Anti-Semitism Gets Backburner Treatment from WH

Jillian Bandes | August 05, 2009 8:09 AM

Obama has created a special position: U.S. Special Representative for Muslim (Ummah) Outreach. This was done at the urging of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, representatives of which Obama has hosted at the White House.

What Obama has failed to do, as Human Events points out, is appoint an envoy to combat anti-Semitism — a position that is already mandated by U.S. law. From Rafael Medoff, director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies:

Foot-dragging on the selection sends a message that anti-Semitism is not of great importance to the United States.

I won't forget that Obama hosted a Passover Seder — the first one in the White House, ever — or that he's always been a darling of many Jewish Americans. But how hard can making this appointment really be? Anti-Semitism isn't on it's way out, and there's simply no reason he can't be concerned with discrimination against Jews as much as he's concerned with discrimination against Muslims.