Wednesday, March 26, 2008

More bad news for Pastor Wright

From NRO:

Wright and Israel [Yuval Levin]

This Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter (PDF link) from last June seems to be making the rounds in Jewish circles. I have now had it e-mailed to me three times in the last 24 hours from friends who all more or less seem to have gotten it through their synagogues. On page 8 of the newsletter, entitled “Pastor’s Page”, Jeremiah Wright prints an “Open Letter to Oprah from Ali Baghdadi on her visit to Palestine.” Baghdadi is described as an “Arab-American activist, writer, columnist,” and the letter, among other things, accuses Israel of once working with South Africa “on an ethnic bomb that kills Blacks and Arabs.”

It also accuses Israel of war crimes, quotes Arnold Toynbee saying that “what the Zionist Jews did to the Palestinians is worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews,” speaks of “Israeli death squads” and so on.

Mostly very familiar accusations, of course (though I don’t know if I’ve heard the one about the ethnic bomb to kill “Blacks and Arabs” before), but apparently the Rev. Wright saw fit to pass them along to his congregation; and someone else (I can't imagine who) has seen fit to make sure Jewish voters contemplating their options in the remaining Democratic primaries are aware of it. There are very few states where Jewish voters really make a difference, but Pennsylvania is one of them.

Fair or not, this reflects on Obama. How many things will come out about Pastor Wright that Obama will claim he knew nothing about? It strains incredulity. The Obama camp should be worried.