Obama: To Slam The Door In The Face Of Refugees Would Betray Our Deepest Values

MEP: US President Barack Obama in the United Nations General Assembly at the UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday has announced a pledge by 50 nations to take in 360,000 refugees from war-torn countries this year.

He said, “We are facing a crisis of epic proportion.”

Calling the refugee crisis “one the urgent tests of our time” and “a test of our common humanity,” President Obama added, “We cannot avert our eyes or turn our backs. To slam the door in the face of these refugee families would betray our deepest values.”

The President’s interest in calling attention to the tens of millions of displaced people around the world, and pushing back against the anti-refugee tenor, was underscored by his decision to convene a Leaders’ Summit on Refugees at the United Nations Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Obama referred to the Palestinian crisis and said Israel will be better off if it makes peace with Palestinians and realize it cannot permanently occupy the Palestinian lands.

“Surely Israelis and Palestinians will be better off if Palestinians reject incitement and recognize the legitimacy of Israel … (and if) Israel recognizes that it cannot permanently occupy and settle Palestinian land,” Obama said.

Opening the General Assembly session, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also addressed the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

“As a friend of both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples, it pains me that this past decade has been ten years lost to peace,” Ban said.

“Ten years lost to illegal settlement expansion. Ten years lost to intra-Palestinian divide, growing polarization and hopelessness. This is madness,” he said.

President Barack Obama praised the US for observing the interest of other countries, criticized those who do not, called for better trade agreements like TPP, and mentioned fight against ISIS in passing.

Putting colonialism and communism in the same basket, Obama said that their demise gave more people a choice and increased the number of democracies. He compared the “wasteland” of North Korea to South Korea, as proof that command economy doesn’t work, but did not mention years of US and UN sanctions against North Korea.

He called on advanced economies to do more to close the gap between rich and poor nations, but warned that helping undeveloped countries out of poverty ought to take a back seat to fighting climate change.