Why? Because "once he said the Palestinian people are suffering most in the world." Clearly Ibrahim Abu Jayyab thinks that Barack Obama is on the Palestinian side in their jihad against Israel. He hates Hamas, but of course Hamas is the fault of ... George W. Bush.
"Voices for Obama resound from afar," by Carolynne Wheeler for the Globe and Mail, October 27 (thanks to Writer Mom):
NUSSEIRAT REFUGEE CAMP, GAZA STRIP — For every point that U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama gains ahead of the Nov. 4 election, a young student in a sparsely furnished room an ocean away is taking enormous satisfaction.For months, Ibrahim Abu Jayyab has been working through the night, telephoning American voters at random to plead in broken English that they support his favourite candidate.
Never mind that most of the people Mr. Abu Jayyab calls don't even know where the Gaza Strip is, much less understand why this man with heavily accented English crackling down the phone line should care about the U.S. presidential race.
"Obama is the best candidate. He has leadership qualities, he is charismatic. Once he said the Palestinian people are suffering most in the world," Mr. Abu Jayyab says, his eyes heavy after another late night, already back at the computer that is his pride and joy in a life otherwise dominated by poverty. On screen is an enormous photo of Mr. Obama in a classic pose - which has, perhaps, inspired Mr. Abu Jayyab's recurring dreams, of Mr. Obama putting a hand on his shoulder and promising peace.
A media student at Gaza's al-Aqsa University, Mr. Abu Jayyab, 23, has chafed at the strict religious rule enforced since the Islamist Hamas organization took control 17 months ago. A heavy economic embargo, imposed by the international community after Hamas's refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence, has collapsed Gaza's economy and squelched any hope of finding a decent job after graduation.
Like most in Gaza and across the Arab world, the young man blames U.S. President George W. Bush for the mess, in part for his unwavering support of Israel. So when a young, black American senator emerged as the front-runner in the Democratic primaries, he found himself hoping for change, even here in the never-changing Middle East.
Mr. Abu Jayyab, who speaks little English and at first left only practised messages on telephone answering machines, has since enlisted the help of 15 friends to use computer VOIP programs, including iCall, to randomly call U.S. telephone numbers. They frequently meet in a nearby Internet café, where they work in fear that Hamas forces or even more radical groups will burst in.
Of the dozens of calls they'll make each night between midnight and 4 a.m. - early evening in most of the United States - Mr. Abu Jayyab and his friends say they may only speak to one out of every 10 households. They've encountered answering machines, small children, and often people impatient with their Arabic-accented English....
Is America really going to do this?
Melanie Phillips pulls no punches as she focuses primarily on how Obama sees America in relation to the threat of Islam, as compared to McCain.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2545716/is-america-really-going-t
"Clearly Ibrahim Abu Jayyab thinks that Barack Obama is on the Palestinian side in their jihad against Israel."
As do I - as do most people paying attention to BO's sympathetic rhetoric towards the Palestinians.
While we're on the subject of BO, what does he mean by, "spreading the wealth around?" Sounds like the Changes he's after revolve around changing our country into more of a Socialist/Communist nation. No thanks.
Hurray for Marxism.
Take from the rich (you and me) and give to the poor (the people earning less - but they will never see the moolah or become better off, only less resentful - maybe)
Barrie is a Marxist radical from the Hawaii days - that's what he is. He is a lying vicious humourless and unfeeling bastard who is ready to take you and your freedoms to the cleaners.
He is Reverend Jeremiah Wright, not just an aquaintence. This is what he has been trying to hide, and under that lying academic facade partially succeeding at this deception.
If elected he will be another disastrous Peanut Jimmy.
America, I love you, and you are in danger.
"Like most in Gaza and across the Arab world, the young man blames U.S. President George W. Bush for the mess..."
Just a reminder to those who may confuse McCain for Bush - McCain is NOT George Bush - so please don't fall for BO's spiel of, "four more years of GWB". I mean, come on, how low will the guy go to pander his BS? Bush is leaving, so keep that in mind.
Give commone sense a chance - that's the Change we need.
Ladies and gentlemen - Please fasten you seatbelts. We are in for a bumpy ride. I've got many friends serving on the B'more Police Department. Most of them believe that if Obama loses the election, there will be rioting. Almost as many of these same folks believe that if Obama wins the election, there will be rioting. Only time will tell. So many people, world-wide, expect a great deal from Obama. Just in the nature of politics, lots of them will end up disappointed.
Obama once upon a time took tuition from, or at least listened intently to, the likes of Rashid Khalidi, a practiced performer, on the subject of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and there were others too, who similarly presented the Arab case, with a practiced air of indignation, victimhood, and sweet reasonableness. But like Prince Harry, when he becomes Henry V, Obama will have to reconsider, and not just for election purposes, some of the dangerous innocences and perhaps enthusiasms and misunderstandings of his youth, especially on a subject where, apparently, he never received any countervailing presentation (Jewish financial backers of the Peace-Now variety are not what one means by those capable of offering a countervailing presentation as to the history of Arabs and Jews, not only this year, or twenty years ago, but over the history of the Middle East since Islam arrived -- and put in the context of the Arab and Muslim treatment or attitude toward all non-Muslims and, as well, toward non-Arab Muslims such as the black Africans in Darfur) from those capable of offering it. Obama has shown himself to be intelligent and also a quick study, as well as a keenly ruthless politician, and it would be good if, rather than offer the pro-forma, and palpably unfelt rhetoric that may please the easily-pleased audiences of AIPAC, he were really to study the source, nature, and unsusceptibility to "solution" through further Israeli surrenders of land and relinquishing of rights, of what is not a "struggle" for "the legitimate rights of the [recently-invented]"Palestinian" people (i.e., the local Arabs), but rather a Lesser Jihad, without end (though possible to manage through deterrrence), against the Infidel nation-state of Israel. And that Jihad is participated in not only directly, but indirectly, and propagandists -- including those who may not be Muslim but rather islamochristian (Khalidi may, like Hanan Ashrawi, possibly may fall into this category) --should have their soothing presentation balanced by real study, and thought, about what Islam means, what the texts and tenets and attitudes and atmospherics of Islam mean for non-Muslims, as judged by those texts, and by the behavior of Muslims toward the non-Muslims whose many lands they conquered and whom they killed, or converted, or subjugated as dhimmis. Forget, for right now, about Israel, and study what has happened to Hindus in India, to Buddhists and Hindus in East Asia, to Christians and animists in sub-Saharan Africa, what is happening today to the historic, now "post-Christian" West in its center and source, Western Europe. Once all of that is grasped, then return to the subject of tiny, hardly-to-be-discerned-on-a-world-map Israel, and compare its size, with the thousand times more land, and the fabulous unearned wealth of the Arab Muslims, who everywhere treat ruthlessly their own non-Muslim or non-Arab minorities, and then, in Obama fashion, start to think about "distributivist" or "redistributivist" justice when it comes to what the Arabs possess, and what the Jews of Israel have built, out of land which, pace Khalidi, was an ill-considered backwater, fallen into ruin and desolation (and all the accounts of Western travellers support this view), and all the demographic and cadastral records will give a different picture than the one Obama was so plausibly painted.
He needs to understand not the easygoing, syncreticic, even slightly-lapsed Islam that he may identify with his father, and with his stepfather, and with still-tolerant Indonesia during those years of his youth. But one cannot judge Islam on that basis; one has to instead study the texts, and the history of Islamic conquest.
One would be relieved to learn that Obama was reading Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who come bearing intelligent and uncowed witness, just as one would be relieved if he were known to be reading, say, such a book as "Since Time Immemorial" and looking not so much at the author's sometimes too-sweeping rhetoric as at the wealth of quotation that cannot be unsaid or undercut.
And one would be even more relieved to discover that Barack Obama, whether or not he wins the election, was not only reading the books by, but meeting with, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan, and perhaps, especially, someone who lived in Somalia, and Kenya, and Saudi Arabia, and then in the Netherlands and the United States, and could help Obama see things straight -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Besides, Obama is not foolish enough, one assumes, if he wishes to achieve any of his domestic agenda, to use up political capital, and to confirm all the worst fears, or heighten all the anxieties that remain (remain among some who may, nonetheless, decide to vote for him, allowing themselves to believe that he will act as they hope, and not as they fear).
One does not wish to trade the incomprehension and messsianic sentimentalism of the Bush Administration in Iraq (and Afghanistan) for what would be even worse: a policy of dealing with the world-wide manifestations and instruments of Jihad (the "struggle" to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam) through greater "dialogue" and "understanding" (an understanding really based on a wilful refusal to understand the texts and tenets of Islam, and the behavior that naturally flows from such texts, tenets, and steady inculcation, whether in a mosque or madrasa, or simply through one's own steady reading, and a taking of those texts to heart) and not through a clever policy designed to exploit pre-existing fissures within the Camp of Islam and -- most importantly -- to force Muslims themselves to confront the fact that the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failures of Muslim states and societies are a direct result of Islam itself. And this can only be done if Infidels themselves come to that clear understanding.
If Obama is willing to learn this, such an understanding would stand him in good stead, and help him to make the case not only for leaving Iraq, but also for not repeating the same naive kind of errors in Afghanistan, and instead for shoring up those conducting the war of self-defense against adherents of Jihad through other means, including, most importantly, every conceivable attempt to diminish OPEC oil revenues that suppply the Money Weapon that has been used to such great effect -- not least in the capitals of the Western world.
If he proves unable or unwilling to do this, if he ends up, for example, appointing as Secretaries of State and Defense those who have given every sign of being susceptible to Muslim arguments and blandishments (or who exhibit a long history of being notably anti-Israel in their voting records and attitudes -- a sure sign of being more likely, for emotional reasons, or other sorts of pathologies present in a forme fruste, to wish to continue to wilfully misunderstand the nature of Islam, not least because a right understanding would naturally help Israel.
One has only to consider how eager Pat Buchanan is to not understand the world-wide threat of Jihad, for to the pat-buchanans of this world, it is more important to persaude the American government to essentially throw Israel to the wolves, even if this whets, rather than states, Arab and Muslim appetites for further triumphs, and not all of them confined to the Middle East). McCain, if he wins, clearly will be appointing some Democrats to his cabinet. If Obama wins, he might do worse than appoint someone who has held posts dealing with security and who demonstrates an immunity to that anti-Israel undercurrent so obvious in the votes of Senators Hagel and Lugar, who are both mentioned in the short lists. What if that Secretary of State were to be, for example, James Woolsey?
Such a choice would relieve a great many people, worried about -- and not completely out of whole cloth -- Obama's ties to, or sympathies with, Islam and Islamic causes.
And were Obama to lose, he would still need to better inform himself about Islam, and not to surround himself with Yesterday's Men who have spent the last few decades unaware, essentially, of what the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest in the countries of Western Europe means, for they have not been paying attention, and have focussed, idiotically, only on the Middle East and, in some cases -- see Dennis Ross -- have professional reasons for insisting upon believing that "peace-processing" and "shuttle diplomacy" and endless "negotiations" leading to a "peace treaty" mean a great deal, when any student of Muslim treatment of all treaties with Infidels (see Majid Khadduri, War and Peace in the Law of Islam) demonstrate how silly, futile, and dangerous such pious hopes, on the Infidel side, will and must necessarily be.
Well, you know, I was undecided--then this nice young Palestinian fellow called and told me how great Barack Obama would be for Gaza! He sure helped me make up my mind.
By the way, how is this "poor, impoverished student" able to spend his nights calling a nation half-way 'round the world? I have to be careful about making long calls to my relatives in the next state...
I referred to Obama as an Avatar on a another thread...These Gazans seem to agree...They are expecting a lot out of Obama, and are really going to be disappointed when he does not deliver. Or when he does deliver, it will not be what these Gazans hope for.
They will find him as I do...a false prophet.
It will be a short honeymoon and a quickie divorce...
I agree with gravenimage, yep, a call from an Arab touting Obama, that would make me decide alright.
Sheesh, how ignorant are people? This whole idea of Obama being elected scares me. Why should I have worked all my life, saved my money, built a life, just to "redistribute" to the people who didn't do any of that?? Call it what you want, socialism, communism, it's unfair and ludicrous. Let alone the rest of his "policies".
God help us if he's elected.
"...how is this "poor, impoverished student" able to spend his nights calling a nation half-way 'round the world?"
Sugar Daddy Colin Powell put him up to it.
Obama supports Israel.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/826665.html
Yes, a recommendation from the Gaza Strip is enough to make me switch my vote. How come this clown has time to call us? Isn't he busy resisting the Israeli "occupation"? Oops, now that they have left, it must be the Hamas (read Iranian) occupation. Worst than the Israelis? Hmm, I guess I can't feel too sympathetic. Maybe you could spend your time overthrowing the true "occupiers" of the Gaza...........
If George Bush would get out of your way...............(sarcasm)
All the anti-Israel and anti-American vermin are crawling out of the woodwork to support Obama, not only domestic but also abroad, but I guess they must be blind to the hopeful possibilities of an enlightened Obama that Hugh bothered to spend time on noting.
In 2004 Brits were calling an Ohio county urging people there to vote for Kerry, the calls backfired and most ended up voting for Bush. The question is what will this Palestinian do when Obama is defeated on Nov 4th?
Why don't they just let The Guardian take care of telling Americans who to vote for?
That worked out splendidly last time.
BTW, am I the only one expecting The Lancet to publish yet another paper about the seven billion Iraqis that got killed by a Republican president?
Roxane, you beat me to it.
Look on the bright side.
Maybe these earnest young Arabs, randomly ringing American numbers, will luck onto Arabic-speaking American Christians, whether retired missionaries, or apostates from Islam...pray that they do...the tables might turn.
YHWH has a very Jewish sense of humour and I wouldn't put something like that past Him, at all.
Hello, hello. this is a long distance call from a minion of the prophet. Calling on behalf of Obama. You know, the anti Christ. Hello, hello. Abdul another hang up. Ooooooo it makes me so mad!
Abdul, lets take a break and go have some fun. I have some Rockets down stairs. Lets go shoot some off so we can feel better.
gravenimage -
it's quite likely they use Skype, or VOIP or some of the other many free or nearly-free computer phone programs developed by -you know - Americans - via which you can speak all over the world for hardly any money.
Or those really cheap phone cards.
Those students are making those phone calls from local Internet cafes. It's strange, i don't recall any Arabs helping to invent the Internet or any of the technology associated with it to facilitate telecommunication. But as always, they're ready to use it. Not for anything productive of course, not to battle their own fellow-maniacs who, by refusing to renounce violence and recognise Israel have provoked an economic blockade upon them, officially.