Topic: WorldNetDaily
Desperate for any sliver of conspiracy to attack Barack Obama and boost John McCain, WorldNetDaily has renewed its previous attention to speculation that a birth certificate for Obama is not real.
A July 8 WND article repeats so-called "investigative work" by the website Israel Insider that the birth certificate "lack[s] authenticity." WND offers no information about what Israel Insider is, let alone any evidence that what it says can be considered trustworthy.
A scan of the website shows it to cater to right-wing Israelis as well as a hotbed of anti-Obama activism; currently on its front page is a rehashing of John Bolton's attacks on Obama as originially reported by WND's Aaron Klein.
Indeed, it's another sign of Israel Insider's bias that it loves Klein: It has reprinted numerous Klein articles. It has also published opinion pieces by Klein. An August 2004 "open letter" to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon begins, "I am a bit worried about your plan to unilaterally vacate all settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005." (Klein laer wrote numerous articles about the withdrawal for WND, nearly all of them biased toward the Jewish settlers being removed, in which he whitewashed the violent extremism of some settlers.) Klein also attacked a speech Sharon gave: "Was Sharon's speechwriter drunk when this masterpiece was constructed? Did Doctor Seuss come back from the dead to help Sharon with his verbiage?"
Opinion pieces tend to reflect a certain familiar right-wing ideology:
- One column begins, "It simply feels wrong that liberal American Jews continue to relentlessly pursue and cast stones at John Hagee to further their political agenda." The writer does concede that "Pastor Hagee's rhetoric and gestures do present the Jewish people with certain halachic and moral challenges." (WND has a hands-off policy on criticizing Hagee, whom WND editor Joseph Farah has declared "my friend," on its news pages.)
- Another begins: "It looks like Mr. Obama is a shoo-in for the White House. It also looks like my people are going to be betrayed once again by a badly misguided American president." (WND as a whole, and Klein in particular, hate Obama and push an agenda that's pro-McCain.)
- Another writes of the tenure of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "When will this nightmare end?" (WND Klein hate Olmert too, to the point of trying to undermine him during a time of war.)
In other words, Israel Insider appears to be little more than an Israeli-centric version of WorldNetDaily. Given WND's history of reporting false claims, that's a bad thing for Israel Insider to be.
