The Rot Inside American Jewish Organizations. My new essay in @Commentary on how groups turned a blind eye to antisemitism masquerading as ‘anti-Zionism’ to protect the left and now can’t contain the damage from the predictable explosion of antisemitism commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-r…
Two of these groups are led by ex-Obama political figures. One is Halie Soifer, who heads the Jewish Democratic Council of America, a group whose vulgar politicking after Jewish tragedies is unlike anything the US Jewish community has seen, and is only getting worse.
The second ex-Obama-led group is the Anti-Defamation League, now headed by Jonathan Greenblatt, who for years gave Sarsour, Omar and others a pass while pushing the lie that antisemitism was a right wing phenomenon. The damage that lie has done is incalculable.
The New Israel Fund is launching a competitor philanthropy to the Jewish Federations b/c JFNA wouldn’t give to the anti-Zionist IfNotNow. As Jonathan Tobin put it, it’s “an attempt by the Jewish left to topple the basis on which Jewish philanthropy in this country exists.”
What Tobin said is true: this is the attempted destruction of the system of Jewish philanthropy in America. And they’re getting major help from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has elevated INN through cynical tokenism as a shield against her attacks on Israel.
In the same manner, Rashida Tlaib has elevated Jewish Voice for Peace, which has been one of the loudest propagators of the conspiracy theory held by the Jersey City shooters who went on an antisemitic massacre—that Jews control cops to kill African-Americans.
Sarsour is an even more prominent pusher of that blood-drenched antisemitic conspiracy theory. And Sarsour, Tlaib, Omar And AOC are all key parts of the Bernie Sanders campaign, which US Jewish groups refuse to criticize.
The Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism vociferously opposed security funding to shuls on ‘constitutional’ grounds. But RAC dropped its opposition after Pittsburgh. Didn’t want the p.r. headache—the constitutional concerns were always a lie. How many Jews had to die first?
Meanwhile ADL refused to back security funding for Jewish institutions after Pittsburgh. Such a principled organization—even though that ‘principle’ has been debunked and rejected as nonsense, hence federal security funding continues. (Trump increased it.)
The Israel Policy Forum was created at the behest of Yitzhak Rabin—yet the IPF came out strongly against Trump’s peace plan because it was too favorable to Israel. This despite the fact that Rabin also backed protecting the Jordan Valley and a united Jerusalem.
J Street and the Jewish Democratic Council of America also came out hard against the plan because it was too protective of Israel’s security. Same for Jewish former US ambassadors to Israel, all involved with communal groups.
Soifer’s JDCA attacked Trump’s antisemitism executive order giving civil rights protections to Jews on campus—even though the crucial determination on it came from Obama when he president. You know, the administration she worked for.
Please read the whole thing, I look forward to your perspective on a genuine crisis for American Jewry: its organizations are rotting away because they’re prioritizing partisan politics over the safety and security of Jews.
