"More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don't think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand."
I did not want to ask McGovern about Palin. I knew it was no point in asking him that question. George McGovern does not speak harshly of anyone. Case in point: He says about Richard Nixon:
"I bear no malice toward Richard Nixon. Indeed, he governed as a moderate liberal. His administration launched the Environmental Protection Agency, he supported civil rights, he established detente with the Soviet Union and opened the door to China, he invoked wage and price controls to stabilize the economy -- just to name a few of his moderate liberal steps."
What we lost when George McGovern did not make it to the White House might best be understood when we realize that McGovern not only reads and respects the work of Israeli peace activist Avraham Burg, he agrees with Burg's statement on the conditions for a just peace, which Burg wrote in the Israeli journal, Yediot Aharonot in 2004:
"We cannot keep a Palestinian majority under an Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves the only democracy in the Middle East... We must remove all the settlements and draw an internationally recognized border between the Israeli national home and the Palestinian national home."
The man who should have been elected president in 1972, offers a stark contrast to the former governor of Alaska, who would like to be the Republican nominee in 2012.
When George McGovern accepted his party's nomination in 1972, he presented the nation with a vision that says, regardless of its ambiguity, politics is the arena where we must shape hope into organized, positive, action..
I wanted to be reminded of that vision, because in Ramallah, President Abbas plans to resign, while in Tel Aviv, Bibi Netanyahu continues to insult and defy the president of the United States, (Barack Obama), the only world leader who supports him.
McGovern's vision echoes the wisdom and eloquence of Reinhold Niebuhr, who once wrote, "man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."
McGovern frequently quotes Niebuhr; he did, after all, spend a year in seminary before he shifted to Northwestern University's graduate school, where he earned a Master's degree in history.
Our current political dialogue, which McGovern is well prepared to critique, is conducted in such an environment of ignorance and anger, that it is hard not to sink into a dark funk over what comes next.
Of course, periods of darkness are not uncommon in the Middle East.
When Yasir Arafat was presiding over a newly formed Palestinian Authority initially created in Oslo, I traveled to Gaza in November, 1994, with an American church delegation.
We went first to meet with Arafat's wife, the former Suha Tawil, a member of a politically active Palestinian family.
In the delegation was a United Methodist bishop from Ohio. Before we left, she offered a prayer in the Arafat home. After the prayer, Suha said to the bishop, "Please give that same prayer when you visit my husband in his office. Something needs to be done to lift the darkness over there."
Which is why I wanted to talk with George McGovern.
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