State Dept. Spot Grilled on Obama’s Comment About ‘Random’ Kosher Market Attack
Days after the horrible terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, there was another shooting in Paris, this time at a Kosher market. It reignited concerns about Jews being targeted in France and anti-Semitism in Europe.
This week, that attack was back in the news with President Obama saying about terrorism in general, “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.” People objected to his use of the term “randomly,” when the targeting of a Kosher market wasn’t exactly a random act.
Josh Earnest tried to explain away that comment today, and State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki was also grilled along the same lines.
When asked if the attack was really random, Psaki said, “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 a grocery store.”
She was directly asked whether this was an “anti-Jewish attack” and who the White House thinks would be in a kosher market. Psaki didn’t give a definitive answer and deferred to the French government instead of saying whether the U.S. thinks the attack was anti-Semitic.
But there’s the little matter of this quote, provided to The Jerusalem Post by another State Department spokesperson last month, soon after the attack on the Kosher market:
“We condemn in the strongest terms yesterday’s cowardly anti-Semitic assault against the innocent people in the kosher supermarket.”
UPDATE- 3:57 pm EST: Psaki tweeted out this clarification to her earlier comments:
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.
— Jen Psaki (@statedeptspox) February 10, 2015
You can watch the video of Psaki getting grilled here:
[h/t Michael Weiss]
[image via screengrab]
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