Eight minutes ago, the New York Times posted this article about Obama’s speech today in Egypt. The Israeli lobby has already made its mark, as the article accuses Obama of being too harsh on Israel.
How much longer before he is accused of being anti-Semitic?
The lede:
In opening a bold overture to the Islamic world on Thursday, President Obama confronted frictions between Muslims and the West, but he reserved some of his bluntest words for Israel, as he expressed sympathy for the Palestinians and what he called the “daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation.”
While Mr. Obama emphasized that America’s bond with Israel was “unbreakable,” he spoke in equally powerful terms of the Palestinian people, describing their plight as “intolerable” after 60 years of statelessness, and twice referring to “Palestine” in a way that put Palestinians on parallel footing with Israelis.
Good forbid that we should put Palestinians on “parallel footing” with Israelis.
It is, in order, the headline, the lede and the conclusion that you must care about in judging an article’s impact. The headline, online at least, is neutral. But in addition to the lede, the Israelis got the conclusion, too.
Although Mr. Obama strongly condemned those who would deny the Holocaust, many American supporters of Israel said they resented what they viewed as comparing it to the plight of the Palestinians.
“I understand Palestinian suffering, it is terrible,” said Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “But it is not on the other hand to the Holocaust.”