‘They took land off people’: Obama faces backlash over Israel remarks

Former U.S. President Barack Obama has come under fire from conservative and pro-Israel commentators over remarks about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which he said Jews who sought refuge from persecution "took land off people" and "were excessive." Critics accused him of distorting the history of Israel's establishment and overlooking more than 3,000 years of Jewish ties to the Land of Israel. Obama made the comments Tuesday during a conversation with journalist and author Susan McKay at the O2 arena in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as part of a speaking tour that also includes Glasgow and Manchester. His remarks, which largely addressed the responsibilities of both Israelis and Palestinians, drew particular criticism for what opponents described as a portrayal of Israel's founding primarily as a response to European persecution. During the discussion, Obama emphasized that the millions of Jews and Palestinians living in the region were not going anywhere and said critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should remember that not all Israelis supported his government. He urged Israelis to reconsider how their children and grandchildren would live in the region, questioning whether they could remain behind walls indefinitely or whether they needed to find a way to defend themselves while upholding ethical and moral principles. Obama also challenged Palestinian leaders to recognize the limits of armed confrontation. Palestinians, he argued, could not "outkill, outweaponise the Israelis" and would need to pursue change through moral arguments, ethical appeals and nonviolent strategies. He cautioned against expecting a rapid resolution. His immediate priorities, he said, were alleviating suffering, achieving a genuine end to violence, halting what he described as the continuing encroachment into the West Bank and helping rebuild Gaza. Even those objectives, he acknowledged, would require considerable diplomatic effort and an American administration willing to engage creatively, something he suggested might not happen in the near future. Referring to the hardening of Israeli attitudes following the October 7 Hamas attack, Obama said the region needed a genuine cessation of violence before meaningful discussions of long-term peace could resume. He described the conflict as an example of societies becoming trapped by history, tribal divisions and entrenched grievances, a pattern he compared to periods of conflict in Northern Ireland and elsewhere. It was Obama's discussion of Jewish history and the origins of the conflict, however, that provoked the strongest reaction. "The fact is that the Jewish people, for millennia, were oppressed, discriminated against, killed," Obama said. He noted that Europe had been responsible for much of that persecution and argued that Jews had understandably sought refuge. "What is also undeniable is that they took land off people and they were excessive," he continued. He said those who lost land understandably regarded it as an injustice and wanted it returned. Obama went on to argue that the stronger party in a conflict bears particular responsibility for breaking the cycle of violence because of the power it holds. He warned that if Israel believed its military and technological superiority allowed it to guarantee security by acting as it wished, taking what it wanted and refusing concessions, such a strategy might succeed temporarily but would undermine its moral standing. In that scenario, he said, Israel would have "ceded moral ground," adding that the current Israeli government appeared to have adopted such an approach. He emphasized that Israel needed to recognize that approximately seven million Palestinians would remain in the region and that indefinitely imposing conditions they would not accept could not provide a sustainable solution. At the same time, Obama said Palestinians also had to acknowledge Israel's military superiority and adopt a strategy that did not depend on defeating its armed forces. He criticized Hamas' October 7 attack, arguing that it was exceptionally unlikely to produce meaningful political change for Palestinians. Obama's description of Jews seeking refuge and taking land prompted accusations from conservative and pro-Israel commentators, particularly in the United States, that he had presented a misleading account of the Jewish state's origins. The conservative news website The Daily Wire, co-founded by Jewish political commentator Ben Shapiro, published an article accusing Obama of erasing more than 3,000 years of Jewish history and presenting a revisionist account of Israel's establishment. The publication argued that Obama's remarks framed the creation of Israel primarily as a response to European antisemitism and the Holocaust while overlooking the Jewish people's historical connection to the territory. Critics contended that his account suggested Jews arrived from Europe as outsiders and dispossessed the local population, without acknowledging their ancestral ties to the Land of Israel. Media watchdog HonestReporting also criticized the former president, arguing that his remarks omitted both the Jewish people's millennia-old connection to the land and centuries of continuous Jewish presence there. "Israel's legitimacy did not begin with European persecution," the organization wrote. "Neither did Jewish history." Another criticism focused on the history of Jewish land acquisition before Israel's establishment. Critics pointed to decades of documented legal purchases of land from Arab property owners, including wealthy landowners, during the period before 1948. They argued that such transactions, recorded in British Mandate-era documents, complicated Obama's broad characterization of Jewish land acquisition. Obama did not explicitly say that Jewish migration to the region was illegitimate, nor did he deny the Jewish people's long history of persecution. His critics nevertheless argued that his account omitted a central element of Jewish history: the connection between the Jewish people and the land long before the persecution they faced in modern Europe.