Yesterday, I post the diary, Obama fights nasty whisper campaign. It was based on a recent post by Cecilie Surasky of Muzzlewatch (Jewish Voice for Peace), which described the smear campaign being conduct by Hillary supporters to peg Barak Obama as antiIsrael in the Jewish community. Obama fought back with assertions that he is proIsrael, even though he is not likely to match Hillary. No Democratic presidential candidate is to the right of Hillary, who is to the right of Bush, and is a strict supporter of AIPAC whatever its positions are.
In a tight race, where every vote counts, Obama has confronted the attacks on multiple levels. He first responded to charges that he was not proIsrael in an audio conference with Jewish media outlets. You can listen to it here.
On Jan 28, 2008, Ben Harris wrote,
Obama addresses Jewish concerns
Barack Obama just finished a conference call with Jewish reporters (read the news brief). He took four questions, the first from JTA’s own Ron Kampeas. But while questions dealt with the Middle East, and the recent controversy about Obama’s church, what the candidate really wanted to talk about was the smear campaign that has circulated by email among Jewish leaders in recent weeks.
The allegations — that Obama is a Muslim and took his oath of office on a Koran — have been thoroughly, and repeatedly, refuted. Still, Obama said he wanted folks to hear the refutation from the “horse’s mouth.”
Before the call broke up, Obama urged reporters to use their “megaphone” to let readers know “that there’s no substance there and that my strong and deep commitment and connection to the Jewish community should not be questioned.”
Obama then went even further and published an entire web page dedicated to answering the false charges.
Obama Has Never Been A Muslim, And Is a Committed Christian
In the internet age, there are going to be lies that are spread all over the place. I have been victimized by these lies. Fortunately, the American people are, I think, smarter than folks give them credit for. — Barack Obama, MSNBC Debate, January 15, 2008
ALSO WATCH WHAT OBAMA HAD TO SAY ABOUT THE SMEAR EMAILS
READ WHAT OTHERS HAVE TO SAY
NEWSWEEK: “Dueling chain e-mails claim he’s a radical Muslim or a ‘racist’ Christian. Both can’t be right. We find both are false. If these two nasty e-mail messages are any indication, the 2008 presidential campaign is becoming a very dirty one. One claims that Obama is ‘certainly a racist’ by virtue of belonging to Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, which it says ‘will accept only black parishioners’ and espouses a commitment to Africa. Actually, a white theology professor says he’s been ‘welcomed enthusiastically’ at the church, as have other non-blacks. Another e-mail claims that Obama ‘is a Muslim,’ attended a ‘Wahabi’ school in Indonesia, took his Senate oath on the Koran, refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and is part of an Islamic plot to take over the U.S. Each of these statements is false. These false appeals to bigotry and fear remind us of the infamous whispering campaign of eight years ago, when anonymous messages just before the South Carolina primary falsely accused Republican candidate John McCain of fathering an illegitimate child by a black woman.”
THE UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST: “‘Trinity UCC is rooted in and proud of its Afrocentric heritage,’ [Rev. John H. Thomas, the UCC’s general minister and president] said. ‘This is no different than the hundreds of UCC churches from the German Evangelical and Reformed stream that continue to own and celebrate their German heritage, insisting on annual sausage and sauerkraut dinners and singing Stille Nacht on Christmas Eve. Recognizing and celebrating our distinctive racial-ethnic heritages, cultures, languages and customs are what make us unique as a united and uniting denomination.’ While Trinity UCC is predominately African American, it does include and welcome non-Black members. The Rev. Jane Fisler-Hoffman, Illinois Conference Minister, who is white, has been a member of the congregation for years.”
PROMINENT JEWISH LEADERS: “As leaders of the Jewish community, none of whose organizations will endorse or oppose any candidate for President, we feel compelled to speak out against certain rhetoric and tactics in the current campaign that we find particularly abhorrent. Of particular concern, over the past several weeks, many in our community have received hateful emails that use falsehood and innuendo to mischaracterize Senator Barack Obama’s religious beliefs and who he is as a person. These tactics attempt to drive a wedge between our community and a presidential candidate based on despicable and false attacks and innuendo based on religion. We reject these efforts to manipulate members of our community into supporting or opposing candidates.”
JEWISH U.S. SENATORS: “Over the past several weeks, many in the Jewish community have received hateful emails that use falsehood and innuendo about Senator Barack Obama’s religion and attack him personally. As Jewish United States Senators who have not endorsed a candidate for the Democratic nomination, we condemn these scurrilous attacks. We find it particularly abhorrent that these attacks arc apparently being sent specifically to the Jewish Community. Jews, who have historically been the target of such attacks, should be the first to reject these tactics. We won’t dignify these falsehoods by repeating them in order to refute them. Instead, we will express our outrage at these tactics, which are being used to demonize a good and decent man and our friend and colleague. Attempting to manipulate voters into supporting or opposing one candidate or another based on despicable and fictitious attacks is disgraceful. These false and malicious attacks should not be part of our political discourse.”
Finally, and perhaps unfortunately, Obama also released a gratuitous letter to the United Nations regarding their impending condemnation of the illegal and disastrous Siege of Gaza.
Dear Ambassador Khalilzad,
I understand that today the UN Security Council met regarding the situation in Gaza, and that a resolution or statement could be forthcoming from the Council in short order.
I urge you to ensure that the Security Council issue no statement and pass no resolution on this matter that does not fully condemn the rocket assault Hamas has been conducting on civilians in southern Israel…
All of us are concerned about the impact of closed border crossings on Palestinian families. However, we have to understand why Israel is forced to do this… Israel has the right to respond while seeking to minimize any impact on civilians.
The Security Council should clearly and unequivocally condemn the rocket attacks… If it cannot bring itself to make these common sense points, I urge you to ensure that it does not speak at all.
Sincerely,
Barack Obama
United States Senator
Richard Silverstein of Tikun Olam said: “This letter is a perfect example of how election campaigns prostitute legitimate policy objectives. Of course, Israel was NOT forced to put Gaza under siege.”
According to Jewish Voice for Peace through its subsidiary, Muzzlewatch:
….the letter caused “great anguish among peace activists, presumably, not because it demanded the UN also condemn the rocket assault on the residents of the working class town of Sderot, who have suffered mightily over the years from some 6,000 quassam rocket attacks, without benefit of substantive protection from their own government.
The ire was caused, rather, by Obama’s absurd assertion that a) Israel has any right whatsoever to engage in collective punishment of 1.5 million people, and b) his inference that doing so in any way serves to protect the people of Sderot. Far from it, Israel’s increased attacks on Gaza invariably lead to greater attacks on Sderot. Recently, Hamas offered an unconditional cease fire with Israel that would have dramatically improved the lives of Sderot’s residents, but Israel refused.
Can it be said that Obama has paid tribute to the Jewish community (and AIPAC) in these compliant statements to the public and press? Is he now on Hillary and Bill’s level in regard to his willingness to support right wing Zionist foreign policy initiatives? Doubtful. It is too little, too late. Hillary has beaten Obama in every aspect of AIPAC preferences: stay the course in Iraq, bombing Iranian nuclear facilities is not off the table, and as for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, no Palestinian state. Hillary is the leading advocate for every right wing proLikud/antiPalestinian policy initiative out there.
If Hillary gets in, we are back to Bush in many respects, except one: Hillary is way to the right of Bush on resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. It will never get done.