White House that Demagogued Iran Deal Laments Rise of Anti-Semitism

From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:

Obama: ‘Anti-Semitism Is on the Rise.’ No Kidding. 

President Obama, last night:

President Obama warned of growing anti-Semitism in the United States and the world Wednesday as he honored two Americans and two Poles who helped save Jewish lives during World War II.

“Here, tonight, we must confront the reality that around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it,” Obama said at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony at the Israeli embassy Wednesday night. He cited Jews fleeing European cities, attacks on Jewish centers in Mumbai, India and Overland Park, Kansas and swastikas on college campuses.

 “When we see all that and more, we must not be silent,” Obama said.

So when the New York Times editorial board writes about GOP opponents of the Iran deal and describes the “unseemly spectacle of lawmakers siding with a foreign leader against their own commander in chief . . . ” should we raise our voices against the suggestion that agreeing with Bibi Netanyahu is somehow un-American?

Or when the president suggests that pro-Israel members of Congress are driven by “donors” . . . 

The president said he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than make a move for short-term political gain, according to the senator. Mr. Menendez, who was seated at a table in front of the podium, stood up and said he took “personal offense.”

As Tablet wrote during the Iran-deal fight . . . 

Accusing senators and congressmen whose misgivings about the Iran deal are shared by a majority of the U.S. electorate of being agents of a foreign power, or of selling their votes to shadowy lobbyists, or of acting contrary to the best interests of the United States is the kind of naked appeal to bigotry and prejudice that would be familiar in the politics of the pre-Civil Rights Era South.

This use of anti-Jewish incitement as a political tool is a sickening new development in American political discourse, and we have heard too much of it lately — some coming, ominously, from our own White House and its representatives. Let’s not mince words: Murmuring about “money” and “lobbying” and “foreign interests” who seek to drag America into war is a direct attempt to play the dual-loyalty card. It’s the kind of dark, nasty stuff we might expect to hear at a white power rally, not from the president of the United States — and it’s gotten so blatant that even many of us who are generally sympathetic to the administration, and even this deal, have been shaken by it.

It’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, hmm? How’s that Atrocities Prevention Board doing?