U.S. President Barack Obama said he's hurt and angered by people who say supporters of the Iran nuclear deal are "anti-Semitic."
In response to a question from Forward, a Jewish newspaper, Obama said "of course" he's bothered by such accusations.
"There's not a smidgeon of evidence for it, other than the fact that there have been times when I've disagreed with a particular Israeli government's position." The current Israeli government strongly opposes the Iran deal.
The president added that he's "probably more offended when I hear members of my administration who themselves are Jewish being attacked."
Obama's Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, who is Jewish, was heckled this summer at a conference in New York when he defended the nuclear deal. Dan Shapiro, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, has received "threatening letters related to the Iran deal," a U.S. official said.
Obama was also referring to charges such as Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's assertion that signing the nuclear deal was like "marching the Israelis to the door of the oven," a reference to the Holocaust that the president found "objectionable," the White House said.