What is it with the Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet and Barack Obama's comments about Israel?
Back in March, we noted her suggestion that Obama hadn't addressed Jeremiah Wright's controversial statements regarding Israel (when, in fact, he had). Now she's reprinting Republican press releases that blatantly misrepresent Obama's recent remarks on the Middle East.
As Rob at Illinois Reason astutely pointed out, in a Sun-Times blog post yesterday evening headlined "GOP hits Obama over Israel," Sweet copy-and-pasted a statement from House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) criticizing the Illinois Senator for comments made in a recent interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg. From the release:
“Israel is a critical American ally and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, not a ‘constant sore’ as Barack Obama claims. Obama’s latest remark, and his commitment to ‘opening a dialogue’ with sponsors of terrorism, echoes past statements by Jimmy Carter who once called Israel an ‘apartheid state.’ It’s another sign that Obama is part of the broken Washington Americans are rejecting."
Sweet also included this statement from Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA):
“It is truly disappointing that Senator Obama called Israel a ‘constant wound,’ ‘constant sore,’ and that it ‘infect[s] all of our foreign policy.’ These sorts of words and characterizations are the words of a politician with a deep misunderstanding of the Middle East and an innate distrust of Israel."
But did Obama actually call Israel a "constant sore" or a "constant wound"? No, he didn't.
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He actually used those terms to refer to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine:
JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?
BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable.
Rob also notes that while Sweet simply reprinted the GOP's distortions, some journalists took the time to both report on the attacks and point out that they're misleading. For instance, here's ABC's Jake Tapper:
Apparently given nothing of substance to criticize, House Republican leaders then took a statement Obama made and twisted it to act as if the Democrat had insulted the Jewish state. Which he had not.
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