Selecting Dots – The Art of Misrepresentation

By Josh Pasek

The Republican Jewish Coalition wants to tell everyone that they are “connecting the dots” when it comes to Obama and Israel.  They try to stress that what they are doing is putting together relevant facts that need to be “considered” rather than dismissed.  But when the RJC seeks to examine a record like Obama’s they never talk about the whole picture.  They ignore Obama’s voting record on Israel-related bills, disregard Obama’s actual mideast advisors like Dan Shapiro and Dannis McDonough, and make bold and often unsourced claims about Obama’s viewpoints [1].

It is no surprise that the RJC can find a couple of dots and weave them into a story that sounds incriminating.  Indeed, we could easily do the same with John McCain:

• McCain actively recruited the support of the controversial pastor John Hagee [2], who claimed that the Jews were at fault for both Jesus’ death and the Holocaust [3].
• Fred Malek, the man charged with counting the number of Jews in the Bureau of Labor statistics for Nixon [4], is a national finance co-chairman for McCain, who declared him “an inspiring public servant who has served our nation well” [5].
• McCain failed to support the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act which would have authorized state and local governments to divest from companies that invest in Iran [S.1430, thomas.loc.gov].  He similarly opposed a bill restricting business ties with Iran [6].
• McCain suggested in an interview with Haaretz that he would dispatch “Brent Scowcroft or James Baker” to deal with Israeli-Palestinian issues and that Israel should make “concessions and sacrifices” [7].
• Another McCain advisor, Thomas Loeffler, only left the campaign earlier this year when it became obvious that he was a critical lobbyist on behalf of Saudi Arabia [8].

How should we interpret these facts?  We could “connect the dots” like the RJC and start telling American Jews that McCain has bought into an eschatological vision, wants to compromise Israel’s security, or wants to keep tabs on all the Jews in government.  But we know that these very disturbing facts are not the whole story of John McCain.  It’s a shame that the RJC is only willing to pursue the dots that fulfill their ideological goals.  Indeed, the bigger picture tells a very different tale.

McCain Uses Outdated RJC Talking Points at AIPAC

By Josh Pasek

John McCain went to AIPAC this week in another attempt to distort Barack Obama’s record on Iran.  In typical RJC style, McCain was careful to conveniently ignore certain facts about the Middle East and Obama’s policy. We outline a number of these misleading statements below:

 

• “We must apply the full force of law to prevent business dealings with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.  I was pleased to join Senators Lieberman and Kyl in backing an amendment calling for the designation of the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization responsible for killing American troops in Iraq.  Over three quarters of the Senate supported this obvious step, but not Senator Obama.” [1]

Actually, Obama signed on as a co-sponsor to the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007 (S.970), which had the exact language that McCain claimed Obama had objected to (“The Secretary of State should designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act”).  What was the difference?  A section of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment referred to by McCain (S.AMDT.3017) also suggests that a continued US presence in Iraq is necessary to counterbalance Iran, a proposition that Obama has actively rejected [2].

• We should privatize the sanctions against Iran by launching a worldwide divestment campaign [3].

McCain again fails to note that Obama sponsored the Iran

 Sanctions Enabling Act (S.1430) and that AIPAC supported the bill as one of its major efforts in 2007.  Perhaps this omission stems from the fact that his name remains completely unconnected with the legislation [4].

 

McCain also criticized Obama by stating that talking to our enemies is a bad idea.  While we agree with McCain that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are extremely unlikely to come around, that does not mean all dialogue in the Middle East is wrong. Indeed, Israel mus

t believe the same thing as it recently publicized its peace talks with Syria [5]. We at RJCWatch are still waiting for the RJC and McCain to call Israel out for that move.