In America, black antisemitism has its capital in southside Chicago, and its high priest is the sinister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. Rev. Jeremiah Wright is not in the same league as Farrakhan, but he is no friend either to white people or to Jews, as both his church sermons and his comments to the media blaming Jews for preventing him from seeing Obama, make clear. Obama has managed until now to escape the charge of antisemitism, having been careful as a presidential candidate to distance himself from the controversial Rev.Wright. But one of Obama’s former girlfriends, Sheila Miyoshi (married name Jager), suggests that he was not bothered by black antisemitism. More on this story can be found here: “The Obama Factor: A Q&A with historian David Garrow,” by David Samuels, Tablet, August 2, 2023:
There is a fascinating passage in Rising Star, David Garrow’s comprehensive biography of Barack Obama’s early years, in which the historian examines Obama’s account in Dreams from My Father of his breakup with his longtime Chicago girlfriend, Sheila Miyoshi Jager. In Dreams, Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of Black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white-identified liberal universalism. As readers, we know that the stakes of this decision would become more than simply personal: The Black American man that Obama wills into being in this scene would go on to marry a Black woman from the South Side of Chicago named Michelle Robinson and, after a meteoric rise, win election as the first Black president of the United States.
Yet what Garrow documented, after tracking down and interviewing Sheila Miyoshi Jager, was an explosive fight over a very different subject. In Jager’s telling, the quarrel that ended the couple’s relationship was not about Obama’s self-identification as a Black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spertus Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann.
At the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spertus Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a Black mayoral aide named Steve Cokely who, in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting Black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African Americans. The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons, with some prominent Black officials supporting Cokely and others calling for his firing.
In Jager’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal, after seeing the exhibit, and in the swirl of this Cokely affair, to condemn Black racism. While acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a Black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple, she insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Cokely’s comments. It was not Obama’s Blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism.
No doubt, Obama’s evolving race-based self-consciousness did distance him from Jager; in the end, the couple broke up. Yet it is revealing to read Obama’s account of the breakup in Dreams against the very different account that Jager offers. In Obama’s account, he was the particularist, embracing a personal meaning for the Black experience that Jager, the universalist, refused to grant. In Jager’s account, the poles of the argument are nearly, but not quite, reversed: It is Obama who appears to minimize Jewish anxiety about blood libels coming from the Black community. His particularism mattered; hers didn’t. While Obama defined himself as a realist or pragmatist, the episode reads like a textbook evasion of moral responsibility.
I believe Sheila Miyoshi Jager’s account; she has nothing to gain by such a story, while the calculating Obama, determined to leave her because he was sure that as a white woman, she would be a political liability as his wife, made sure in his own memoir, Dreams of My Father, to leave out the Cokely episode, including his failure to condemn Cokely for his charge that “Jewish doctors” were deliberately committing “genocide” on “black babies.” This variant on the medieval blood libel about Jews killing Christian children so as to use their blood in making matzos, was a charge so explosive that it could well have resulted in murderous attacks by credulous African-Americans on Jewish doctors. When Sheila Miyoshi tried to convince Obama to denounce Cokely, he refused. He had decided that if he condemned Cokely, he would lose more support among black antisemites than he would gain in Jewish support. Clearly, Obama did not share the anguish of Jews at such charges, an updated version of the medieval blood libels. He was perfectly willing to pass over in silence Cokely’s disgusting and absurd charge of “genocide” by “Jewish doctors” of “black babies.” Sheila Miyoshi was appalled at Obama’s indecent political calculus, and told David Garrow so; that, she said, was her reason for the breakup. Obama, ever the calculating arriviste, determined to rise high, felt no need to reassure Jews that he stood with them. Instead, his silence about Steve Cokely’s charge suggested he had no interest in condemning even the worst antisemitic charges if to do so might hurt him with a black electorate that was also predominantly antisemitic.
Obama’s betrayal of a longstanding American commitment to veto all anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Security Council, when instead of a veto he had Samantha Power abstain from voting on UN Security Council Resolution 2334, that declared Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where a half-million Israelis lived, to constitute a violation of international law, was bad. An American veto would have killed the resolution. With the Americans not vetoing it, UNSC 2334 passed by a vote of 14-0. But Obama had done worse than that, when as a thrusting young Chicago politician he refused to do the right thing; he never denounced Steve Cokely for his extreme antisemitism, reflected in his charge that “Jewish doctors” practiced “genocide” on “black babies.” Obama’s tolerance of the worst kind of antisemitism was then, and remains, a form of antisemitism.
somehistory says
The lying, mozlum creep is evil, inside and out. The woman is so much better off for having broken up with him.
It was obvious from the beginning, this “young senator from Kenya,” was then, and is now, totally against the Jews and Israel.
Didn’t he have the PM of Israel enter through the servant’s door when the man visited the WH?
bo’s mother may have been White, but he’s also anti-White. The thug in Florida who was trying to kill the “White” Hispanic man, ‘could have been his son.’
And the White policeman “acted stupidly” when he was attempting to prevent a Black man from entering a house…suspiciously…because the man was breaking into, what the officer was later told, was his own home.
bo is such an evil smear on American history. On world history. On mankind’s history.
Wellington says
Obama is my choice for the single most destructive person in American history. He weaponized various federal agencies (e.g., the IRS). He had reporters monitored (N.B., Trump had no reporters monitored even though the media was quite hostile to Trump and ordinarily fawning towards Obama).
Obama knew no later than August of 2016 about the phony Steele Dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and went along with it, thus impeding a peaceful transfer of power come January of 2017 and which phony dossier was used to weaken Trump for years on end. He also regularly went on apology tours for America and refused to acknowledge its unique greatness. Of course, he made rank apologies for Islam whether out of ignorance or mendacity. He lied about people being able to keep their health care plan and their doctor.
Obama also stoked the flames of racism again and again and even lied about racism in America (e.g., the Ferguson, Missouri incident in 2014 in which Michael Brown was killed by Officer Wilson because he tried to take Wilson’s gun away from him—he never had his hands up and a mixed-race grand jury brought no charges against Wilson and yet Obama for years continued to reference the Ferguson incident as evidence of racism). He stupidly said that racism is in America’s DNA. Well, if it’s in our DNA we can’t change it, then can we?
And now Obama is in his third term, though de facto, behind the despicable shell of a man who is Joe Biden and making sure his “fundamental transformation of America” (his words back in 2008) continues. He has done great damage to the country and I know of no one who has done greater damage. He is detestable and only fools or worse continue to admire him.
somehistory says
All of what you said, Wellington, and more. No good came from him; and none continues to come from him. He’s still blathering his lies to do as much damage as he can to the good in people he hates.
Wellington says
Thank you, somehistory. I see once again we are on the same page. And damn Obama for all the harm he has done to America.
somehistory says
thank you, Wellington.
I have every confidence bo will get his just desserts. the evidence against him is “damning” for sure.
Keys says
“Obama is my choice for the single most destructive person in American history.”
Wellington, I think millions of Americans, including me, are with you here.
The current, destructive Strifes in the USA are marked with the beginning of the Obama Administration.
Wellington says
So tragic, Keys, that that man ever became President.
somehistory says
“Barack Obama Destroyed America”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/barack-obama-destroyed-america/ar-AA1fdhtl?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=015429e363f14346a61de80b57b5698d&ei=44
James Lincoln says
Wellington says,
“Obama is my choice for the single most destructive person in American history.”
Agreed – and Biden as Obama’s surrogate.
Even if Pres. Trump wins back the White House in 2024, at least some of the damage done to our great country is not even fixable…
Wellington says
Sadly, James, I fear you are right that some of the damage Obama did is beyond repair. Would dearly like to be wrong here.
Pablo says
Everything that you cite, is true, Wellington. Thus, you make a strong argument for Obama being the most destructive president in our history. However, I contend that one can just as easily cite Clinton as the worst. II`ll cite 3 events that he pushed for, then, “achieved”, that have had long term destructive effects on our country. First, getting NAFTA passed, in 1994. In the ensuing 29 years, America`s manufacturing has been hollowed out by the passing of this agreement. Our middle class has taken tremendous blows by the loss of 10s of millions of well paying jobs, both primary manufacturing jobs, and, the secondary jobs that existed to serve the needs of those who earned good incomes in manufacturing. Second, was the repeal, in 1999, of the Great Depression era bill, the Glass/Steagal Act. The very quick repercussions of this repeal manifested in the creation of giant financial conglomerates, such as the Citigroup, which engaged in questionable financial practices across the board. Ultimately resulting in the real estate bubble from 2001 to late 2007, which, when it burst, took down the entire American economy, almost creating a second Great Depression. Third, was Clinton`s strenuous urging to allow China entry into the WTO. Which finally happened towards the end of Clinton`s second term, in 2000. The direct, and now, long term result, of allowing China into the WTO, has been green lighting China`s extraordinary economic growth, most of which as come at OUR expense. From enormous amounts of IP theft, to dumping shoddy products, at below manufacturing cost (both of which are illegal in our, and, the WTO rules), China is close to becoming the #1 economy in the world, mostly due to its pervasive manufacturing/exporting. While due to the long term effects of NAFTA, we have almost forsaken what made us the world`s great power, starting in WW2: we were the #1 manufacturer in the world, not only of consumer items, but, of tech, especially, military tech. Obama tried to use the ancient tactic of divide and rule, especially in exacerbating divisions between races, religions, and, political parties. All of which have dramatically come to pass. But, in terms of destroying our infrastructure, and, our economy, Clinton may only be outdone by what the Biden cabal is doing…
Hoi Polloi says
You’ve made a sound case, Pablo. The products are shoddy and manufactured outside well-established safety standards. American engineers have been reduced to building China’s and Mexico’s economy for them and its youth can no longer expect to work as producers who learn daily in a world governed by physics instead of this bubble of government-sponsored lies and counter-reality myths. It’s dangerous and intentional.
As much as I now distrust MO, add HRC to WJC’s list of sins and we can rate the four as an unprecedented tidal wave of destruction, working in concert. I no longer trust JECarter since he trooped out to shill for the rest.
commonsense says
As usual, Wellington, you hit the nail on the head, and did so eloquently.
Hoi Polloi says
Agreed and add his wife, who wants us to redefine peaceful. I believe the girlfriend because it’s their established character to defend the wrong and attack the wronged in order to buy support for further wrongs.
Clifford Fodor says
Can Jihad Watch please stop showing B.O. giving us the middle finger? I hate him more than enough for screwing our country without seeing a picture of him doing it to us.
somehistory says
Ever notice how many photos of mozlums have that offensive gesture?
Jayell1 says
I’m absolutely fed up with politely ignoring the ‘charming’ little quirks of certain groups who’ve appeared amongst us to ‘enrich’ our lives. Despite all the laws and social sanctions that the majority of us in the civilised West have taken upon ourselves to observe, isn’t it very odd how persons of colour and those who follow a certain ‘Great and Mighty Prophet’ and are always the first to complain about ‘racism’, ‘discrimination’ and ‘being offended’, somehow feel entitled to indulge themselves in all manner of downright offensive, and obnoxiously racist and outright nasty behaviour as and when they feel like it? Who the hell do these people think they are?
OLD GUY says
Whats surprising is how many black people are followers of islam which openly supports slavery around the world.
Kepha says
Jager’s Dutch grandparents are apparently named at Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations. No wonder she’d be upset at the O’s apparent indifference to black anitsemitism!