At Contentions, Commentary’s group blog, Michael Totten offers props to Obama for more or less keeping quiet on Gaza for now:
I don’t know what Obama really thinks about Israel’s war in Gaza, but I can guess.
[snip]
Whatever he thinks, his silence ought to be welcomed among supporters of Israel for at least one of two reasons.
If Obama opposes Israel’s use of force to defend itself from missile attack, he deserves credit for keeping his opinion to himself while he is not actually president. As he has stated on several occasions: the United States only has one president at a time. “We can’t have two administrations running foreign policy at the same time,” he says. “We simply can’t do it.” He could try to undermine the current President Bush, but he’s right that it wouldn’t be proper.
On the other hand, perhaps he silently supports Israel’s short operation in Gaza against a terrorist army with whom he himself repeatedly said he would refuse to negotiate. If he said so out loud, though, his global “hope and change” honeymoon would be over before it even began. It’s not in his interest to hobble himself from the start, nor is it in America’s interest or Israel’s.
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