Obama campaign fixes uncle story
Barack Obama’s campaign clarified that he had a great uncle who served with U.S. forces that liberated Buchenwald.
The campaign noted that Obama “mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience.”
In a Memorial Day speech in New Mexico, the U.S. senator from Illinois identified an uncle who had returned from liberating the Auschwitz death camp.
In fact, the Soviets liberated Auschwitz, and the campaign corrected the error after it was exposed by conservative bloggers. The campaign said Obama’s great uncle (his maternal grandmother’s brother) was in the 89th Infantry Division, which liberated Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp complex in Germany.
Israel gets copies from U.S. archive
The U.S. National Archives gave Israel facsimile copies of presidential documents relating to the Jewish state.
The collection, ranging from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1937 to President George H. W. Bush in 1991, was delivered to Israel ahead of its 60th birthday celebrations earlier this month. It includes President Harry Truman’s one-page, typed recognition of Israel on May 14, 1948.
The earliest entry is 1937 greetings from Roosevelt to the United Palestine Appeal.
Most of the documents are exchanges of thanks and support between leaders of both nations, but there are picayune offerings as well, such as U.S. Rep. John F. Kennedy recording observations during a 1951 trip to Israel.
Group fighting Seattle initiative
An Israel advocacy group is going to court to stop a Seattle ballot initiative on divestment.
The Seattle-based organization StandWithUs Northwest is challenging the legality of Initiative 97 in King County Superior Court. The initiative could bar the city from investing employee pension funds in corporations that do business with Israel.
Spearheaded by a group called Seattle Divest from War and Occupation, the initiative links divestment from Israel with divestment from companies involved in the war in Iraq, such as Halliburton. — jta