Difficult problems rarely have a morally clean or internally consistent answer. Progress starts with holding contradictory ideas at once — and understanding what the other side is actually saying.
Obama makes the point in the context of violence in Gaza (watch 19:38–25:46 or the full interview).
If there’s any chance of us being able to act constructively to do something, it will require an admission of Complexity and maintaining what on the surface may seem contradictory ideas.
If you genuinely want to change this, then you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about.