http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4586
Obama's Israel Inquisition
Globalism; Posted on: 2008-05-14
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Finding Obama guilty of insufficient devotion to Israel
Obama's Israel Problem
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=87
Obama and Israel
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3613
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg conducted what he's calling an "interview"
with Barack Obama regarding Israel, but it sounded much more like an
inquisition. Goldberg repeatedly demanded that Obama swear his devotion to
Israel and affirm prevailing orthodoxies ("I'm curious to hear you talk
about
the Zionist idea. Do you believe that it has justice on its side?"; "Go to
the
kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you
love
them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don't
know
you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There
seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that
you
don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it";
"Do
you think that Israel is a drag on America's reputation overseas?"; "If
you
become President, will you denounce settlements publicly?"). Afterwards,
Goldberg pronounced himself satisfied: "Obama expressed -- in twelve
different
ways -- his sup****t for Israel to me."
Marty Peretz, after a telephone conversation with Obama devoted primarily
to
Israel, similarly clears Obama of any suspicions of disloyalty,
approvingly
noting that Obama "recognizes" that Israeli settlements of the West Bank
are
not "the core problem" for the conflict with the Palestinians (to Peretz,
such
settlements "are very much a side-issue"). Peretz further decrees that
Obama's
"exhilarating experience with American Jews and with their bonds to the
dream
and realities of Israel" was evident in both Goldberg's interview and in
Obama's call with Peretz.
Needless to say, Obama's vows of devotion to Israel were not enough for
the
right-wing polemicists who endlessly play on the fears of American Jews
and
exploit Israel-related issues for political gain. GOP leaders in the House
--
such as Minority Leader John Boehner -- issued highly inflammatory
statements
regarding Obama's interview with Goldberg, condemning Obama for describing
Israel as a "constant sore" when, in fact, Obama used that term to
describe
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- not Israel (that lie by Boehner and
others
was so severe that Goldberg, to his credit, embraced Andrew Sullivan's
description of Boehner's statement as a "flat-out lie" and added that it
was
"mendacious, duplicitous, gross, and comically refutable").
Continue
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/13/obama/index.html
News Source: salon
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# Barak Obama's Global Vision: In His Own Words
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=4566
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