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Sunday, December 27, 2009

Obama offends Jews and Israel again

On Friday, I reported on Hannah Rosenthal's remarks in an interview with Haaretz in which she lambasted Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, for his shunning of the pro-Israel pro-'peace' J Street lobby. As I reported in that article, Rosenthal has turned into yet another major blunder for the Obama administration with the Jewish community and with Israel. Unsurprisingly, she was blasted by Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard:
An official with a leading Jewish organization in Washington emails to say that "this is a matter of deep concern and raises real questions about her ability to do the job. There is no precendent that I can recall for a US official -- let alone a diplomat -- to so recklessly criticize another nation's ambassador from any country, ever, like this. While it seems obvious she was not reading from a State Department speech, it begs the question -- is she expressing offical American policy? If not, one would certainly hope the administration would say so. How would one know otherwise? People are outraged and they are telling the White House that, I am sure."

Are there not enough anti-Semites to keep Rosenthal busy even for a month before she starts attacking the Jews? It's as if Melanne Verveer had attacked Ayaan Hirsi Ali during her first month on the job, or if Carol Browner had gone after the head of Greenpeace. Still, I'm less interested in whether Rosenthal was acting in an official capacity when she attacked the Israeli Ambassador, but whether she was carrying out her official duties to combat and monitor anti-Semitism while she attended the J Street conference -- and when can we expect her report.
Even the State Department felt the need to disavow her.
[T]he Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, has repudiated Ms. Rosenthal with the following statement:

"The Department of State values its close relationship with Ambassador Michael Oren and his staff at the Embassy of Israel in Washington. The United States and Israel enjoy extraordinarily close ties based on shared values, interests, and history, as well as the deep bonds between the Israeli people and the American people. Ambassador Oren plays an indispensable role in maintaining and strengthening our relationship through his day to day interaction with the Administration and Congress on issues of vital importance to both countries and his vigorous outreach to Americans of all origins and points of view."
At Pajamas Media, Ron Radosh views Rosenthal as part of Obama's effort to sneak socialists into 'under the radar' positions.
This past, I think, explains Obama’s propensity to keep appointing rather low-level officials who can operate under the radar and who come from a similar radical or left-wing past. The latest appointment, perhaps not as low level, is that of Hannah Rosenthal, who started her new job last week in the State Department as the special envoy to monitor and report on anti-Semitism. With the growth of anti-Semitism in countries like Britain and France, the job sounds important and necessary. But what was Ms. Rosenthal’s first salvo aimed at?

...

What the article does not go on to note,(as Aaron Klein points out on his blog) however, is that Rosenthal’s husband, Richard Phelps, was a three-term Madison, Wisconsin, executive who worked closely with Joel Rogers, one of the founders of The New Party. Clearly, she met Obama in 1996 when he was gaining the support of The New Party for his campaign.

So once again- as with the appointment of Van Jones- Obama has put in a major position of influence a person from the left-wing of the political spectrum who, as an official whose office monitors anti-Semitism, is using her position to support J-Street, on whose Board she previously sat. Conflict of interest, anyone? Are the statements she gave to Haaretz, uttered in her official capacity, likely to help or harm the ability of Israel to defend itself against its enemies, or once again work instead to cast doubt among Israelis about the view of Israel really held by the Obama administration?

Ms. Rosenthal notes, parenthetically, that criticism of her appointment comes “from a very few people who blog a lot.” Add this blogger to that list!
Radosh goes on to describe how he was attacked for this post by the Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan. Read the whole thing.

5 Comments:

At 6:37 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

yes, she blew it with her comments about oren, however, her following comments from her ha'aretz interview are right on the money

"I do believe that some of the criticism against Israel is anti-Semitism but not all of it is. And I think that healthy democracies - and Israel is one - has to do self reflection and the world looks at the light unto the nations and says I agree to this policy or I don't agree - that is not anti-Semitism. But having the UN single out Israel for 170 resolutions over the last five years - when everybody knows that Sudan is committing genocide and they have only five resolutions. When Israel is the only agenda item on the human rights council - I think it's legitimate to look at this singling out, holding Israel to a different standard than the rest of the world. I think that crosses the line to anti-Semitism."

"But it is not anti-Semitic to look at a certain policy of Israel and say - I disagree with it. Half of the population in Israel isn't anti-Semitic by not agreeing with policies."

the only language i would change in that statement is the word "some" to "most"

she does however need to make an apology to orem...or tender her resignation

 
At 7:09 AM, Blogger Daniel said...

because she married out she is disqualified to be a Jewish spokeswoman

 
At 10:38 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks to the fraud committed by our media the voters elected an America-hating, anti-Semite and racist to be our president. Had the media covered the "church" obama went to for almost 20 years and took a closer look at the people in obama's life the voters would have known exactly who they were voting for.

 
At 4:02 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

free

it was covered....and fox and all the wingnuts on the radio covered it ad infinitum

you just werent paying attention

and i bet you didnt know that mrs obama has a cousin who is an orthodox rabbi

 
At 8:43 PM, Blogger Mike Dugas said...

Hey Bacci40. Telling us that Mrs. Obama "has a cousin who is an orthodox rabbi", what does that mean?
Is that supposed to steer us away from considering any of the One's actions as anti-Semitic? Is that supposed to give this administration a pass in it's horrible treatment of Israel? I wanna know bacci.

 

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