Is Obama Backpedaling About Jerusalem?

This morning, the Jewish World Review reported that Obama had backpedaled after his historic statement that Jerusalem will always be Israel's capital and must NEVER be divided. THE JWR quoted Obama's comments:

On Thursday, when queried by CNN, Obama said he was misunderstood.

"Well," Obama explained, "obviously, it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations."

Except that, conveniently, JWR forgot to quote the rest of Obama's statement, as quoted by Reuters. The rest of the statement was:

Asked if he opposed any division of Jerusalem, Obama said: "As a practical matter, it would be very difficult to execute. And I think that it is smart for us to -- to work through a system in which everybody has access to the extraordinary religious sites in Old Jerusalem but that Israel has a legitimate claim on that city."

In other words, Obama doesn't think it can be divided, and probably still doesn't think it should be divided. He did not backtrack. He did say it would be up to negotiators and their respective governments to ultimately decide Jerusalem's "final status." And that was the politically correct thing to say and probably didn’t go anywhere near as far as the Arabs would have liked, which would have been to flatly state that Jerusalem SHOULD be divided and that East Jerusalem WILL be the Palestinian capital.

It seems, as a matter of principle, Obama believes quite firmly Jerusalem MUST remain undivided, as he stated quite clearly this week to AIPAC. The evidence of this is that he did NOT come out and say what the Arabs hoped he would say, which is the Jerusalem SHOULD be divided. Instead, the worst one can infer from Obama's statement is that Jerusalem should be open to all, not that it should be a divided city. Frankly, I think this makes Obama a STRONGER supporter of Israel than any president in the recent past.

It also seems, as a matter of principle, that the Jewish Right Wing will do ANYTHING to make Obama look bad to Jews and Israel. It's very disappointing. And all in the name of what? Of keeping those in power who have worked so hard to screw up this country, its reputation, its standing in the world, and its relationship with Israel?

I emailed this post to the JWR this morning with the following comments:

This article is VERY disappointing and misleading, and to be honest, I'm getting kind of sick of your Obama bashing. While Lashon Hara is not explicitly prohibited against non-Jews, the Chofetz Chaim still warns to stay away from it. And the way you represented Obama’s stance was pure Lashon Hara because you did NOT print his ENTIRE statement.

Then, at the bottom of the email, I stated:

You people need to stop knee-jerking and actually do your research before making stupid statements like the one in your article. You also need to quote a person’s entire statement instead of misrepresenting what the person says.

I really am sick of this sewage that comes from these people. It's disgusting.

UPDATE: Article's author responded, but the response wasn't for publication. Wanna know why? Because the answer was a complete non-answer, he ignored my central objection, that he ignored Obama's entire statement, and he focused instead on whether his article was actually Lashon Hara. He completely failed to actually acknowledge his mistake. Pretty sad.