Did Barack Obama Legitimize Anti-Semitism?

Is it conceivable that the Democratic Party became the epicenter of American anti-Semitism without this having something to do with Barack Obama? Did Obama make it safe to be anti-Semitic and a Democrat? Such is the argument made by Mark Hemingway in The Federalist. We have made a similar argument here, but Hemingway has amassed the evidence.

We might begin with the fact that Palestinian terror group Hamas endorsed the Obama candidacy in 2008. And of course, Obama's favorite pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright hated Israel, hated Jews and supported Hamas:

In 2008, Jimmy Carter met with the leader of terror group Hamas, a move condemned by Condoleezza Rice, who then was secretary of state. Obama declined to condemn the meeting because “he’s a private citizen. It’s not my place to discuss who he shouldn’t meet with.” This is a remarkably calm reaction to Carter’s blatant Logan Act violation, a crime the Obama administration would later deem so serious it was used to justify investigating and surveilling the Trump campaign.

When Hamas came out and officially endorsed his candidacy in 2008, Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, said the endorsement was “flattering.” This is not an exaggeration. “We all agree that John Kennedy was a great president, and it’s flattering when anybody says that Barack Obama would follow in his footsteps,” Axelrod said.

Obama’s problematic pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was also notoriously anti-Israel. Aside from making plenty of public criticisms about Wright, in 2007 the bulletin at Wright’s church reprinted an article by a Hamas official.

Obviously, Obama famously backtracked from Wright when the heat became too intense during the 2008 campaign. But seriously, who but the most obtuse dunderhead could imagine that a twenty minute speech could erase twenty years of indoctrination. And, how come Obama did not notice what Wright was preaching. To say that he was not there or was not paying attention makes him out to be an idiot, and no one believes that Obama was an idiot:

Hemingway explains:

If the church where you baptized your kids starts putting terrorist propaganda in the pews, right then might be time to find a new place to worship, not after continuing to attend threatens your political career.

And then there was the matter of Obama’s close relationship with one Rashid Khalidi, a supporter and sympathizer with Palestinian terrorism:

But Wright was hardly the first person with these views Obama had very visibly associated with. Much has been made of Obama’s friendship with scholar Rashid Khalidi, who has been accused of working as an advisor for the PLO terror group (Khalidi claims he was only helping the press understand the group). Obama sat on the board of a foundation that gave $40,000 to a local charity Khalidi’s wife headed.

In 2008, the Los Angeles Times notoriously reported on a videotape of Obama speaking at an event in Khalidi’s honor, where one of the speakers compared Zionists to Osama bin Laden. While the still unreleased video of this event attracted the most attention, other aspects of the Los Angeles Times’s lengthy report on Obama’s close ties to Palestinian activists are noteworthy. For instance, in the same report Khalidi heavily implies that any pro-Israel sentiment Obama expresses while running for president was “a stance that Khalidi calls a requirement to win a national election in the U.S.”

One notes that, to this day, we have not heard the tape of Obama’s remarks at Khalidi’s departure dinner. The Los Angeles Times is holding them in its safe, and no one seems to care about pressuring them to spit them out.

And then there was the matter of Gen. Merrill McPeak, a man who was decidedly anti-Israeli:

The Obama’s campaign’s chief military adviser and national-campaign co-chairman was Gen. Merrill McPeak. In 1976, McPeak wrote an article for Foreign Affairs criticizing Israel. He said Israel should return to its 1967 borders and hand the Golan Heights back to Syria.

McPeak also trotted out the “dual loyalty” issue and in a 2003 interview with the Oregonian accused Jewish and evangelical voters of placing their interest in Israel above U.S. interests. Asked what was impeding world peace, McPeak said, “New York City. Miami. We have a large vote . . . here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it.” Obama disavowed McPeak’s thoughts on Israel being primarily responsible for impeding peace in the Middle East, but stood behind his campaign’s affiliation with the general.

Hemingway continues that the best evidence of Obama’s attitude lay in his policy, especially the policy that empowered Iran and that gave Iran money to pass to anti-Israeli terrorist groups:

But if you looked at what went on with the first Obama campaign, then it logically follows that his presidency would be laser-focused on empowering Iran, the largest benefactor of murderous on anti-Semitic and anti-Israel terror groups such as Hamas, even if it meant engaging in a variety of extraordinarily deceptive behaviors to hide such policies from Congress and the American people. Top administration officials eventually admitted the manipulation and deceit.

Hemingway concludes that we should not be surprised that anti-Semitism has come to infest Barack Obama’s Democratic Party:

By allowing people who pal around with terror groups and employ questionable anti-Israel rationales to have a seat at the table, Obama allowed the legitimate critics of Israel to be eclipsed, and it was only a matter of time before someone such as Omar broke through to a position of power in American politics without expressing much concern about masking anti-Semitism.