"Optics?": No Comment Yet on Why Obama Held Meeting on 9/11 With Terrorist-Supporting Cleric

9/13/2014

President Obama held an Oval Office meeting with Middle Eastern-based Arab Christians on 9/11, one member of whom is a loud and proud supporter of the terrorist group Hezbollah.

The day before, members of the same group, holding a conference under the name In Defense of Christians, booed andshouted down keynote speaker Senator Ted Cruz when he called for support of Israel. Cruz told the group, “[I]f you will not stand with Israel and the Jews, then I will not stand with you. Thank you and God bless you.”

It’s surprising White House staffers allowed Maronite Patriarch Bashara Rai to meet with the President in the first place. As the Washington Free Beacon reports, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah supporting cleric isn’t shy about his views.

“Everyone says why is Hezbollah carrying arms?” said Rai in a 2011 interview with Al-Arabiya. “We responded that the international community did not exert pressure on Israel to withdraw from Lebanese territory. As long as there is an occupied Lebanese territory, Hezbollah will maintain that it wants to carry arms in defense of its land. What will we say to it then? Isn’t [Hezbollah] right?”

And, surprisingly, Rai wasn’t the only terrorist-supporting cleric invited to the meeting. From the Washington Free Beacon:

According to an IDC press release, another attendee at the meeting with Obama was Orthodox Church Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, who posted photos on Facebook from his meeting with a “high level delegation from Hezbollah” last week. Antioch Church patriarch Gregory III Laham, who has called anti-Christian terrorism in Iraq a “Zionist conspiracy against Islam,” also attended, according to the press release.

The United States has listed Hezbollah as a terrorist organizationsince 1997, but the terror group and its mirror organization Islamic Jihad have been responsible for terrorist attacks since the 1980s. The group is responsible for bombing the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 men.

The White House still has not commented on the meeting.

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