http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/191210#.VNtvgS6GNOUState Dept. Backs Obama: Paris Attack Didn't Target Jews
Jen Psaki the latest Obama spokesperson to stutter an explanation as to why he described the attack on kosher store as just 'random'.
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By Ari Soffer
First Publish: 2/11/2015, 1:20 PM
Not anti-Semitic - just random?
Reuters
It's the controversy that just won't go away - and it's hard to understand why.
Since US President Barack Obama's controversial comments during a recent interview, in which he downplayed the anti-Semitic nature of the deadly shooting attack at a kosher supermarket in Paris last month, government spokespeople have been falling over themselves to explain what exactly he meant. And failing pretty miserably.
In the interview with Vox, published earlier this week, the US President asserted that the media was "overstating" the threat from terrorism to garner ratings, but admitted terrorism was still a problem. In so doing, however, he provoked a storm of controversy with the following comment: "It is entirely legitimate for the American people to be deeply concerned when you've got a bunch of violent vicious zealots who behead people or randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris."
That statement provoked widespread outrage, with viewers taking to social media to ask how an attack by a follower of a virulently anti-Semitic ideology on a kosher store could be seen as "random," rather than as an attack against the Jewish community.
First, White House official spokesman Josh Earnest made a valiant but cringeworthy attempt to tidy up after the President, justifying Obama's claim that climate change was more dangerous than terrorism, as well as attempting to explain how ISIS terrorist Amedy Coulibaly was simply "shooting random folks" without paying any attention to their background at the Hyper Cacher store.
Later Tuesday evening it was the turn of State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who similarly struggled to rationalize Obama's strange comments.
Associated Press journalist Matt Lee began the exchange, asking: "Does the administration really believe that the victims of this attack were not singled out because they were of a particular faith?"
Psaki's response to the straightforward question was perhaps even more evasive than Earnest's.
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