noted that he had been to the Buchenwald concentration camp and to the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, and that this was his second visit to Yad Vashem, having come as a presidential candidate in 2008. |
| “We can come here a thousand times and each time our hearts would break,” Mr. Obama said. “Here we see the depravity to which man can sink. We see how evil can, for a moment in time, triumph, when good people do nothing.” | “We can come here a thousand times and each time our hearts would break,” Mr. Obama said. “Here we see the depravity to which man can sink. We see how evil can, for a moment in time, triumph, when good people do nothing.” |
| But he said because the museum also tells the story of rescuers, “this accounting of horror is a source of hope. | But he said because the museum also tells the story of rescuers, “this accounting of horror is a source of hope. |
| “We always have choices, to succumb to our worst instincts” and “to be indifferent to suffering,” Mr. Obama added, “or to display empathy that is at the core of our humanity.” | “We always have choices, to succumb to our worst instincts” and “to be indifferent to suffering,” Mr. Obama added, “or to display empathy that is at the core of our humanity.” |
| Rabbi Lau, 75, told the story of his liberation from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, by American forces, recounting the disbelief in the barracks when a chaplain entered and shouted in Yiddish, “'Jews, you are free.'” | Rabbi Lau, 75, told the story of his liberation from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945, by American forces, recounting the disbelief in the barracks when a chaplain entered and shouted in Yiddish, “'Jews, you are free.'” |
| “This is the opportunity to thank you, to thank the American people, who came finally,” Mr. Lau said. Saying that one of the liberators apologized to him decades later for coming too late, the rabbi said to President Obama, “Yesterday you promised us that we are not alone. Don’t be too late.” | “This is the opportunity to thank you, to thank the American people, who came finally,” Mr. Lau said. Saying that one of the liberators apologized to him decades later for coming too late, the rabbi said to President Obama, “Yesterday you promised us that we are not alone. Don’t be too late.” |
Khaled Abu Aker contributed reporting from Ramallah, West Bank, and Mark Landler from Tel Aviv. |