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In an attempt to explain away President Obama’s assertion in an interview that the Islamic terrorist massacre of Jews at a Paris kosher deli was a “random” attack against a “bunch of folks”, the administration appears to be creating an even greater mess. It is still unclear what President Obama really thinks.
United States President Barack Obama created a stir earlier this week when he stated during an interview that the four Jews intentionally murdered by a Muslim terrorist at the Hyper Cacher market in Paris in January were “a bunch of folks” who were “randomly” shot.
His remarks were widely publicized and prompted the media to further inquire about Obama’s meaning, hoping to receive some acceptable explanation. When confronted, both a White House spokesman and a State Department spokeswoman defended Obama’s remarks.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest was asked about Obama’s suggestion that the Kosher market was not targeted by the Muslim terrorist because it was Kosher, but rather it was random, and Earnest backed up this claim.
Earnest stated, “It is clear from the — the terrorists, in some of the writings that they put out afterwards, what their motivation was. The adverb that the president chose was used to indicate that the individuals who were killed in that terrible tragic incident were killed not because of who they were, but because of where they randomly happened to be.”
Earnest added, “These individuals [the terror victims] were not targeted by name.”
“Not by name, but by religion, were they not?” the reporter asked. “There were people other than just Jews who were in that deli,” Earnest insisted.
After the reporter asked again if the president had any doubt that the shop was attacked because of the likelihood the terrorists would be able to kill Jews, Earnest finally said, “No.”
He later seems to have somewhat retracted this statement when he tweeted: ”Our view has not changed. Terror attack at Paris Kosher market was motivated by anti-Semitism. POTUS (President of the United States) didn’t intend to suggest otherwise.”
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki exhibited similar semantic acrobatics when she was presented with the same question regarding Obama’s comments.
“I believe if I remember the victims specifically – they were not all victims of one background or one nationality. So I think what they mean by that is – I don’t know that they spoke to the targeting of the grocery store or that specifically, but the individuals who were impacted,” she remarked.
When pressed again on whether the Obama administration believed that the attack was “anti-Jewish” or “an attack on the Jewish community in Paris,” Psaki responded, “I don’t think we’re going to speak on behalf of French authorities and what they believe was the situation at play here.”
When pressed again she replied by stating that she had no more to add, concluding, “It’s an issue for the French Government to address.”
Psaki later tweeted, “We have always been clear that the attack on the kosher grocery store was an anti-Semitic attack that took the lives of innocent people.”
By: United with Israel Staff
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