Obama: Hamas attacks were horrific, but you need to look at ‘unbearable’ occupation too

Tiptoeing carefully, former US president Barack Obama condemns the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, while also urging people to “take in the whole truth.”

“If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively, to do something, it will require an admission of complexity,” Obama says on a panel hosted by the Pod Save America podcast manned by his former administration staffers.

“That what Hamas did was horrific and there’s no justification for it, and what is also true is that the occupation, and what is happening to Palestinians, is unbearable,” he says to applause.

Obama: “What Hamas did was horrific, and there is no justification for it. And what is also true is that the occupation, and what’s happening to Palestinians, is unbearable…

“You have to admit that all of us are complicit to some degree.” pic.twitter.com/FtAGFAexz1

— Yonah Lieberman ???? (@YonahLieberman) November 4, 2023

Obama goes on to juxtapose stories of the Holocaust and “the madness of antisemitism” with the fact that “there are people right now who are dying, who had nothing to do with what Hamas did.”

“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth,” he says. “And then you have to admit nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree.”

Last month, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres came under harsh censure from Israel for noting that Hamas’s attacks “did not occur in a vacuum,” which Israeli officials interpreted as a justification for terror.