Rev. Wright says he meant ‘Zionists,’ not ‘them Jews’

Jeremiah Wright, who earlier this week said he was being kept from President Barack Obama by “them Jews,” corrected himself Thursday. He didn’t mean Jews; he meant Zionists. I guess them Jews got to Wright.

I heard this same line of reason from Amir Abdel Malik Ali and many of the fellow travelers of the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine, and it’s difficult to know who is using the “I-hate-Zionism” argument as a cover for anti-Semitism. As Daniel Treiman points out:

It was Martin Luther King Jr. who wrote: “When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews — this is God’s own truth.” I always thought that King was perhaps painting with a bit too broad a brush, but his statement does seem rather apt in the case at hand.