White House Rejects Reid-Lott Comparison Over Racially Tinged Remarks

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs brushed away suggestions that controversial remarks made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) could be compared to a suggestion made by former Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) that the U.S. would be better off if now-deceased Senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) had been elected on a segregationist platform.

“I don’t understand how one draws the analogy to a former Majority Leader expressing his support for the defeat of Harry Truman in 1948 so that Strom Thurmond would be president running on a states’ rights ticket,” Gibbs said during a press conference Monday. “To draw that analogy strains any intellectual enterprise or any ... reality.”

The Press Secretary seemed to take a swipe at Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who made the comparison on a talk show Sunday.

“I understand what people have to say ... to get themselves on T.V.,” Gibbs remarked. “I suggest they spend about twenty seconds reading a little history”

Reid reportedly told reporters amid the 2008 Presidential campaign that then-Senator Barack Obama would benefit from being “light-skinned” and having “no negro dialect.” The president accepted Reid’s subsequent apology.

“The President didn’t take offense personally, but believes ... that this is an unfortunate choice of words,” Gibbs said.

Lott’s comments were made during a ceremony for Strom Thurmond’s birthday in 2002. The Mississippi Republican said that if Thurmond had won the presidency, the U.S. would not “have had all these problems over all these years.” Lott resigned from his leadership post after the remarks prompted a wave of controversy.

Gibbs declined to speculate on how Reid could have more appropriately phrased his statement.

Knesset Member: Israel is racist

Random beatings of Palestinian-Israeli's not being investigated by police and recent mass lay-offs of train workers for employees who never served in the military, have resulted in a a Palestinian-Israeli member of Israel's parliament calling the country racist.

“Our main demand is equality, full equality in the framework of full citizenship of the Palestinian people,” said Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Israeli Knesset.

The Palestinian minority – 20 percent of Israel’s population – is often one that goes undocumented because the West is more concerned in the political outcome than the human cost, said Aida Touma-Sleiman, director of Women Against Violence, an organization that advocates Palestinian women’s rights.

“This kind of racism is slipping and going from the institutional level into the public level into the ordinary people,” said Touma-Sleiman, adding that the last 10 years have brought to power strong right-wing politicians in the government who have strong inclinations against unity between Palestinians and Israel.

“If Israel wants to establish a true democracy their is no way to escape the fact of dealing with the Palestinian minority within Israel,” said Touma-Sleiman.