Taking statements out of context is a constant wound

And makes for sore tempers...

Matthew Yglesias:

Barack Obama, speaking to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, offered a sensible reply to a sensible-but-sensitive question:

JG: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?

BO: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable.

GOP Reps. John Boehner and Eric Cantor decided to prove they studied hard in the school of misreading and misrepresenting:

It is truly disappointing that Senator Obama called Israel a ‘constant wound,’ ‘constant sore,’ and that it ‘infect[s] all of our foreign policy.’ These sorts of words and characterizations are the words of a politician with a deep misunderstanding of the Middle East and an innate distrust of Israel.

Eliding here is the difference between calling Israel, the country, a sore and calling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a sore.