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In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., talked a great deal about Israel. He was rather effusive in his support for the Jewish state.
When the topic turned to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama said, "Israel and the Palestinians have tough issues to work out to get to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security."
When asked if Israel besmirches the United States' reputation, Obama said "No, no, no."
Then he said: "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. I am absolutely convinced of that ... I want to solve the problem..."
It's obvious that by "constant sore" Obama was referring to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As he says in the next sentence: the "lack of a resolution to this problem."
Apparently given nothing of substance to criticize, House Republican leaders then took the statement Obama made and twisted it to act as if the Democrat had insulted the Jewish state.
House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, accused Obama of calling Israel a "constant sore."
"Israel is a critical American ally and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, not a ‘constant sore’ as Barack Obama claims," Boehner said. "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.’"
That's interesting because in that very same interview, Obama rejected Carter's use of the term "apartheid" as applied to Israel.
Said Obama: "I strongly reject the characterization. Israel is a vibrant democracy, the only one in the Middle East, and there’s no doubt that Israel and the Palestinians have tough issues to work out to get to the goal of two states living side by side in peace and security, but injecting a term like apartheid into the discussion doesn’t advance that goal. It’s emotionally loaded, historically inaccurate, and it’s not what I believe."
Here's what the inteviewer Jeffery Goldberg had to say today about John Boehner:
"Mr. Boehner, I'm sure, is a terribly busy man, with many burdensome responsibilities, so I have to assume that he simply didn't have time to read the entire Obama interview, or even the entire paragraph, or even a single clause.
If he had, of course, he would have seen that Obama was clearly calling the Middle East conflict, and not Israel, a sore. Why, there's no one who would disagree that the Middle East conflict is a 'sore,' is there?
"I have no doubt that Mr. Boehner will issue a correction to his press release in which he states the obvious, which is that Obama expressed -- in twelve different ways -- his support for Israel to me.If he doesn't, however, I would, sadly, have to agree with my colleague, the less-forgiving Andrew Sullivan, who called Boehner's statement a 'flat-out lie.'
In fact, I would add to Andrew's post, by calling Boehner's statement mendacious, duplicitous, gross, and comically refutable."
HT: Politcal Punch
