RJC Presents Loaded Challenges to Barack Obama

By Matthew Rozsa

In preparation for Senator Obama’s trip to a Florida synagogue, the Republican Jewish Coalition presented a list of three questions to pose to the soon-to-be presidential candidate. RJCWatch has decided to address these challenges (as well as expose the manipulative political maneuvering behind them) in a three-part series. Now to the first question:

In an interview, you called for a summit of Muslim nations, including Iran and Syria, but excluding Israel. Why?

The answer to this inquiry is fairly obvious. The summit in question is meant to open dialogue between the United States and Islamic countries. As such, Israel (which has a predominantly Jewish population) would not by definition fall into the category of nations with which Obama would be conversing. This in itself does not discriminate Israel in the slightest. Indeed, one could only make a case for discrimination against the Jewish state if it turned out that Obama was planning on talking with these nations on matters affecting Israel and that he was then not going to included Israel’s input before making relevant policies. However, there is no evidence, that this is the case. That makes this question a loaded one; RJC is implying that Israel’s exclusion from a summit of Muslim countries indicates anti-Israel bias, when in fact his reasons for not including Israel are perfectly legitimate (as well as obvious) and no other indication of anti-Israel predilections can be found.

Conquering False Fears About Obama and Israel

By Salomon Kalach

Senator Obama has been campaigning in Florida meeting with Jewish communities to convince them of his genuine support for Jews and Israel. It’s not an easy job. Misinformation and stereotypes have hardened and it will be an uphill battle, especially now that the Democratic party is still divided with the nominating contest still in progress.

But the battle becomes more than unfair when groups like the Republican Jewish Coalition cross the line and start using spin to scare people from sticking to their traditional political party. It definitely crosses the line when they use Israel in order to snatch away some Jews, especially when all three candidates are strong supporters of Israel. It crosses the line when President Bush addresses the Israeli Knesset and hints, not so subtly, that Obama is an appeaser. (Right, I forgot how his cowboy foreign policy of “with us or against us” has been really successful in creating a safer world and making the U.S. be more respected around the world.)

Can these groups really not come up with any other reason why Republican nominee John McCain would be a better president without bringing up Israel? Is their only hope scaring people away from the democratic party by tapping into one of the most sensitive corners of the Jewish psyche? If that’s the case, that is pretty telling.

But well, since they do want to focus on Israel, I decided to contribute my two cents by fighting back and trying to convince people why Obama not only poses no danger to Israel but could also be great. I wrote an op-ed on the Jerusalem Post on the issue (click here to read it). You can also read Obama’s interview with Jeffrey Goldberg here.

Huffington Post: McCain Backer Hagee Said Hitler Was Fulfilling God’s Will

McCain Backer Hagee Said Hitler Was Fulfilling God’s Will (AUDIO)
By Sam Stein
May 21, 2008 01:24 PM

John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God’s behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a “hunter,” sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God’s will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.

Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: “‘And they the hunters should hunt them,’ that will be the Jews. ‘From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.’ If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can’t see that.”

He goes on: “Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said ‘I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.’ So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust.

“Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says — Jeremiah writing — ‘They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,’ meaning there’s no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don’t let your heart be offended. I didn’t write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel.”

The sermon, which was first posted by Bruce Wilson on his site, Talk To Action, adds another element to Hagee’s controversial stance on the state and history of Israel. It also may provide a new round of political headaches for McCain who has admitted that seeking out Hagee’s endorsement was a mistake, but still declared himself “glad to have” it.

A spokesman for Hagee confirmed the authenticity of the remark, which can be found at around the 1:08 mark of his sermon “Battle For Jerusalem.”

Since McCain secured the endorsement, both his campaign and Hagee have been pressed to explain a series of derogatory remarks the Reverend made about the Catholic Church, including his reference to the institution as “the Great Whore.”

Hagee has since apologized for those remarks. But his interpretation of the role of the Nazis could be harder to dismiss, in part because McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are expected to compete heavily over the Jewish vote come the general election, in part because McCain has said he admires Hagee’s commitment to Israel, but mainly because similar theories have found their way into much of the Reverend’s writings.

As Wilson notes, in his 2006 book “Jerusalem Countdown”, Hagee proposed the theory that “anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves — the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive.” He also wrote that “Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews.”

Hagee is considered, in many political circles, to be one of the most passionate and strident supporters of Israel. He has spoken at AIPAC conferences and leads the evangelical group Christians United for Israel. But his views of the country, while possibly shared by others in the evangelical community, can be, at times, startling. Holding to the belief that Armageddon will come to earth following the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Israel, Hagee has advocated an aggressive war against Iran and has opposed any Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank.

McCain, at least in the public record, has sought to thread the needle with the Hagee association: distancing himself from the controversial comment while reaping the political benefits of the Reverend’s endorsement. Appearing on ABC’s “‘This Week” in late April 2008, McCain criticized Hagee’s past remarks on the Catholic Church, but said that, “I admire and appreciate his advocacy for the state of Israel, the independence of the state of Israel.”

Smacking Against History’s Window: The Kevin James Incident

By Matthew Rozsa

I find that every so often an event occurs in politics that reminds me of some darkly comic incident from my childhood. Such was the case when I found a clip of Chris Matthews exposing the astonishing ignorance of a conservative talk show host named Kevin James on MSNBC’s “Hardball”. Here is an excerpt from that clip, in which James – who had been vigorously claiming that Barack Obama favors a policy of “appeasement” and was comparing him to history’s most famous appeaser, Neville Chamberlain – was suddenly asked by Matthews to explain what precisely Chamberlain did wrong.

Chris: I want to do a little history check on you—what did Neville Chamberlain do wrong in 1939? What did he do wrong?

Kevin: It all goes back to appeasement. It’s the key term.

Chris: No, what did he do, tell me what he did?

Kevin: It’s the key term.

Chris: You have to answer this question. What did he do?

Kevin: It’s the same thing, it puts it all…

Chris: Well, tell me what he did?

Kevin: It’s appeasement.

Chris: What did Chamberlain do wrong?

Kevin: His actions, his actions enabled, energized, legitimized…

Chris: What did Chamberlain do?

Kevin: It’s the exact same thing.

Chris: No stop, Kevin. I’m not going to continue with this interview unless you answer what that thing is. What did Chamberlain do in ‘39, tell me? ‘38?

Kevin: Chris, it’s the exact same thing alright?

Chris: What did he do? <Yelling> What did he do?… You don’t know, do you? You don’t know what Neville Chamberlain did!

Kevin: Yeah, he was an appeaser, Chris….

Chris: You don’t know what you’re talking about, Kevin. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Tell me what Chamberlain did wrong.

Kevin: Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser, Chris. Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser, all right? […]

Chris: I’ve been sitting here five minutes asking you to say what the president was referring to in 1938 at Munich.

Kevin: I don’t know.

Chris: You don’t know, thank you.

Watching this reminded me of a time when I was in tenth grade history and a bird flew into the classroom window. At first our class was stunned by the unexpected sound, but soon we couldn’t help finding ourselves staring with a mixture of horror and awe as the poor creature rose from the ground, floated in the air for a few seconds, and proceeded to smash against the window again. Before we could absorb what we had just seen, the creature picked itself up, stared at the dust-coated reflective surface with what can only be described as avian determination, and slammed its carcass against the glass for a third consecutive time. The bird then made at least a dozen more efforts, each with more vigor than the one preceding it, while the rest of us argued as to what we could do to stop the poor animal from torturing itself. Fortunately, the nineteenth time seemed to be the charm, prompting the bird to fly away in recognition of the fact that the barrier through which it wished to traverse was simply too strong. Seeing Kevin James debate Chris Matthews was like witnessing a re-enactment of this event, with James playing the bird and Matthews playing the window.

Mean-spirited analogies aside, there are actually some very sober implications to the Kevin James scandal (and if that man has any sense of shame, he should feel nothing short of scandalized by his performance). Throughout history, Jews have been the victims of persecution born not only from active hatred, but from selfish indifference. When Neville Chamberlain whet Hitler’s imperial avarice by giving him Czechoslovakian territory in 1938, he knowingly condemned the thousands of Jews living in that region to lives of oppression and degradation (which eventually culminated in death). Although Chamberlain’s defenders may point to the fact that the British Prime Minister’s motives were undoubtedly driven from a desire to maintain peaceable relations between his own country and the Third Reich, what they would ignore is that it was Chamberlain’s very willingness to sell out the Jews in the name of the interests of his own country that made his deed particularly monstrous. Regardless of whether Chamberlain was personally an anti-Semite, his indifference to the anti-Semitic actions and aspirations of Hitler were directly responsible for a genocide that eventually led to the deaths of six million Jews. From this we learned a lesson – that the policy of appeasement (“to buy off an aggressor by concessions usually at the sacrifice of principles”) (1) is as immoral as it is ultimately unsuccessful.

This lesson is one that we must never forget. At the same time, it is equally important that we not allow demagogues to cheapen this lesson, by manipulating and warping it to serve their own ends. Men like Kevin James and George W. Bush, who use one of history’s greatest tragedies like a club with which to bludgeon their ideological opponents, are just as dangerous as any number of would-be appeasers.

The transcript was taken from two websites:

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/15/kevin-james-appeaser/ 

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/15/matthews-rips-right-wing-talkie-kevin-james-because-he-doesnt-know-neville-chamberlain/.

A full video clip of the more hilarious parts of this incident can be found at http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/15/kevin-james-appeaser/.

Anti-Semites in a Presidential Campaign, 2008

By Matthew Rozsa

Did you know that a prominent clergyman supporting one of the major presidential candidates has hostile feelings toward Jews? Here is a sample:

It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day… Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come…. it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people. (1)

You’re probably thinking that that observational gem came from the mouth of Jeremiah Wright, the wayward former reverend of Senator Barack Obama. Well, guess again. Those words were uttered by John Hagee, the founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio and a prominent televangelist. Considering how frequently members of the Christian Right express disdain for the Jewish community, the fact that Hagee would make these remarks should not come as a surprise to perceptive followers of the American political scene. What should cause more alarm, however, is the fact that Hagee is an outspoken supporter of a presidential candidate, Senator John McCain (2).

Those who defend Hagee (and through him McCain) argue that the Arizona Senator cannot be held accountable for the views of those who happen to endorse him, and point to Hagee’s long-standing advocacy for the Zionist cause as a sign of his affinity for the Jewish people. What these arguments fail to take into account, however, is the fact that John McCain actively sought Hagee’s endorsement (3), and that Hagee’s support of Israel is based not in a conviction that Jews have the right to a homeland, but rather in the belief that the Jewish state’s existence will usher in Doomsday, an event that will end rather poorly for everyone “but those who have trusted in Jesus” (4).

If John Hagee were the only disreputable pastor who had endorsed John McCain, that would be bad enough. Unfortunately, McCain has also received the endorsement of Rod Parsley, another televangelist and the founder of World Harvest Church, a Pentecostal Megachurch in Columbus, Ohio. While the venom Parsley spews against Jews may not be as overt as Hagee’s, he can nonetheless be found on YouTube shouting bombastic rhetoric that sounds remarkably similar to the coded Jew-baiting of infamous libelous tracts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (5). Rather than denounce such a man, however, McCain has instead praised him as “one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide…” (6).

John Hagee and Rod Parsley are not the only prominent figures associated with John McCain whose backgrounds may give Jews pause. Take Fred Malek. Hired on April 3, 2007 as McCain’s national finance co-chairman, Malek became notorious as President Richard Nixon’s “Jew-counter” – i.e., a man who, due to Nixon’s conviction that a “Jewish cabal” in the government was skewing data to damage his administration’s economic image, was assigned by the President in 1971 to tabulate how many Jews served in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Malek followed orders, and of the thirteen Jews he counted, two were demoted. According to one of Malek’s victims, all of the Jews whose names appeared on the list felt demeaned by their own government and country (7). This story, when revealed in 1988, caused Fred Malek to resign from a top post at the Republican National Committee. It did not, however, prevent Senator McCain from appointing Malek to a high-ranking position in his campaign (8).

There is a fourth individual associated with John McCain’s presidential bid who made some disturbing comments pertaining to the Jewish people. When discussing the idea of America having a non-Christian president, this man said “I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles … personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith.” This person then added, “But that doesn’t mean that I’m sure that someone who is Muslim would not make a good president.” How can someone whose comment so blatantly excludes Jews from the corridors of presidential power be allowed to work for a major presidential campaign? It’s easy, when the man uttering those comments is the candidate himself, John McCain (9). One has to wonder whether more attention would have been paid to such a deplorable statement had it come from Barack Obama.

The fact of the matter is that anti-Semitism has an unfortunate habit of popping up on both sides of the aisle in American politics – from the far right wing Nazi apologists like Pat Buchanan to the insinuations of Jewish conspiracy by James Moran, neither party is entirely free of history’s oldest form of bigotry. That is why it is the obligation of all decent human beings, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, to draw attention to the pernicious prejudice of anti-Semitism wherever it exists, so that it can be rooted out and condemned along with racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Catholicism, and other forms of intolerance, all of which are incompatible with the fundamental premises of democratic thought. The purpose of this article is not to claim that one candidate is worse than any of the others, but to make sure that the spotlight which has shined thus far disproportionately on one be more evenly distributed.

I think it would be appropriate to end this article as it began – with a quote from the Reverend John Hagee. In this one, he claims that G-d wanted the Holocaust to happen so that the Jews would return to Israel.

God says in Jeremiah 16 – “Behold I will bring them the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers” – that would be Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – “Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them” – that will be the Jews – “from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.” If that doesn’t describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust… you can’t see that.
So think about this – I will send fishers and I will send hunters. A fisher is someone who entices you with a bait…
Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew that at the turn of the 19th century said – “This land is our land, God wants us to live there”. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said, “I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel”. So few went, Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the Holocaust.
Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter.
And the Bible says – Jeremiah righty? – “They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks”, meaning, there’s no place to hide.
And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn’t write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, “My top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come BACK to the land of Israel”. (10)

Plain and Simple – RJC Must Stop the Smear

By Marshall Spevak and Josh Pasek

The Republican Jewish Coalition needs to stop the smear campaign they are running against Senator Barack Obama.  In an interview the Atlantic, Barack Obama repeatedly reiterated his support for Israel and his belief that Israel’s enemies are America’s  enemies (1).  But in typical Republican Jewish Coalition fashion, the RJC released a press statement accusing Senator Obama of not standing with Israel against Hamas and question him on his “questionable grasp of foreign policy” (2). Time and time again Senator Obama has proven that he understands that in order to achieve peace you need not to just talk to your friends, but talk to your enemies.  Indeed, in that very interview, Obama said: “I welcome the Muslim world’s accurate perception that I am interested in opening up dialogue and interested in moving away from the unilateral policies of George Bush, but nobody should mistake that for a softer stance when it comes to terrorism or when it comes to protecting Israel’s security or making sure that the alliance is strong and firm.”  The sentiment is well reflected in a statement of Harry Truman’s: “The United States is not so strong, the final triumph of the democratic ideal is not so inevitable that we can ignore what the world thinks of us or our record.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition is making quite a stretch in trying to turn a clear and decisive denunciation of Hamas and the statement that “we should not be dealing with them until they recognize Israel, renounce terrorism, and abide by previous agreements” (3) into “excus[ing] the inexcusable actions of anti-American militant jihadists” (4).  We don’t think many other individuals reading the Atlantic article will come to the same conclusion as the RJC.

Electoral Prediction: It’s Not That Simple

By Josh Pasek

Republican Jews have begun to gloat about new Gallup numbers that show McCain losing to Obama among Jews by only a 30-point margin “If the election were held today.”  What they don’t seem to notice is those critical qualifiers at the end.  While Republicans have a single candidate who emerged unscathed from a clean and quick primary, Democrats are still in the middle of their primary season.  And both candidates have been relatively strongly hit.  So what does it mean that more Jewish voters are responding that they might choose McCain in a general election?  The answer is not much.

David Moore, a former senior editor at Gallup, explained in a Stanford University lecture last autumn that the “if the election were held today” language can be both confusing and biasing (1).  It, along with follow-up questions, strongly encourage undecided voters to choose a side often long before they are ready to do so.  In general election polling, this kind of technique usually inflates the number of voters for each candidate.  While only 30% of voters make up their mind by a month from the election, they often split somewhat similarly to the 70% of undecided voters who, if they truly had to make a choice “today,” will give a response — however considered.  In a primary, however, we can expect the influence of this type of polling to be much more biased.  The survey technique is almost guaranteed to inflate McCain’s numbers as compared to either Democrat.

New “I Used to be a Democrat” Ads – Is the RJC Out of Former Democrats?

By Josh Pasek

The Republican Jewish Coalition has released a new series of ads in their misleading “I Used to be a Democrat” campaign.  In rather impressive form, they sought out a number of well-known Jewish neo-conservatives for this series of advertisements — namely Ari Fleischer and Dennis Prager (1).  While both claim to have once been Democrats, the RJC’s own biography of Fleischer notes his strong connections to the Republican party dating back to 1983, only one year after he graduated from Middlebury College (2), and Prager has been broadcasting his neo-conservative Jewish radio show for over 25 years and is a regular columnist for Townhall.com, a website which lauds itself as “the first conservative web community” (3).

We at RJCWatch have one really simple question for the RJC: Are there really so few Democrats becoming Republicans today that you need to look to neo-conservatives who switched affiliation in the 1980’s?

RJC Distorts Results of Gallup Poll

By Matt Rozsa

A recent report from Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matt Brooks distorts the results of a new Gallup Poll:

“The just released Gallup poll of Jewish voters is another important indicator of the ongoing troubles Barack Obama has with Jewish voters. In the poll of Jewish voters (conducted April 1-30), it showed Obama getting only 61% of the Jewish vote against John McCain (32%). By comparison, in 2004, John Kerry received 75% of the Jewish vote and George W. Bush received 25%. The recent polling numbers demonstrate Obama’s weakness among Jewish voters. This data comes on the heels of the exit poll data from the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania. Hillary Clinton beat Obama among Jewish voters 62% – 38%,” said Brooks. “These results show that the American Jewish community is troubled by what they know of Barack Obama, his views and his positions. The RJC remains confident that John McCain will continue the trend of the GOP making inroads among Jewish voters.”

In fact, when Gallup analyzed its own poll, it came to the conclusion that “Barack Obama is faring better than might be expected among Jewish voters, beating John McCain in Gallup Poll Daily general-election matchups.” Elaborating on this, Gallup explains that “rather than declining between March and April, support for Obama versus McCain among Jewish voters has increased slightly, from a 23-point margin in favor of Obama (58% to 35%) to a 29-point margin (61% to 32%).” Finally, it is worth noting that, according to Gallup, “Jewish voters nationwide are nearly as likely to say they would vote for Obama if he were the Democratic nominee running against the Republican McCain (61%), as to say they would vote for Clinton (66%).” – Gallup Poll

Considering how honesty is often a rare commodity in election seasons, it is unfortunate that the RJC would put such a deceptive spin on Gallup’s statistics (to make McCain seem more successful with Jewish vote that the reality shows), particularly one that flies in the face of Gallup’s own interpretation of its findings.

What Are We Watching?

By Josh Pasek

Every year, the Republic Jewish Coalition (RJC) shows time and time again that it puts partisan interests above Jewish concerns and that they relentlessly attack anyone with whom they disagree, sometimes using only half-truths and drastically misleading statements. As Jews, we have long since known the dangers of misinformation. Indeed, as the targets of the blood libel and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, we should know better than to spread half-truths and outright lies.

There is perhaps no better example than the RJC’s often conflicted relationship with Joe Lieberman. When Joe Lieberman was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2000, the RJC took out a full-page ad in the New York Times attacking him and attempting to link him to Louis Farrakhan (New York Times. October 5, 2000). Yet when Lieberman was challenged in the Connecticut primary by Ned Lamont in 2006, the RJC quickly used the opportunity to attack the Democratic Party and claim that “America and Israel [were] worse off” for his loss (http://www.rjchq.org/media/pics/lieberman.ad.jpg).

Republican Jewish Coalition Watch plays the critical role of documenting the inaccuracies and hypocrisies of the RJC. For each advertising campaign and email the RJC puts out, we attempt to catalog both accurate statements and misleading remarks. We attempt to document these statements by referring to non-partisan neutral sources.

Republican Jewish Coalition Watch is a project of the Young Democrats of America Jewish Caucus (YDAJC; http://www.jewishcaucus.org). YDAJC is an organization dedicated to building the young Democratic Jewish political community. YDAJC seeks to engage young democrats in issues of particular Jewish concern and to invigorate young Jews to engage in politics from a progressive Democratic perspective. YDAJC accomplishes this task through a combination of education, awareness, and social interaction, as well as political advocacy on issues of Jewish concern.