Smearing Obama - by Ari Berman - Democratic Underground

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Thu Mar-13-08 08:53 PM
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Smearing Obama - by Ari Berman

I apologize if this has already been posted.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/berman

He's a Muslim. He was sworn into office on the Koran. He doesn't say the Pledge of Allegiance. His pastor is an anti-Semite. He's a tool of Louis Farrakhan. He's anti-Israel. His advisers are anti-Israel. He's friends with terrorists. The terrorists want him to win. He's the Antichrist.

By now you've probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama's religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies from Chicago. The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black nationalist. That picture couldn't be further from the truth, but you'd be surprised how many people have fallen for it. The American Jewish community, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party and US politics, has been specifically targeted . What started as a largely overlooked fringe attack has been thrust into the mainstream--used as GOP talking points, pushed by the Clinton campaign, echoed by the likes of Meet the Press host Tim Russert. Falsehoods are repeated as fact, and bits of evidence become "elaborate constructions of malicious fantasy," as the Jewish Week, America's largest Jewish newspaper, editorialized.
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Even if the false claims about Obama originally emanated from the neoconservative right, the Clinton campaign has eagerly pushed them. Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal has e-mailed damaging stories about Obama to reporters, including a recent article by Batchelor. Clinton fundraiser Annie Totah circulated a column by Ed Lasky before Super Tuesday, with the inscription "Please vote wisely in the Primaries." Clinton adviser Ann Lewis falsely referred to Zbigniew Brzezinski, a critic of AIPAC, as a chief adviser to Obama on a conference call with Jewish reporters. "I can tell you for a fact people from the Clinton campaign are calling reporters and asking them to pay attention to things involving Obama and Israel," says Shmuel Rosner, Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. The volume of e-mails about Obama in a given state tends to track the election calendar--hardly a coincidence.

Large American Jewish organizations, like AIPAC and the Orthodox Union, have repeatedly defended Obama. Yet they've had little sway over reactionary elements in both the United States and Israel--including Jewish hate groups--who are eager to keep the smear campaign alive. The website Jews Against Obama, for instance, is run by the Jewish Task Force, which funnels money to the radical settler movement in Israel. (Curiously, John McCain's alliance with Pastor John Hagee of Christians United for Israel, a leading proponent of "end times" theology, and his recent endorsement by former Secretary of State James Baker have received far less scrutiny from pro-Israel pundits. It was Baker, after all, who reportedly told George H.W. Bush, "Fuck the Jews. They didn't vote for us anyway.")