President Barack Obama reportedly held an off-the-record foreign policy meeting with nine editors and columnists to discuss Afghanistan, Israel, NATO and the G8 Summit at Camp David. Many of the participants are widely known for their extreme and unwarranted criticism of the Jewish state.
According to the reports, the meeting included Peter Beinart, author of the recent much-criticized book, “The Crisis of Zionism,”, which bashes the American Jewish establishment, claims US Jewish youth are abandoning Israel because of its actions and advocates a boycott on the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, calling the area "non-democratic Israel". He calls Obama the "Jewish president" and blasts Netanyahu and his father, barely mentions Arab terror while excoriating "Jewish terror."
The meeting also included The New Yorker’s David Remnick, who has compared the democracy of the State of Israel to that of Syria and Egypt, and Time’s Joe Klein, who has disregarding the threat of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, stating that the regime is doing so merely to “deter Israel.”
Sources would not discuss the specific details of the conversation, as it was off the record, but did indicate that Obama looked to the group to “help improve messaging” on the aforementioned foreign policy matters in the run-up to the 2012 election, reported Politico.com.
White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor clarified the last point stating, “The President didn’t ask for messaging advice. He simply noted that before writing that we haven’t offered enough ‘specifics’ on a given issue, that we’d appreciate it if they called over and gave us the opportunity to provide more information.”
“If President Obama believes Peter Beinart’s opinions are credible or anywhere near mainstream thought, then that is a five-alarm fire for Israel supporters all across the world,” said one senior GOP adviser, according to the Free Beacon.