“Anything … against the survival” of Israel is anti-Semitic, said Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson Sunday, defending the op-ed he wrote for the Jerusalem Post that called President Barack Obama’s speech “replete with coded innuendos employing standard anti-Semitic themes.”
When “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace questioned how Carson could call Obama “anti-Semitic,” Carson replied, “All you have to do, Chris, is go to Israel and talk to average people on all ends of that spectrum. I couldn’t find a single person there who didn’t feel that this administration had turned their backs on Israel.”
“I think the position of president of United States should be one where you begin to draw people together behind a vision, not one where you castigate those that believe differently from you,” said Carson.
Wallace countered that “it’s one thing to argue your policy differs from Israel, but you say in your article … that there’s ‘anti-Semitic themes’ there. What specifically is anti-Semitic in what the president is saying?”
“I think anything is anti-Semitic that is against the survival of a state that is surrounded by enemies and by people who want to destroy them,” responded Carson. “And to sort of ignore that and to act like everything is normal there and that these people are paranoid, I think that’s anti-Semitic.”
Carson listed his reasoning for opposing the Obama administration’s Iran deal in his op-ed:
The deal will enable $150 billion to flow into the coffers of a rogue regime that systematically abuses the human rights of its own citizens, foments violence in the Middle East, funds terrorist proxies who have killed hundreds of American soldiers and whose leaders decry the United States as the “Great Satan” and lead mass rallies featuring chants of “Death to America.” And let’s not forget the American hostages who continue to suffer in captivity just as they did while talks proceeded apace and concluded with handshakes and smiles.
