Jewish Insider says Obama 'avoided' questions on Israel, Middle East for written interview

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CNN’s Brian Stelter getting panned for interview with Jen Psaki, the New York Times being criticized for ‘biased’ tweet against Joe Manchin, and Peter Daszak getting cited by media fact-checkers and Facebook round out today’s top media headlines.

Former President Obama was apparently extremely selective when it came to answering questions for a written interview with Jewish Insider. 

In a published interview on Monday, JI features reporter Matthew Kassel laid out all of the questions that were sent to the 44th president and the answers that were received. However, out of the 13 questions that were sent, Obama answered just five of them, putting "[No answer.]" following the inquiries that received no response. 

"The former president avoided every question touching on Israel and the Middle East that JI posed to him," Kassel wrote. "Of the 13 questions JI sent to the former president, listed below in full, he provided answers to just five, focusing on the history of Black-Jewish relations, the Capitol siege, the state of American politics and the rise of antisemitism, among other topics."

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Among the questions Obama skipped include his assertion that critics of the Iran nuclear deal were motivated by interests of another country rather than being for a policy disagreement, if he thought there was "any hope for Iran’s pro-democracy demonstrators, and what he believed contributed to the Abraham Accords, the Trump-era Israeli peace agreements between multiple Arab nations and the Jewish state. 

DETROIT, MI - OCTOBER 26: Former President Barack Obama speaks at a rally to support Michigan democratic candidates at Detroit Cass Tech High School on October 26, 2018 in Detroit, Michigan. Obama, and former Attorney General Eric Holder, who was also at the rally, are among approximately a dozen democrats who were targeted by mail bombs over the past several  days. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images) (Getty Images)

However, the former president did manage in the very few answers he provided to JI to suggest that his successor, former President Trump, was to blame for the rise in anti-Semitism. 

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"In my last year as President, I gave a speech at the Embassy of Israel where I said that the seeds that gave rise to the Holocaust have always been with us. They have found root across cultures, faiths, and generations. And they have reemerged again and again, especially in times of change and uncertainty," Obama wrote. "When I gave that speech, it was clear that anti-Semitism was on the rise around the world. People’s anger over everything from immigration to inequality was boiling over—and many of them were looking for someone else to blame. And for four years, we had a President in the White House who fanned those flames."