Take notes, Obama: Condi Rice dug deep into her bag of tricks and…recycled her “childhood in Birmingham as source of foreign policy insight” argument that she has used far too many times already:

Rice began by saying she did not want to draw historical parallels or be too self-reflective [bold mine-DL], but as a young girl she grew up in Birmingham, Ala., “at a time of separation and tension.”

She noted that a local church was bombed by white separatists, killing four girls, including a classmate of hers.

“Like the Israelis, I know what it is like to go to sleep at night, not knowing if you will be bombed, of being afraid to be in your own neighborhood, of being afraid to go to your church,” she said.

But, she added, as a black child in the South, being told she could not use certain water fountains or eat in certain restaurants, she also understood the feelings and emotions of the Palestinians.

“I know what it is like to hear to that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian,” she said. “I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness.”  

“There is pain on both sides,” Rice concluded. “This has gone on too long.”

She knows what it is like to hear that you “can’t go through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian”?  Did she have trouble making it through checkpoints on the interstate?  What is she talking about?  She says she doesn’t want to “draw historical parallels or be too self-reflective” right before she draws historical parallels and reflects on her own childhood as a window onto the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.  Does this mean, despite her insistence that she wasn’t drawing historical parallels, that she was making a comparison between segregation and the treatment of the Palestinians?  Was she (gasp!) implying that there is some kind of apartheid system over there?