Progress Illinois

Appearing on MSNBC yesterday, the Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet falsely suggested that Barack Obama hasn't addressed Rev. Jeramiah Wright's controversial comments about Israel. At issue are remarks about Israel in the "pastor pages" of Trinity United Church of Christ's newsletter and particularly their republication of an LA Times op-ed by Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzook.

Here's the exchange with host Andrea Mitchell:

MITCHELL: In one bulletin, the remarks of a Hamas leader were reprinted and circulated to the parish -- to the congregation, rather -- quoting the Hamas leader, "Why should any Palestinian recognize the monstrous crime carried out by Israel's founders and continued by its deformed modern apartheid state?" [U.S. News & World Report editor-in-chief] Mort Zuckerman and Lynn Sweet rejoin me again.

Lynn, how difficult is this going to be for Obama? Does he have to do more explaining? Does he have to meet perhaps once again with Jewish leaders to try to reassure them that these are not his views as well?

SWEET: Andrea, yes, yes, yes, and yes on everything you're saying. Senator Obama's been trying to spend much of the last year in shoring up his support in the Jewish communities. He had a meeting a few weeks ago in Cleveland with 100 Jewish leaders there and activists. If you want to cut him slack and cut him a break on what he knew or didn't know about Jeremiah Wright's sermons, when you have your church bulletin print some of this stuff and you attend it over years, how could he not address it?

But contrary to Sweet's suggestion that Obama hasn't "address[ed]" the issue, Obama already "condemned" Wright's "views on Israel" in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), as Media Matters pointed out.

From the March 20 JTA article:

A pro-Hamas op-ed printed in his church's bulletin is "outrageously wrong," Barack Obama said. [...]

"I have already condemned my former pastor's views on Israel in the strongest possible terms, and I certainly wasn’t in church when that outrageously wrong Los Angeles Times piece was re-printed in the bulletin," Obama said in a statement emailed to JTA late Thursday, and referring to critics who noted that Obama had been in church when Wright had made controversial statements. "Hamas is a terrorist organization, responsible for the deaths of many innocents, and dedicated to Israel's destruction, as evidenced by their bombarding of Sderot in recent months. I support requiring Hamas to meet the international community's conditions of recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and abiding by past agreements before they are treated as a legitimate actor."