Obama blogger: ‘Zionism means ethnic cleansing’

The latest effort to hold Barack Obama responsible for what other people say is this story from IsraelNationalNews.com:

United States Presidential candidate Barak Obama is hosting leftist blogger Tony Wicher on his official website.  Wicher’s blog is promoted as “A forum for a new foreign policy based on peace, democracy, and human rights instead of hegemony and war, with particular attention to the Israel/Palestine conflict as the key to a new Middle East policy.”

Wicher repeatedly refers to Israel as an apartheid state, and in fact claims that Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Authority Arabs is “worse than apartheid.”  He also refers to the Likud party as “right-wing jingoists,” and insists that “Zionism means ethnic cleansing.”

Israel’s current government, Wicher says, “is faithfully carrying out the Zionist policy, by relentlessly persecuting the Arabs until they give up and go to Jordan or whatever.”  He dismisses any who call his claims of Israeli “apartheid” anti-Semitic as members of the “Zionist thought police.”

These words, however, were not uttered by Obama’s pastor (not that we know of). And Wicher does not appear to be a contributor to the official Obama blog. He’s a registered user of the social networking service at Obama ‘08, and that is where he promotes “Zionism without a Jewish state.”