More from Sarah Palin:
By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press Writer
LEESBURG, Virginia (AP) _ Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is meeting with the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. as part of a three-city tour in Virginia.
Monday’s meeting preceded a rally Palin is holding in Leesburg, west of Washington, D.C. Palin greeted ambassador Sallai Meridor and apologized for not being able to meet with him sooner. She told the ambassador: “We look forward to … working with your Jewish agency.”
Sallai Meridor served as the Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization from 1999-2005. I wonder if someone on Palin’s staff got it wrong, or if Palin thinks that Israel’s ambassador to the US is also the chairman of the Jewish Agency; or that Israel is the Jewish Agency, or if Palin just has so many things on her mind that she’s mixed things up a bit.
The current head of the Jewish Agency is Ze’ev Bielsky.
UPDATE: AP JUST RELEASED AN UPDATED VERSION OF THE STORY, WHERE PALIN’S EARLIER REFERENCE HAS BEEN ENTIRELY CHANGED. IT NOW READS:
Palin, Republican John McCain’s running mate, also tried to burnish her foreign policy credentials by meeting here with Israel’s ambassador to the United States, apologizing for the session’s delay.
“I look forward to hearing about your work with the Jewish Agency and all the plans that we have,” Palin told Ambassador Sallai Meridor. “We’ll be working together.”
She was apparently referring to the Jewish Agency for Israel, an organization of which Meridor was formerly chairman.
So, either AP got the quote totally wrong first time round and then released an updated, corrected version; or they got it right, and then changed it when somebody figured out the mistake that Palin made.
By their third update [writethru in professional jargon] the first quote was still there:
BC-NA–US-Elections-Palin, 3rd Ld-Writethru,0515ยค
“We look forward to … working with your Jewish agency,” she told Ambassador Sallai Meridor just before her speech outside Washington.
BC-NA–US-Elections-Palin, 4th Ld-Writethru,0529
“I look forward to hearing about your work with the Jewish Agency and all the plans that we have,” Palin told Ambassador Sallai Meridor. “We’ll be working together.”
It could very well be that Palin was misquoted by the AP reporter, but I’m withholding judgment on that until I get confirmation.
In any case, Gil Tamari from Channel 10 just reported that the Israeli embassy wanted to keep the meeting a secret, as a meeting with an official ambassador this close to the elections could be seen as an endorsement. But Palin’s officials told reporters right away.
