Obama told his former staffers on the Pod Save America Saturday that “all of us are complicit to some degree” in the violence in Gaza, as he appeared to describe a moral equivalence between Hamas murdering Israelis and the Israeli “occupation” of Gaza.

Gaza has not been “occupied” by Israel since 2005, when Israel withdrew all of its soldiers and civilians in a “disengagement” that aimed to reduce violence in the region. Hamas responded by launching thousands of rockets at Israel and starting several wars.

Obama’s remarks, as published by the podcast, are as follows:

President @BarackObama on the violence in Gaza.

Full interview out Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/U42Jy2Aa4y

— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) November 4, 2023

If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively, to do something, it will require an admission of complexity. And maintaining, what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas — that what Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it; and what is also true is that the occupation [sic] and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable. [Applause] And what is also true is that 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. And what is true is that there are people right now who are dying who have nothing to do with what Hamas did. And what is true, right — I mean, we can go on for a while. And the problem with the social media, and trying to — TikTok activism, and trying to debate this, on that, is you can’t speak the truth. You can pretend to speak the truth. You can speak one side of the truth, and in some cases you can try to maintain you moral innocence, but that won’t solve the problem. And so if you want to solve the problem, you have to take in the whole truth, and you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree. 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, and 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?” That’s the conversation we should be having. Not just looking backwards, but looking forward. And that can’t happen if we are confining ourselves to our outrage. I would rather see you out there talking to people, including people who you disagree with. If you genuinely want to change thin, then you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side, and listen to them, and understand what they are talking about, and not dismiss it. Because you can’t save that child without their help. Not in this situation.

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