Unfortunately there have been some right wing attempts to smear Barack Obama’s reputation by making false accusations that Obama is anti-Semitic. Some of the supposed claims were repeated in The Washington Post by Richard Cohen. “The smears concentrate on relationships between Jeremiah A. Wright, the pastor of Obama’s church, and Trumpet Magazine, a church newsletter, to Louis Farrakhan. The attacks boil down to insinuating that Obama shares views with Farrahkan because of support for Farrahkan by Wright and the church newsletter. As even Cohen concedes in his column, ‘It’s important to state right off that nothing in Obama’s record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views or agrees with Wright when it comes to Farrakhan.’” (Ron Chusid)
Obama responded with this statement: “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”
Some leaders in the Jewish community responded with a letter condemning this libel.
January 15, 2008
An Open Letter to the Jewish Community:
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.
Attempts of this sort to mislead and inflame voters should not be part of our political discourse and should be rebuffed by all who believe in our democracy. Jewish voters, like all voters, should support whichever candidate they believe would make the best president. We urge everyone to make that decision based on the factual records of these candidates, and nothing less.
Sincerely,
William Daroff, Vice President, United Jewish Communities
Nathan J. Diament, Director, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America
Abraham Foxman, National Director, Anti-Defamation League
Richard S. Gordon, President, American Jewish Congress
David Harris, Executive Director, American Jewish Committee
Rabbi Marvin Hier, Dean, Simon Wiesenthal Center
Rabbi David Saperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Phyllis Snyder, President, National Council of Jewish Women
Hadar Susskind, Washington Director, Jewish Council for Public Affairs
(This letter was found in a blog entitles “Liberal Values” written by Ron Chusid.)
I am glad that the Jewish leaders wrote the community a letter explaining these false rumors. I think the situation was handled well and I can only hope that Obama’s name is cleared from having a racist mark. This should never have happened, but politics are ugly.
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2 comments:
Politics is dirty business, and people often throw anything at candidates that might stick, whether it is wholly true, grossly exaggerated, or totally false. The third seems to be true in this example. Good thing Obama got that cleared up; people tend to believe most of whatever propaganda they hear nowadays.
One major problem is that people remember the attack more than they remember the defense. We'll see if this charge comes up again.
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