Do Jewish Lives Matter Now?

Yesterday, for a time, Obama administration spokespeople in the White House and the State Department tried to defend their boss.

As you know, President Obama, in an interview on Vox, denied that the terrorist attack on the kosher Parisian market was anti-Semitic.

It would have been easier for Jen Psaki and Josh Earnest to explain that the president had misspoken. But no, they both went to their respective podia yesterday to pretend that he did not say what he said.

Which made them look like blithering fools.

Trying to defend the great mind of Obama will do that to you.

Jonathan Chait, surely not an Obama critic, summarizes what happened at State:

Psaki, asked if Obama believed the attack on the kosher market was truly random rather than aimed at Jews, insisted, “There were not all victims of one background or one nationality.” (In fact, the victims at Hyper Cache were all Jewish.) Psaki continued to refuse to attribute anti-Semitic intent to the attacks. “I don’t think we’re going to speak on behalf of French authorities and what they believe was the situation.” (In fact, the French government has called the attack on the Hyper Cache market anti-Semitic.)

Over at the White House Josh Earnest got himself tangled in this colloquy with Jonathan Karl of ABC:

Question: They weren’t killed because they were in a Jewish deli though, they were in a kosher deli?

Earnest: John, these individuals were not targeted by name. This is the point.

Question: Not by name, but by religion, were they not?

Earnest: Well, John, there were people other than just Jews who were in that deli.

By the end of the day, both Psaki and Earnest tried to end to their pain by admitting the truth.

Psaki tweeted:

We have always been clear that the attack on the kosher grocery store was an anti-semitic attack that took the lives of innocent people.

To which Chait responded that, evidently, they had not “always been clear”… witness that afternoon’s press briefings.

Josh Earnest tweeted:

Our view has not changed. Terror attack at Paris Kosher market was motivated by anti-Semitism. POTUS didn't intend to suggest otherwise.

Of course, their view had changed and POTUS had clearly intended to suggest otherwise. While POTUS is hard at work exculpating Muslims from all actions taken by Islamist terrorists, he is also running a foreign policy that is distinctly anti-Israeli. His supposed misstatement was a sign of that policy.

While Obama refuses to say the least ill word about the Muslim Brotherhood or the mullahs in Iran, he is always at the ready to trash the prime minister of Israel.