Throughout the primary campaigns, fingers (and in many cases, whole arms) have been pointed at Barack Obama regarding his stance when it comes to Israel and the Jewish people. In the last debate in Ohio, the question came up of whether or not Obama would reject the support of Louis Farrakkhan (Nation of Islam leader, anti-Semite) and this has sparked somewhat of a mainstream interest in what has been already a topic sitting on the verge of boiling point in the Jewish community. E-mails filled with “information” have unjustly accused Senator Obama of many mistruths. Among these, they have affiliated him with the Muslim religion, they have suggested that he went to a “madrassah” (a Muslim school devoted mainly to the teachings of the Koran), they questioned his personal beliefs on Israel and the Middle East as negative to Israel and positive to the Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel, and among many other things, questioned the “advisors” he has “surrounded” himself with. Before I dive into this, I want to make one thing clear: the information presented is FACTUAL. If you actually look for answers and do the research, you will find information that actually is FACTUAL. Do not buy into e-mails that are written convincingly and sharpened to make you feel and believe a certain thing and if you do, research EXTENSIVELY the topic that has been presented and find out the truth.On with the show…To start off with, let’s talk about the debate and the answer Barack Obama gave. Louis Farrakhan has, indeed, called the Jewish religion a “guttery” one and has made unmistakable and unforgivable attacks on the Jewish community. When you look at the man’s career, you may rightfully call him an anti-Semite. In Barack Obama’s own history, before any support from Farrakhan or his Nation of Islam were even existent, he has denounced the man and everything he stands for. In fact, last year when Farrakhan received an award for a community project in Chicago (his home town as well as Obama’s), Obama declared the award as insensitive to the Jewish people in a denunciation of his overt anti-Semitism, hatred, and intolerance. Let it be clear that the award in question had –nothing- to do with Jews, Israel, or hatred – Obama took his own initiative to come out and speak against –any- recognition of Louis Farrakhan. In the world of politics, support and endorsements are frequent. It is not Obama’s job during his busy campaign to stop and draw attention to a man that really doesn’t need or deserve any sort of attention. If Louis Farrakhan chooses to try and ride the popular wave of Barack Obama by adding his voice to the CHORUS of support (from ALL walks of life – mostly accepting ones!), that is his folly and he will not and has not found a friend in the senator. To add to Barack Obama’s notion that the words “denounce” and “reject” in this situation are much-in-the-same, I would assert that to denounce someone would be much stronger than to reject that person’s support. The denunciation of a person generally means that you do not favor them in the slightest, instead of you disapprove of them and go as far as to outwardly be –against- them. Should Barack Obama go through an approval process of everyone who wishes to express their support of his candidacy? Get real. This is politics and –everybody- has an opinion. Should Barack Obama’s job go away from deflecting these sorts of attacks and towards stamping “accept” or “reject” on each expression of support he receives? The senator handled himself admirably and it is to his credit that he has denounced Farrakhan, stated that he finds his actions and words “reprehensible” (meaning he not only believes its wrong what Farrakhan said or did, he believes he should actually be held accountable), and he has distanced himself from the man without awarding him a pedestal and a shower of attention to broadcast his views from that pedestal.Now let’s tackle some myths.The only way Barack Obama is at all affiliated with the Muslim religion is through his father and his time spent in the pre-dominantly Muslim country of Indonesia. All of the false things being circulated about his ties to Islam come out of these two roots. “Aha!”, you might be thinking…A. Barack Obama’s father left him and his mother when he was two. He moved to Connecticut to finish his own education and then went back to Kenya. The two did not maintain contact and the only other time they ever saw one another was when Barack Obama was 11 years old and his father came to visit them for Christmas (you know, that Muslim holiday…). Let’s assume for one second here that his father actually was some kind of radical Islamist… how on earth do you influence your son’s beliefs or opinions thousands of miles away and without contact? Furthermore… his father was anything but!B. Barack Obama’s grandfather was a convert to Islam. For anyone who is knowledgeable in the many conquests of Africa, you will come across the religious conquests that missionaries have waged on the continent and you will find that Islam is rapidly growing as a result. You will also find, if you look into the history books, that the same could have been said about Christianity in the past. In Barack Obama’s grandfather’s case, this is true The man was a convert to Christianity first and then to Islam. However, his son, Barack Obama’s father did not practice the religion at ALL, and as Barack Obama has openly claimed, the man was “agnostic” (sorry, I don’t know of any al-Qaeda operatives screaming, “death to the infidels! That large, gaping, empty void is great!” before committing some sort of terrorist activity. Nor would I associate any sort of fanatical belief in the religion with agnosticism and a questionable relationship with Allah. Senator Obama cannot have ties to some deeply rooted radical Islam because of his father if even the basic, peaceful religion of Islam didn’t exist in his father’s life beyond the point, and ONLY the point of conversion.C. After his parents were divorced, Barack Obama’s mother married an oil manager from Indonesia and the family relocated to Jakarta. There, Barack Obama did not attend a madrassah, he attended two different private schools in the area. One was only Muslim in the sense that most of the children who went there were Muslim (hello, Indonesia) and the other, the latter, was a Catholic school where he actually studied and practiced Christianity. In fact, to further refute the claim that he went to a “madrassah,” CNN investigated these claims and went to Indonesia to the school where Barack Obama attended between 1969 and 1971.Here are some quotes on the article, courtesy of www.snopes.com (a website that you can also look at to refute any myths, not only relating to Obama – very handy)“’This is a public school. We don’t focus on religion,’ Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basku School, told Vause. ‘In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don’t give preferential treatment.’ Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while the teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.‘I came here to Barack Obama’s elementary school in Jarkata looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa… like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan,’ Vause said on the ‘Situation Room.’ ‘I’ve been to those madrassas in Pakistan… this school is nothing like that.”There was also an Associated Press report that concluded with the same findings and you may look for that if you choose to and Obama himself has said he went back to the school recently to find the kids reading Western books and listening to iPods. I think the message has been made clear.Okay, so Barack’s not a Muslim… hmm. Well he’s still anti-Israel isn’t he? Anti-Semitic? No, no. Recently, Barack Obama delivered a great speech to a Jewish convention in Clevelend (at which Robert Wexler endorsed him and spoke as well) and I feel the following quotes from the speech to be quite enlightening. After each series of quotes, I will comment. These quotes are taken from the official transcript of the speech (found at http://www.nysun.com/article/71813?page_no=2). Please excuse some of the grammatical errors in the transcript itself, keep in mind how difficult it would be to put up a whole transcript of a speech! Although, I won’t make excuses…On allegations that he would be influenced by his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who has been connected with anti-Semitism and some controversial words and actions: “I am member of the Unity Church of Christ, Trinity United Church of Christ been there for 20 years. And although this is an improvement because you don’t think I am Muslim, which is the other… [laughter] You know so, slowly we are progressing here. It is a very conventional African American Church. If you go to, if you were there at the church you would be hearing gospel music and people preaching about Jesus. It is a very conventional in that sense. It is true that my Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who will be retiring this month, is somebody who on occasion can say controversial things. Most of them by the way are controversial directed at the African American Community and calling on them start reading books and turn off the TV set and engage in self help. And he is very active in prison ministries and so forth. It is also true that he comes out of the 60s he is an older man. That is where he cut his teeth. That he has historically been interested in the African roots of the African American experience. He was very active in the South Africa divestment movement and you will recall that there was a tension that arose between the African American and the Jewish communities During that period when we were dealing with apartheid in South Africa, because Israel and South Africa had a relationship at that time. And that cause – that was a source of tension. So there have been a couple of occasions where he made comments with relation, rooted in that. Not necessarily ones that I share. But that is the context within which he has made those comments.He does not have a close relationship with Louis Farrakhan. Louis Farrakhan is a resident of Chicago and as a consequence he has been active in a range of community activities, particularly around ex-offenders and dealing with them” “I have never heard an anti-Semitic made inside of our church. I have never heard anything that would suggest anti-Semitism on part of the Pastor. He is like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don’t agree with.”“And as I said that last point I would make is that you know my Pastor is going to be retiring over the next month. So my general view, and the reason that I raise this, this is always a sensitive point, what you don’t want to do is distance yourself or kick somebody away, because you are now running for President and you are worried about perceptions, particularly when someone is basically winding down their life and their career.”He’s absolutely right in what he’s saying. Your spiritual leader is not your life manager or the dictator of your beliefs. He is an inspiration in some ways and in others you are better to ignore some of the things he does. There are countless incidents where a spiritual leader may believe one thing that his congregation may not for the most part. If Mitt Romney were elected President and the leader of the Mormon church was a polygamist would that make Mitt Romney a polygamist? If my Rabbi decides that he is firmly against the disengagement from settlements in the Middle East, does that mean I must automatically believe the same thing? What happens here is a mistake in focus. How can you fault Obama for the beliefs of his Pastor? If that Pastor provides the service Obama is looking for at Church on Sundays and gives Obama inspiration because of his faith or his other wisdoms, then what disqualifies him as a spiritual leader and why should Obama step away from him? The situation would be different if there were anti-Semitic sermons being delivered in that very church (yes, there have been some in the Baptist churches, in fact Obama stood up in front of a Baptist church he didn’t belong to and spoke out against anti-Semitism in the African-American churches of America – look it up), the situation would be different.On what we talked about earlier, his time in Indonesia and his grandfather“If anyone is still puzzled about the facts, in fact I have never been a Muslim. We had to send CNN to look at the school that I attended in Indonesia where kids were wearing short pants and listening to ipods to indicate that this was not a madrassa but was a secular school in Indonesia. Where I attended for two year prior to coming back to Hawaii. If you look at Nicholas Kristof’s article today it gives you an indication of where I got my name. My grandfather who was Kenyan converted to Christianity then converted to Islam, my father never practiced he was basically agnostic and so other than my name and the fact that I lived in a populous Muslim country for 4 years when I was a child I have very little connection to the Islamic religion. But these are the kind of things that you deal with in politics.”No need to comment on this again!!!On the slanderous email campaign against him that we mentioned earlier“Well, let’s just be very specific about what these emails have been. And they have just been virulent and started very early. And I have to say are not. I mean they are clearly political in the sense that they go in waves. And seem to track the next…the next primary or caucus. Suddenly they magically appear in great volume in whatever state it is we are campaigning. And the emails suggest that A. that I am Muslim, B. that I went to a madrassa C. that I used a Koran to swear myself into the Senate D. That I don’t pledge allegiance to the flag. There are all sorts of variations, but you get the general gist. And our general view has been, that the internet is very difficult, because it is very low cost, it can just be churned out and you can’t trace it back to where it’s coming from. What we have tried to do is just make sure that we are flooding the internet with the accurate information and pushing back as much as possible. I don’t think that we are in an era anymore where you can just ignore these things and not dignify them. There was a time when they would be amplified as consequence of you calling attention to it. I don’t think that’s the case any more because of our media age. You know we saw what happened with the swiftboat situation back in 2004. All you have to do is run the ad once and then it gets repeated. And so what we’ve done is try to lift it up and actively debunk it and encourage stories about it.”Again, don’t believe everything you read and honestly that’s coming from anywhere. Don’t take my blog for granted, don’t take the information you receive in an email for granted (whether from conspiracy theorists, Bush, Obama, or anyone!). Use what information you receive as a foundation for research. You know what you want to find out, so go find it out! In this case, I’ve done the research for you but I still encourage you to check sources, to look into this, and to establish your own connection with these issues! He hit the nail on the head, by the way.Now we’re getting to some very important quotes from the transcript…these are all to do with Israel directly. I do apologize for the length of the quote, but its right out of the horse’s mouth, so to speak and it is important to receive his response, after all. I won’t comment on these directly as I will conclude after these quotes:On this “team of advisors” he apparently put together and the accusations that they are anti-Israel, influencing him“There is a spectrum of views in terms of how the US and Israel should be interacting. It has evolved over time. It means that somebody like Brzezinski who, when he was national security advisor would be considered not outside of the mainstream in terms of his perspective on these issues, is now considered by many in the Jewish Community anathema. I know Brzezinski he’s not one of my key advisors. I’ve had lunch with him once, I’ve exchanged emails with him maybe 3 times. He came to Iowa to introduce for a speech on Iraq. He and I agree that Iraq was an enormous strategic blunder and that input from him has been useful in assessing Iraq, as well as Pakistan, where actually, traditionally, if you will recall he was considered a hawk. The liberal wing of the Democratic Party was very suspicious of Brzezinski precisely because he was so tough on many of these issues. I do not share his views with respect to Israel. I have said so clearly and unequivocally. The others that you refer to are former members of the Clinton administration. Somebody like a Tony Lake, the former National Security Adviser, or Susan Rice – these are not anti-Israel individuals. These are people who strongly believe in Israel’s right to exist. Strongly believe in a two state solution. Strongly believe that the Palestinians have been irresponsible and have been strongly critical of them. Share my view that Israel has to remain a Jewish state, that the US has a special relationship with the Jewish state. There’s no inkling that there has been anything in anything that they’ve written that would suggest they’re not stalwart friends of Israel. This is where I get to be honest and I hope I’m not out of school here. I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt a unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel. If we cannot have a honest dialogue about how do we achieve these goals, then we’re not going to make progress. And frankly some of the commentary that I’ve seen which suggests guilt by association or the notion that unless we are never ever going to ask any difficult questions about how we move peace forward or secure Israel that is non military or non belligerent or doesn’t talk about just crushing the opposition that that somehow is being soft or anti-Israel, I think we’re going to have problems moving forward. And that I think is something we have to have an honest dialogue about. None of these emails talk about the fact that on the other side, members of my national finance committee, like Lester Crown, are considered about has hawkish and tough when it comes to Israel as anybody in the country. So, there’s got to be some balance here. I’ve got a range of perspectives and a range of advisors who approach this issue. They would all be considered well within the mainstream of that bipartisan consensus that I raised or that we talked about in terms of being pro-Israel. There’s never been any of my advisors who questioned the need for us to provide Israel with security, with military aid, with economic aid. That there has to be a two state solution, that Israel has to remain a Jewish state. None of my advisors would suggest that, so I think its important to keep some of these things in perspective. I understand people’s concern with Brzezinski given how much offense the Israeli lobby raised, but he’s not one of my central advisors. There is an article in Newsweek, not to make this overly political, this issue that shows that there has been a fairly systemic effort on the part of some of my opponent’s supporters, I wont say it was sanctioned from the top, to constantly feed this suspicion, and I want people to take my words and my track record of years on this issue to heart.” Still on Israel… this time his positions on the resolutions to the Middle East Crisis“Well here’s my starting orientation is A – Israel’s security is sacrosanct, is non negotiable. That’s point number one. Point number two is that the status quo I believe is unsustainable over time. So we’re going to have to make a shift from the current deadlock that we’re in. Number three that Israel has to remain a Jewish state and what I believe that means is that any negotiated peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is going to have to involve the Palestinians relinquishing the right of return as it has been understood in the past. And that doesn’t mean that there may not be conversations about compensation issues. It also means the Israelis will have to figure out how do we work with a legitimate Palestinian government to create a Palestinian state that is sustainable. It’s going to have to be contiguous, its going to have to work its going to have to function in some way. That’s in Israel’s interest by the way. If you have a balkanized unsustainable state, it will break down and we will be back in the same boat. So those are the starting points of my orientation. My goal then would be to solicit as many practical opinions as possible in terms of how we’re going to move forward on a improvement of relations and a sustainable peace. The question that I will be asking any advisor is how does it achieve the goal of Israel’s security and how does it achieve the goal of sustainability over the long term and I want practical, hardheaded, unromantic advice about how we’re going to achieve that. Something that Robert said that I think is very important. I have consistently said this, and I have said this to Palestinians, I said this when I was in Ramallah, that you cannot fault Israel for being concerned about any peace agreement if the Palestinian state or Palestinian authority or Palestinian leadership does not seem to be able to follow through on its commitments. And I think the approach we have to take with respect to negations is that you sit down and talk, but you have to suspend trust until you can see that the Palestinian side can follow through and that’s a position that I have consistently taken and the one I will take with me to the White House. One last point I’ll make on this, in terms of advisors and the kind of debate I think is fruitful, one of the things that struck me when I went to Israel was how much more open the debate was around these issues in Israel than they are sometimes here in the United States. It’s very ironic. I sat down with the head of Israeli security forces and his view of the Palestinians was incredibly nuanced because he’s dealing with these people every day. There’s good and there’s bad, and he was willing to say sometimes we make mistakes and we made this miscalculation and if we are just pressing down on these folks constantly without giving them some prospects for hope, that’s not good for our security situation. There was a very honest, thoughtful debate taking place inside Israel. All of you, I’m sure, have experienced this when you travel there. Understandably, because of the pressure that Israel is under, I think the U.S. pro-Israel community is sometimes a little more protective or concerned about opening up that conversation. But all I’m saying though is that actually ultimately should be our goal, to have that same clear eyed view about how we approach these issues.” On America’s Jewish community and foreign policy as it relates to Israel““Yes … Well look, the Jewish community is a) diverse, b) has interests beyond Israel. There is a … the tradition of the Jewish community in America as a progressive force that is concerned with the poor, is concerned with the vulnerable, is concerned with children, is concerned with civil rights, is concerned with civil liberties. Those are values that I believe are much more evident in our Democratic Party and that can’t be forgotten. I think that what I’ve seen, and you would know better than I would, is that to the extent that there’s been bleeding over into the Republican Party, it all has to do with this issue of Israel. And what I would simply suggest is look at the consequences George Bush’s policies. The proof is in the point. I do not understand how anybody who is concerned about Israel’s security and the threat of Iran could be supportive of George Bush’s foreign policy. It has completely backfired. It is indisputable that Iran is the biggest strategic beneficiary of the war in Iraq. We have spent what will soon be close to a trillion dollars strengthening Iran, expanding their influence. How is that helpful to Israel? How is that helpful to Israel? You can’t make that argument. And so the problem that we’ve seen in U.S. foreign policy generally has been this notion that being full of bluster and rattling sabers and being quick on the draw somehow makes you more secure. And keep in mind that I don’t know anybody in the Democratic Party, and I will say this for Hillary Clinton and I will say this for myself, who has indicated in any way that we would tolerate and allow to fester terrorist threats, that we wouldn’t hunt down, capture, or kill terrorists that haven’t been supportive of Israel capturing or killing terrorists. So it’s not like we’re a bunch of folks asking to hold hands and sing Kumbiya. When Israel launched its counterattack against Hezbollah in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, I was in South Africa at the time, a place that was not particularly friendly to Israel at the time and I was asked by the press, what did you think? And I said, if somebody invades my country or is firing rockets into my country or kidnapping my soldiers, I will not tolerate that. And there’s no nation in the world that would. So I don’t see this softness within the Democratic Party on these issues. The question is, can we use our military power wisely? Can we be strategic in terms of how we move forward? And I think that is profoundly in the interests of Israel and in the interests of U.S. security.”On addressing the problems of Jihad and radical Islam“So what lessons do we learn from that then? I am not naïve. There is a hard core of jihadist fundamentalists who we can’t negotiate with. We have to hunt them down and knock them out. Incapacitate them. That’s the military aspects of dealing with this phenomenon. Now somebody like a Richard Clarke would estimate that the hard core jihadists would gladly blow up this room maybe it’s 30,000 people, maybe it’s 40,000 people, maybe it’s 50,000 people. But it is a finite number. And that is where military action and intelligence has to be directed. So all the things I’ve talked about in the past – improving our intelligence capacity, improving our alliances, rolling up financial support, improving our homeland security, making sure that we have strike forces that are effective – that’s all the military, intelligence, police work that’s required.The question then is what do we do with the 1.3 billion Muslims, who are along a spectrum of belief. Some extraordinarily moderate, some very pious but not violent. How do we reach out to them? And it is my strong belief that that is the battlefield that we have to worry about, and that is where we have been losing badly over the last 7 years. That is where Iraq has been a disaster. That is where the lack of effective public diplomacy has been a disaster. That is where our failure to challenge seriously human rights violations by countries like Saudi Arabia that are our allies has been a disaster. And so what we have to do is to speak to that broader Muslim world in a way that says we will consistently support human rights, women’s rights. We will consistently invest in the kinds of educational opportunities for children in these communities, so that madrasas are not their only source of learning. We will consistently operate in ways that lead by example, so that we have no tolerance for a Guantanamo or renditions or torture. Those all contribute to people at least being open to our values and our ideas and a recognition that we are not the enemy and that the Clash of Civilizations is not inevitable.Now, as I said, we enter into those conversations with the Muslim world being mindful that we also have to defend ourselves against those who will not accept the West, no matter how appropriately we engage. And that is the realism that has to leaven our hopefulness. But, we abandon the possibility of conversation with that broader Muslim world at our own peril. I think all we do then, is further isolate it and feed the kinds of jihadist fanaticism that I think can be so…” So what do we learn from everything? The world takes things at first glance. We are too busy and impatient to actually take a piece of information we receive and look into it. Barack Obama is –not- a Muslim. Barack Obama did not attend a Muslim “madrassah.” Barack Obama stands up for Judaism. He is going to be re-building a historical relationship between Jews and African-Americans in America that has been tarnished over the years. He will not tolerate anti-Semitism in our country or abroad and he will not stand idly by while anyone, whether it is people in his own church or those in mosques in New York, incites hatred against our people. The Diaspora this may be, but we are in strong numbers and we are strong in spirit. We are rich in heritage and sound in morals. Barack Obama understands our cause and wishes to continue supporting it, as he has done in his years of public service.Barack Obama is pro-Israel in every sense, ESPECIALLY the one that says for the last 8 years we’ve seen and experienced a conservative hard-line American approach to the Middle East process without actually considering anything new or fresh. Barack Obama is a man who brings something new and fresh to EVERY topic and as you can see he will bring something new and fresh to this one. Before there is a Third Lebanon War, before Iran and Syria have an arms race to see which one can attack Israel and the American aggressors first, here comes a new man who will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel while holding out the olive branch to the enemies who seek to destroy us and our way of life. He is not unrealistic and he will not endanger us. This man is here and has been here for the Jewish community of America and for Israel and he will elevate the friendship America has with Israel to one that actually achieves a lasting peace. If you can tell me how Bush’s approach (mind you, a Conservative, very pro-Israel, anti-Arab in MANY respects, war-mongering on a whim) has strengthened Israel, I will vote McCain! After all, he’s offering much of the same… okay we’re not going to bash on McCain here, but seriously… this process needs a man who is willing to allocate our strengths as a country to the right places. The war in Iraq endangers Israel. The Palestinian terrorists harm Israel daily. Israelis are on the brink of war with their neighbors and you want more? Get real, again. We need a new strategy and a new approach.As this man unifies America around its failed domestic issues, so will he unify the world around the enormous issues it faces. He will sit with the kings and bring peace to the kingdoms. This is a man who will sit at the G8 summit and embrace the leaders of those prosperous nations while bringing together the voice of EVERY nation and of EVERY citizen of our global community. Most importantly, he will put a friendly face on the American in the eyes of the global citizen while issuing a reminder that while we are to be respected for the mighty nation we belong to, we are ready to come back down to earth and level with a planet that once loved us. The Middle East will show its only signs of progress and we will be able to rest at night knowing that our homeland is “protected and granted peace with its neighbors.” Maybe in the next 8 years we will be able to stop praying for the safety of our brothers and sisters in Sderot, we will be able to stop worrying about our brothers and sisters in the Israeli Defense Forces, and we will be able to call the neighbors of Israel partners in a peaceful Middle East. We don’t want a truce, we don’t want a cease-fire, we want an end. We want solutions. Barack Obama is an answer and he is a solution. As he leads this country into its next era, so he should lead the Jewish people and Israel into its next era. And if any of you should doubt his ability or his willingness to do that based on false information, re-think. When propaganda knocks on your door, take a good look at its face through the hole in the door and find out what it is.
