Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 13 WorldNetDaily article by Aaron Klein played up Barack Obama's response to Klein's manufactured controversy over a Hamas spokesman offering support for Obama's campaign, negatively framing it as Obama saying that "he understands why the terrorist group supports his presidential bid."
Obama's statements came in an interview with the Atlantic magazine. Klein focused narrowly on Obama's reaction to the Hamas "endorsement" and "former President Jimmy Carter's suggestion that Israel resembles an apartheid state." Klein curiously doesn't link to the Atlantic interview, even though it's online. Why? Perhaps because it portrays Obama as a big supporter of Israel, which conflicts with Klein's misleading efforts to portray Obama as the terrorists' choice.
While Klein does reproduce a few of Obama's statements supportive of Israel, most of those are buried under a rehashing of the controversy. Here's some of what Obama said that Klein didn't report:
You know, when I think about the Zionist idea, I think about how my feelings about Israel were shaped as a young man -- as a child, in fact. I had a camp counselor when I was in sixth grade who was Jewish-American but who had spent time in Israel, and during the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted. That was part of my upbringing, to be traveling and always having a sense of values and culture but wanting a place. So that is my first memory of thinking about Israel.
And then that mixed with a great affinity for the idea of social justice that was embodied in the early Zionist movement and the kibbutz, and the notion that not only do you find a place but you also have this opportunity to start over and to repair the breaches of the past. I found this very appealing.
[...]
I think that the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea, given not only world history but the active existence of anti-Semitism, the potential vulnerability that the Jewish people could still experience. I know that that there are those who would argue that in some ways America has become a safe refuge for the Jewish people, but if you’ve gone through the Holocaust, then that does not offer the same sense of confidence and security as the idea that the Jewish people can take care of themselves no matter what happens. That makes it a fundamentally just idea.
[...]
The point is, if you look at my writings and my history, my commitment to Israel and the Jewish people is more than skin-deep and it’s more than political expediency. When it comes to the gut issue, I have such ardent defenders among my Jewish friends in Chicago. I don’t think people have noticed how fiercely they defend me, and how central they are to my success, because they’ve interacted with me long enough to know that I've got it in my gut.
[...]
When Israel invaded Lebanon two summers ago, I was in South Africa, a place where, obviously, when you get outside the United States, you can hear much more critical commentary about Israel’s actions, and I was asked about this in a press conference, and that time, and for the entire summer, I was very adamant about Israel’s right to defend itself. I said that there’s not a nation-state on Earth that would tolerate having two of its soldiers kidnapped and just let it go.
Why didn't Klein tell his readers about this? Like we said, it conflicts with Klein's own efforts to smear Obama. In other words, the truth is in the way of Klein's reporting, and we know what side Klein is on -- and it ain't the truth.
