Hannah Rosenthal

Meet Obama's anti-Semitism czar: Hannah Rosenthal.

Aaron Klein writes about the radical Rosenthal and her husband, Richard Phelps.

President Obama's new anti-Semitism czar was a 1960s anti-war activist and community organizer whose husband worked with the founder of a socialist party, of which, according to documentary evidence, Obama was a member.

Hannah Rosenthal, a former Health Department regional director under the Clinton administration, started her position last week as the State Department's new special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. She previously headed the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella U.S. Jewish organization.

Rosenthal was a community organizer who became involved in the anti-war and civil-rights movements in the 1960's.

Her husband, Richard Phelps, is a former three-term local Wisconsin executive. In Madison, with 1.5 percent unemployment, Phelps worked with University of Wisconsin professor and socialist activist Joel Rogers to create a pilot program through the blue-ribbon Economic Summit Council to train workers and match skills with jobs.

That same year, while running for a seat in the Illinois Senate as a Democrat, Obama in 1996 actively sought and received the endorsement of the socialist New Party, according to confirmed reports during last year's presidential campaign. Rogers was founder of the New Party.

The New Party worked alongside the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. The New Party's aim was to help elect politicians who espoused its policies. Among New Party members was linguist and radical activist Noam Chomsky.

Obama's campaign last year denied the then–presidential candidate was ever an actual member of the New Party.

But the New Zeal blog dug up print copies of the New Party News, the party's official newspaper, which show Obama posing with New Party leaders, listing him as a New Party member and printing quotes from him as a member.

The party's spring 1996 newspaper boasted: "New Party members won three other primaries this Spring in Chicago: Barack Obama (State Senate), Michael Chandler (Democratic Party Committee) and Patricia Martin (Cook County Judiciary)."

The paper quoted Obama saying, "These victories prove that small-'d' democracy can work."

The newspaper lists other politicians it endorsed who were not members but specifies Obama as a New Party member.

New Ground, the newsletter of Chicago's Democratic Socialists of America, reported in its July/August 1996 edition that Obama attended a New Party membership meeting April 11, 1996, in which he expressed his gratitude for the group's support and "encouraged (New Party members) to join in his task forces on voter education and voter registration."

A former top member of the New Party recounted in a WND e-mail interview Obama's participation with his organization.

"A subcommittee met with (Obama) to interview him to see if his stand on the living wage and similar reforms was the same as ours," recalled Marxist activist Carl Davidson.

"We determined that our views on these overlapped, and we could endorse his campaign in the Democratic Party," Davidson said.

That's enlightening.

...Rosenthal, meanwhile, serves on the board of J Street, a lobby group that is mostly led by left-leaning Israelis and that receives funds from Arab and Muslim Americans.

J Street brands itself as pro-Israel. It states on its website it seeks to "promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically."

J Street, however, also supports talks with Hamas, a terrorist group whose charter seeks the destruction of Israel. The group opposes sanctions against Iran and is harshly critical of Israeli offensive anti-terror military actions.

Even the Israeli government has been distancing itself from J Street, with its ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, refusing to attend its annual dinner last month. Israeli Embassy spokesman Yoni Peled told the Jerusalem Post his government has some "concern over certain [J Street] policies that could impair Israel's interests."

...Rosenthal had also previously penned an opinion piece in The New York Jewish Week in which she claimed a mainstream Israel-solidarity rally in Washington, D.C., was being "dominated by narrow, ultraconservative views of what it means to be pro-Israel."

In a letter criticizing Rosenthal's depiction of the event, Anti-Defamation League chairman Abe Foxman noted that rally, which took place at the height of the Palestinian intifada, or terrorist war, included speakers Sen. Harry Reid, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Israeli minister Natan Sharansky. Foxman pointed out the speakers lobbied for peace.

I'm not surprised that Obama has a far Left radical like Rosenthal in his administration.

I do question Obama's judgment when it comes to putting her in charge of monitoring and combatting anti-Semitism.