“Some of the dirtiest attacks against Barack Obama are being carried out by Jewish bigots in the US and Israel, and if Obama is the Democrats’ candidate for president, which looks very likely, these smears are going to get a lot worse.

“It’s not a whispering campaign, it’s not anonymous; Marc Zell, co-chairman of Republicans Abroad in Israel, put his name to an article in The Jerusalem Post’s Web edition last week that brands Obama as a Muslim anti-Semite. ‘Obama and the Jews‘ begins: ‘Less than two weeks before the critical primary elections in Ohio and Texas, Democratic voters have made it very clear: Barack Hussein Obama is for real.’

“Why would a Republican activist mention Obama’s middle name, especially in the first sentence, especially to readers of The Jerusalem Post? Everyone knows the reason, but I’ll spell it out anyway: To reinforce the false impression that Obama is a Muslim, knowing that many readers, Jewish and Christian, will hate and fear him for that reason alone….

“The record on Obama as an anti-Semite or enemy of Israel is utterly blank. He’s not a Muslim, either. (Although it doesn’t speak well for America that he can’t publicly say, ‘And what if I was?’ without killing his chances for election.) But it doesn’t matter – he’s caused legions of Jewish crazies to come crawling out of the woodwork….

“Yes, there is a problem of black anti-Semitism in America, but Obama isn’t part of it. There’s a problem of bigotry among American Jews, but Joseph Lieberman isn’t part of that. If American blacks or Muslims were running an ethnic/religious smear campaign against Lieberman like Jewish extremists are running against Obama, what would Jews call it? We’d call it anti-Semitic. The one against Obama is Islamophobic, with an undercurrent of white racism. It’s the exact same sort of bigotry.”

Larry Derfner in the Jerusalem Post, 27 February 2008