Despicable

By Jennifer J. Foster

Published: July 25, 2008

Before we go any further, I want to add my voice to the chorus of those expressing outrage over an Israeli newspaper’s decision to publish the contents of the note Barack Obama left in the Western Wall during his visit there Thursday.

The rabbi in charge of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitz, said publishing the note intruded in Obama’s relationship with God.

“The notes placed between the stones of the Western Wall are between a person and his maker. It is forbidden to read them or make any use of them,” he told Army Radio. The publication “damages the Western Wall and damages the personal, deep part of every one of us that we keep to ourselves,” he said.

Is nothing sacred anymore?

The newspaper, the Maariv, reportedly got the note from—get this—a Jewish seminary student who had removed it from the wall “immediately after Obama left,“ according to the Associated Press.

Seminary student? Can you say EXPULSION?

Once in possession of the note, newspaper staffers morphed into CSI-type investigators: They undertook a handwriting analysis, ultimately concluding that the writing on the note “appeared to match” the note Obama wrote Wednesday in a guest book at Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, and concluded that it HAD to be Obama’s prayer, especially since it was “written on stationery from the King David Hotel, where Obama stayed while in Israel.“

This is the most despicable, inexcusable invasion of privacy that I can remember in politics.

And that’s saying something.

Sometimes, as that seminary student so aptly demonstrated, people do stupid things. They have no boundaries or respect for other people’s human dignity (think paparazzi). In those cases, it’s up to the media to enforce its own ethical boundaries—something that was completely lost on the editors of the Maariv.

By publishing Obama’s prayer, the Maariv failed Barack Obama, the Jewish community and the institution of journalism.

It is despicable.