Smearing Obama by Ari Berman

Smearing Obama
by Ari Berman


He's a Muslim. He was sworn into office on the Koran. He doesn't say the
Pledge of Allegiance. His pastor is an anti-Semite. He's a tool of Louis
Farrakhan. He's anti-Israel. His advisers are anti-Israel. He's friends
with terrorists. The terrorists want him to win. He's the Antichrist.

By now you've probably seen at least some of these e-mails and articles
about Barack Obama bouncing around the Internet. They distort Obama's
religious faith, question his support for Israel, warp the identity and
positions of his campaign advisers and defame his friends and allies
from Chicago. The purpose of the smear is to paint him as an
Arab-loving, Israel-hating, terrorist-coddling, radical black
nationalist. That picture couldn't be further from the truth, but you'd
be surprised how many people have fallen for it. The American Jewish
community, one of the most important pillars of the Democratic Party and
US politics, has been specifically targeted [see Eric Alterman's column
in the March 24 issue, "(Some) Jews
Against Obama"]. What started as a largely overlooked fringe attack
has been thrust into the mainstream--used as GOP talking points, pushed
by the Clinton campaign, echoed by the likes of Meet the Press
host Tim Russert. Falsehoods are repeated as fact, and bits of evidence
become "elaborate constructions of malicious fantasy," as the Jewish
Week, America's largest Jewish newspaper, editorialized.

What floods into one's inbox these days bears little or no relation to
Obama's record. "Some of my earliest and most ardent supporters came
from the Jewish community in Chicago," he has said. Obama ran for the
Senate promising to help reconstitute the black-Jewish civil rights
coalition. His first foreign policy speech of the campaign was before
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he pledged
"clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel." He has
occasionally angered pro-Israel hawks by urging direct negotiations with
Iran and Syria, but Obama's foreign policy record is well within the
Democratic Party mainstream. He's committed to a two-state solution
between Israel and the Palestinians, supported Israel's incursion into
Lebanon in 2006 and has criticized Hamas. During his campaign for the
presidency, Obama has been defended by AIPAC, the neoconservative New
York Sun and The New Republic's Marty Peretz, a noted Israel
hawk. And yet no defense of Israel by Obama--or of Obama by the
pro-Israel establishment--seems to be enough. "When one charge is
disproved, another is leveled," says Rabbi Jack Moline, who leads a
synagogue in Alexandria, Virginia.

It's nearly impossible to decipher where the smears originated [for a
comprehensive account of how such campaigns are generated and spread in
the age of the Internet and e-mail, see Christopher Hayes, "The New Right-Wing
Smear Machine," November 12, 2007]. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency
traced one e-mail back 200 people before it stopped with a filmmaker in
Tel Aviv who didn't receive a return address. "No one knows if it's the
Clintons, a rogue agent or a Rove agent," says Congressman Steve Cohen,
a Jewish Obama backer who represents a largely black district in
Memphis. Likely it's a combination of the three.

We may not know who started the smears, but we do know who's amplifying
them. The "Obama is a Muslim" rumor began in the fringe conservative
blogosphere. "Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim,"
blogger Debbie Schlussel wrote on December 18, 2006. Schlussel had a
history of inflammatory rhetoric and baseless accusations. She said
journalist Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped by Iraqi insurgents in 2006,
"hates America" and "hates Israel"; labeled George Soros a "fake
Holocaust survivor"; and speculated that Pakistani terrorists were
somehow to blame for last year's shootings at Virginia Tech. Yet her
post on Obama gained traction; one month later, the Washington
Times's Insight magazine alleged that Obama had attended "a
so-called Madrassa" and was a secret Muslim.

The Christian right is also preoccupied with Obama's religious beliefs.
"Is Obama a Muslim?" the Rev. Rob Schenck, a reform Jew who converted to
Christianity and now calls himself a "missionary to Capitol Hill," asked
in a recent videoblog. "He may be an apostate, he may be an infidel, he
may be a bad Muslim, a very, very bad Muslim, he may be an unfaithful
Muslim." Schenck's videoblog was circulated by the Christian Newswire
and Cross Action News, a self-described "Drudge Report for Christians."
Schenck later concluded that, although not a Muslim, Obama was also "not
a 'Bible Christian'" and did not practice a "confident faith." A
separate report posted on the Christian Newswire recently asked if Obama
was "Wearing a What-Would-Satan-Do Bracelet." And a top figure in the
group Christians United for Israel, Pastor Rod Parsley, a "spiritual
guide" to John McCain, repeatedly referred to Obama as "Barack Hussein
Obama" before campaigning with McCain in Ohio. (Thirteen percent of
registered American voters now incorrectly believe that Obama is a
Muslim, according to a recent Wall Street Journal poll, up from 8
percent in December. Forty-four percent of respondents are unsure of his
religion or decline to answer; only 37 percent know that he is a
Christian.)

The Muslim rumor was followed by fictions about Obama's actual faith,
Christianity. In February 2007, Erik Rush, a columnist for
WorldNetDaily, a hub of right-wing yellow journalism, called Obama's
Chicago church a "black supremacist" and "separatist" institution. Rush
found a sympathetic audience at Fox News, where he was interviewed by
Sean Hannity. Soon after, another blast of e-mails went out, calling
Obama a racist: "Notice too, what color you will need to be if you should
want to join Obama's church...B-L-A-C-K!!!" Like the Muslim claim, it
was a lie. But screeds about Obama's faith soon gave way to wide-ranging
attacks against his campaign advisers, his positions on the Middle East
and his associations in Chicago.

At the fulcrum of this effort is a little-known blogger from Northbrook,
Illinois, named Ed Lasky, whose articles on AmericanThinker.com have
done more than anything to give the smear campaign an air of
respectability. Lasky co-founded AmericanThinker.com in 2003, modeling
it after Powerline, a popular conservative blog. Before that, he had
frequently written letters to newspapers defending Israel and
criticizing the Palestinians. Though his background remains a mystery,
Lasky didn't hide his neoconservative leanings. He wrote a blog post in
2004 titled "Why American Jews Must Vote for Bush," made three separate
donations to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, contributed $1,000 to
Tom DeLay and has given more than $50,000 to GOP candidates and causes
since 2000. Lasky sits on the board of the International Fellowship of
Christians and Jews, headed by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, whose close
affiliations with Christian-right operatives like Ralph Reed has made
Eckstein a controversial figure in the Jewish community.

A lengthy article from January 16, "Barack Obama and Israel," put Lasky
on the map. "One seemingly consistent theme running throughout Barack
Obama's career is his comfort with aligning himself with people who are
anti-Israel advocates," Lasky wrote. To reach that conclusion, Lasky
laughably warped what it meant to be "pro-Israel," criticizing Obama
for, among other things, opposing John Bolton as UN ambassador and
hiring veteran foreign policy hands from the Clinton and Carter
administrations. By Lasky's criteria, every Democrat in the Senate, and
more than a few Republicans, would be considered "anti-Israel." "Lasky's
piece is filled with half-truths, omission of 'inconvenient facts,'
innuendo, deeply flawed logic, undocumented charges, hearsay, and guilt
by distant association," wrote Ira Forman
of the National Jewish Democratic Council in the Philadelphia Jewish
Voice.

Despite--or perhaps because of--its propagandistic nature, Lasky's
column and subsequent follow-ups circulated far and wide. Caroline Glick
of the Jerusalem Post quoted Lasky at length in a January column,
printing his false claims as fact, as did a separate column in the same
paper by Marc Zell, a former law partner of Douglas Feith (a onetime top
official in the Bush Defense Department) and a top ally of neocon
darling and Iraq War proponent Ahmad Chalabi and co-chairman of
Republicans Abroad in Israel. More surprising, Lasky became a household
name in the mainstream Jewish press, the talk of the town at
synagogues--even liberal ones--and a useful ally for members of the
Clinton campaign, who circulated his articles. Recently he's been
interviewed by mainstream outlets like NPR and the New York
Times, which have labeled Lasky a "critic" of Obama without
explaining his neoconservative sympathies. "I wonder how a tendentiously
argued anti-Obama piece is mass-emailed by so many Jews who should know
better," blogged Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor of the New Jersey Jewish
News.

Another key purveyor of the smear campaign is Aaron Klein, an Orthodox
Jew who is Jerusalem correspondent for WorldNetDaily. WND is notoriously
disreputable, a sort of National Enquirer for the right (typical
headline: "Sleaze Charge: 'I Took Drugs, Had Homo Sex With Obama'").
Klein made a name for himself by getting terrorists to say nice things
about Democrats and allying himself with extremist elements of the
Israeli right, whom he frequently quotes as sources in his
articles--when he bothers to quote anyone at all. Klein originally
called Hillary Clinton the "jihadist choice for president," but when
Clinton stumbled, he turned his fire to Obama, attempting to expose his
so-called "terrorist connections."

Klein penned two stories in late February wildly distorting Obama's
links, from his days in Chicago, to pro-Palestinian activists like
Rashid Khalidi, a respected professor of Middle East studies at Columbia
University who previously taught at the University of Chicago (hardly a
bastion of left-wing activism). Klein's story goes something like this:
Obama sat on the board of a foundation in Chicago that gave a grant to
the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), run by Khalidi's wife, which
supposedly rejects Israel's existence; and Khalidi directed the PLO's
Beirut press office and is a supporter "for Palestinian terror." (In
fact, the AAAN focuses solely on social service work in Chicago and
takes no position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Khalidi says he
was never employed by the PLO; he has been a harsh critic of Palestinian
suicide bombings and a longtime supporter of a two-state solution, and
he has never been an adviser to Obama. As for Obama's past statements,
at least in Chicago, being pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian is not
a contradiction in terms.)

Once again, the facts mattered little, and Klein's stories gained an
audience beyond the narrow confines of WND. Christian publicist Maria
Sliwa sent Klein's articles to prominent reporters, the Tennessee GOP
included his claims in a press release titled "Anti-Semites for Obama"
and the Jewish Press, an Orthodox Brooklyn paper, reprinted his
story about Khalidi. His latest article alleges that "terrorists
worldwide would indeed be emboldened by an Obama election." As evidence,
Klein quotes Ramadan Adassi, a leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in
the West Bank's Askar refugee camp, who says an Obama victory would be
an "important success. He won popularity in spite of the Zionists and
the conservatives." In previous stories, Klein has quoted Adassi
praising Cindy Sheehan, Rosie O'Donnell and Sean Penn. For a suspected
terrorist, Adassi follows pop culture and US politics remarkably
closely.

Despite Klein's questionable sourcing and scandalous accusations,
mainstream reporters now call the Obama campaign to ask about Klein's
articles. He also reports for John Batchelor, a right-wing talk-radio
host for KFI-AM in Los Angeles who has written a series of outlandish
columns about Obama for the conservative magazine Human Events
and repeatedly pushed the Obama smears on his radio show. According to
an e-mail of Batchelor's obtained by The Nation, Batchelor says
that information about Obama and Khalidi came via "oppo research."

Even if the false claims about Obama originally emanated from the
neoconservative right, the Clinton campaign has eagerly pushed them.
Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal has e-mailed damaging stories about
Obama to reporters, including a recent article by Batchelor. Clinton
fundraiser Annie Totah circulated a column by Ed Lasky before
Super Tuesday, with the inscription "Please vote wisely in the
Primaries." Clinton adviser Ann Lewis falsely referred to Zbigniew
Brzezinski, a critic of AIPAC, as a chief adviser to Obama on a
conference call with Jewish reporters. "I can tell you for a fact people
from the Clinton campaign are calling reporters and asking them to pay
attention to things involving Obama and Israel," says Shmuel Rosner,
Washington correspondent for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz. The
volume of e-mails about Obama in a given state tends to track the
election calendar--hardly a coincidence.

Large American Jewish organizations, like AIPAC and the Orthodox Union,
have repeatedly defended Obama. Yet they've had little sway over
reactionary elements in both the United States and Israel--including
Jewish hate groups--who are eager to keep the smear campaign alive. The
website Jews Against Obama, for instance, is run by the Jewish Task
Force, which funnels money to the radical settler movement in Israel.
(Curiously, John McCain's alliance with Pastor John Hagee of Christians
United for Israel, a leading proponent of "end times" theology, and his
recent endorsement by former Secretary of State James Baker have
received far less scrutiny from pro-Israel pundits. It was Baker, after
all, who reportedly told George H.W. Bush, "Fuck the Jews. They didn't
vote for us anyway.")

Respected news outlets have stoked these smears, even as they attempt to
debunk them. "Is Barack Obama a Muslim?" asked an editorial in the
Forward. "Almost certainly not. Was he ever a Muslim? Almost
certainly yes." After Obama criticized "a strain within the pro-Israel
community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to
Israel that you're anti-Israel," Rosner of Ha'aretz accused Obama
of "meddling in Israel's internal politics." The Washington Post
noted Obama's "denials" of his Muslim faith, without ever stating that
the rumor was untrue. Post columnist Richard Cohen crassly
connected Obama, his pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and Louis Farrakhan, a
line of guilt-by-association questioning that Tim Russert aggressively
repeated in the last Obama-Clinton debate.

Among conservatives, Fox News has endlessly amplified such rumors. Karl
Rove, a new hire by the network, recently speculated that Obama would
withdraw funding for Israel. Sean Hannity has asked if Obama has a "race
problem." Fox News radio host Tom Sullivan compared Obama to Hitler.
"Fox News are on to him and all the arguments our 'smear' camping
[sic] is making and for the most part it is running with them,"
right-wing blogger Ted Belman, of Israpundit, wrote in a recent e-mail.

The attacks on Obama reek of racism and Islamophobia but, as John Kerry
learned in 2004, any Democrat should expect such treatment. "If Moses
was the Democratic nominee, he'd still be the victim of this hate mail,"
says Doug Bloomfield, a former legislative director for AIPAC. The
right-wing smear machine grinds on, with the mainstream media and rival
campaigns lending a helping hand.



This article can be found on the web at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080331/berman