Embattled Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has experienced one of the most awful weeks in American political history. As I said here, you know it’s bad when revealing extensive ties to Chicago political fixer Tony Rezko isn’t the big news of the week. Clearly, the Pastor J-Wright scandal has temporarily sucked the oxygen out of the presidential campaigns. As bas as that seems, this article in WND adds another chapter to the Pastor J-Wright scandal. This headline says it all:
Obama Church Published Hamas Terror Manifesto
It gets worse from there:
The Hamas piece was published on the “Pastor’s Page” of the Trinity United Church of Christ newsletter reserved for Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose anti-American, anti-Israel remarks landed Obama in hot water, prompting the presidential candidate to deliver a major race speech earlier this week.
Hamas, responsible for scores of shootings, suicide bombings and rocket launchings against civilian population centers, is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department.
Here’s more of the details of what got printed in Pastor J-Wright’s page:
In his July 22, 2007, church bulletin, Wright reprinted an article by Mousa Abu
Marzook, identified in the newsletter as a “deputy of the political bureau of Hamas.” A photo image of the newsletter was captured and posted today by the business blog BizzyBlog. The Hamas piece was first published by the Los Angeles Times, garnering the newspaper much criticism. Here’s that image:

Here’s a portion of Mousa Abu Marzook’s LA Times op-ed:
Why should anyone concede Israel’s ‘right’ to exist when it has never acknowledged the foundational crimes of murder and ethnic cleansing by means of which Israel took our towns and villages, our farms and orchards, and made us a nation of refugees?
Why should any Palestinian ‘recognize’ the monstrous crime carried out by Israel’s founders and continued by its deformed modern apartheid state, while he or she lives 10 to a room in a cinderblock, tin roof UN hut?
That that op-ed ran in the LA Times is bad enough. That it was reprinted in Pastor J-Wright’s newsletter calls into question how deep his hatred of Israel runs. Let’s remember that this isn’t something from 10 years ago. That op-ed ran last July. It’s that much more troubling considering the fact that Pastor Wright accompanied Louis Farrakhan on a trip to Libya where he met Col. Qhadhaffi.
I’ll take Sen. Obama at his word when he says that Pastor Wright has been his mentor. That’s troubling because Pastor Wright’s thinking towards Israel is far outside mainstream evangelical Christian thinking. Let’s set that aside temporarily for the sake of this discussion. Let’s pretend that evangelical Christians didn’t take a position on Israel. Instead, let’s think about this from a State Department standpoint. It seems like Hamas has been on the State Department’s list of known terrorists forever.
That brings me to this question: What impact has Pastor J-Wright’s views on Israel had on Sen. Obama? Sen. Obama says that he hasn’t talked politics with Pastor J-Wright but, prior to this week, he insisted that he hadn’t heard any of Pastor J-Wright’s inflammatory sermons, too.
Another troubling portion of the WND article talks about one of Sen. Obama’s foreign policy advisors views about Israel. Here’s the portion I’m specifically refering to:
WND reported in January that Malley, an Obama foreign policy adviser, has penned numerous opinion articles, many of them co-written with a former adviser to the late Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, petitioning for dialogue with Hamas and blasting Israel for policies he says harm the Palestinian cause.
Malley also previously penned a well-circulated New York Review of Books piece largely blaming Israel for the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David in 2000 when Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern sections of Jerusalem and instead returned to the Middle East to launch an intifada, or terrorist campaign, against the Jewish state.
Malley’s contentions have been strongly refuted by key participants at Camp David, including President Clinton, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and primary U.S. envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross, all of whom squarely blamed Arafat’s refusal to make peace for the talks’ failure.
How much influence would Mr. Malley have in an Obama administration? Was Malley the advisor that told Obama that it’s ok to meet, without precondition, with Ahmadinejad, Chavez and other tyrants? If it wasn’t, it’s certainly like-minded, and wrong-headed, thinking.
Suffice it to say that this story eliminates the possibility of the Obama-J-Wright controversy going away anytime soon. It’s more likely that it’ll prolong Sen. Obama’s suffering.
UPDATE: Welcome Redstate readers. The questions surrounding Sen. Obama just keep multiplying. His presidential ambitions are pretty much over.
To answer Moe’s question: It was for the votes and street cred.
Technorati: Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Hamas, Louis Farrakhan, Libya, Muammar Qadaffi, Mousa Abu Marzook, Terrorism, Scandals, Election 2008
Cross-posted at California Conservative

Obama needs to have enough respect for the Democratic Party to withdraw from this election. Democrats will never win if he is nominated. I am sure there are a lot of people that voted for him in previous primaries that wish they could take it back. What a shame he is bringing on America. Vote Hillary 08
I think it is an outrage that a terrorist sympthizer like Obama has somehow managed to become our President. It is a sad time and a time that is significant in Genesis when God said “I will bless those that bless thee and curse those that curse thee” speaking of the jews. So if the United States has now elected its leader, a Hamas and Palestinean sympathizer,then we are under the direct curse of God.