PrintApril 10, 2008
Obama Claims he's greatest friend of Jews ever
Well...not quite. But if Obama is allowed to spout hyperbole, why not the rest of us?
Obama reminded the crowd that he’d denounced his church’s praise of Farrakhan, saying, “I’ve been very clear about saying that was wrong. And nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti- Semitism than I have.”Obama, as Ed Morrissey points out, is getting into the nasty habit of stretching the truth once he gets off script:
Really? No one?
Elie Wiesel? Simon Wiesenthal? Alan Dershowitz?
First off, when has Obama spoken out at all against anti-Semitism outside of generic “hope and change” rhetoric about the tone and tenor of politics? He hasn’t been an activist for anti-Semitism even in his own church. He claims he didn’t agree with Jeremiah Wright’s honoring Farrakhan, but he didn’t speak out against it until people pressed him for a reaction to it. How about when his church reprinted Hamas propaganda in its bulletins? Did his fierce opposition erupt in protest? Uh, no.Pretty soon, the Democratic primary is going to resemble one of those bars where patrons try to outdo each other in making up stories about their exploits. Between Hillary's Bosnia caper and Obama's assertion that he has stood up for the Jews, one might begin to wonder is it possible for either of them just to tell the truth about something.
And now “nobody has spoken out more fiercely on the issue of anti-Semitism” than Obama? That’s not just absurd, it insults the intelligence of everyone who heard it. Many people have spoken out eloquently on anti-Semitism on many more occasions than Barack Obama, which isn’t a difficult threshold to meet.
