Rick Sanchez tried pushing Michael Goldfarb into getting himself fired from Team McCain today on CNN, but Michael didn’t take the bait. In a discussion of Rashid Khalidi and the tape that the Los Angeles Times refuses to release of Barack Obama’s remarks at his going-away party in 2003, Michael says that Obama has a pattern of associating with people hostile to Israel. Rick demands that he names another name, but Michael refuses:

Well, we know the name that Michael didn’t want to utter: Jeremiah Wright. While anti-Semite might be too harsh a word to describe Wright, he’s certainly no friend of Israel. As one pro-Obama blogger notes, Wright went out of his way to demonstrate his hostility to Israel in his notorious appearance at the National Press Club in late April:

As I said on the Bill Moyers’ show, one of our news channels keeps playing a news clip from 20 years ago when Louis [Farakkhan] said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. … And he was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter is being vilified for, and Bishop Tutu is being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I’m anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. …

My position on Israel is that Israel has a right to exist, that Israelis have a right to exist, as I said, reconciled one to another.

Have you read the Link? Do you read the Link, Americans for Middle Eastern Understanding, where Palestinians and Israelis need to sit down and talk to each other and work out a solution where their children can grow in a world together, and not be talking about killing each other, that that is not God’s will?

Rebecca notes that AMEU is not exactly a disinterested third party. It is virulently anti-Israel, and it regularly publishes the work of Holocaust-denier Daniel McGowan. It should come as no surprise that Wright recommends them as a source, considering that Wright regularly publishes pro-Hamas material in his Trinity United Church of Christ bulletin.

But Michael couldn’t talk about Wright because of the embargo John McCain placed on the topic, lest Michael lose his job. Why not mention Louis Farrakhan, then? Farrakhan is close friends with Wright, having been honored by TUCC and Wright on several occasions. No one in their right mind would deny Farrakhan is anti-Semitic, having called Judaism a “gutter religion”, although Farrakhan says the correct quote was “dirty religion” — as if that made it any better.  Obama also has a more direct connection to Farrakhan, having been one of the speakers for the Nation of Islam leader’s Million Man March in 1995.

Not enough yet for Rick Sanchez?  We should also include Robert Malley, an Obama adviser on foreign policy who held meetings with Hamas — despite the group’s listing on the State Department list of terrorist organizations.  Malley also tried to set up a group specifically tasked with fighting AIPAC and their lobbying on behalf of the American-Israeli alliance, which also included top Obama bundler Alan Solomont.  Malley’s foreign-policy credentials include his work in the Clinton administration’s efforts at resolving the standoff between Israel and the Palestinians.  Malley was the only one involved that blamed the Israelis when Yasser Arafat refused to accept the solution that gave him 95% of what he had demanded.  Again, not an anti-Semite, but certainly someone hostile to Israel.

If Rick Sanchez and the national media bothered to ask these questions themselves and do some research, they could find plenty of examples of Israel hostility in Obama’s past and present.  Rick may feel he won the exchange here, but in reality just revealed himself and his colleagues in the Tanning Bed Media as woefully uninformed.

Update: Allahpundit already embedded this earlier — missed it.  Consider this an alternate take ….

Update II: On reflection, I’m a little struck by Rick’s question.  If someone proved that John McCain allied himself with David Duke, would the mainstream media insist on hearing about a second white supremacist before they considered it a story?