Posted on 02/18/2005 7:37:02 AM PST by SJackson
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean's election Saturday as chairman of the Democratic National Committee has prompted a fierce fight between two partisan Jewish groups about Dean's record on Israel and how it could impact Jewish support for the Democratic Party.
The Republican Jewish Coalition, a grassroots group of Jewish Republicans, published an advertisement in US newspapers this week suggesting Dean supported Hamas. A photo of Hamas suicide bombers, camouflaged in white and wearing explosive belts – alongside a child wrapped in an explosive belt – is topped with a quote from Howard Dean from September 2003, which reads: "DNC Chairman Howard Dean says: 'It's not our place to take sides.'"
The ad then lists quotations from Democrats who criticized Dean in the past. Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, who ran against Dean in the Democratic presidential primary, is quoted as saying that Dean's statements "break a 50-year record in which presidents, Republican and Democrat, members of Congress of both parties have supported our relationship with Israel based on shared values."
A quotation is taken from a letter to Dean from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, also from September 2003, which criticized Dean's call for an "evenhanded" approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "It is unacceptable for the US to be 'evenhanded' on these fundamental issues," she wrote.
And Jay Footlik, John Kerry's liaison to the Jewish community during the presidential campaign, is quoted as saying last month that if Dean were elected, "a lot of mainstream, middle-of-the-road, centrist, Jewish Democrats would be very turned off and concerned and would be left wondering whether they have a home in the Democratic Party."
During the presidential primary campaign, Dean frequently stressed to Jewish audiences that his wife, Judith Steinberg Dean, was Jewish, in an attempt to signal that he would be supportive of issues of concern to the Jewish community. But he alienated some pro-Israel Democrats when he said he would pursue an "evenhanded approach" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and other comments that pro-Israel advocates deemed hostile to the cause.
Asked if he would oppose the Israeli policy of selectively killing leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups, Dean referred to members of Hamas as "soldiers" in the Israeli-Palestinian "war," but then gave a lukewarm endorsement of the practice saying, "it seems to me that they are going to be casualties if they are going to make war."
After being criticized by Israel supporters for his evenhanded comment, Dean noted, "I never use the word anymore. I've discovered that 'evenhandedly' is a code word to certain people who think that is being unfair and I don't want to ever repeat that word again." He then said that terror must end before Israel should withdraw from the West Bank.
Abraham Foxman, national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League, chastised the RJC for trying to make Israel a partisan issue and described the photo in the ad as "over the top."
"First, I just don't understand why they're dealing with the past. He doesn't 'say' ['It's not our place to take sides.'] He said it. So it's inaccurate to say 'says.' He has taken those words back," Foxman said.
"Second, the photograph is over the top. And three, I don't know why they are playing the Israel issue. If you look at the Israel part of the platforms of the parties, they are mirror images of one another I don't think it's productive."
The National Jewish Democratic Council, a rival group to the RJC, called the RJC effort "a vicious smear campaign against [Dean] within the American Jewish community – a campaign that dangerously politicizes support for Israel," and "blatantly mischaracterizes Howard Dean's record of support for a strong US-Israel relationship."
DNC Vice Chair Susan Turnbull, speaking on behalf of the DNC, said, "Howard Dean has a strong record, as does the Democratic Party, of working to support peace in the Middle East."
She said the RJC campaign seemed "a response to the tremendous success the Democrats had in the Jewish community in November."
"The negative propaganda won't stick," she added.
Steve Grossman, former DNC chairman and also a former president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, likened the campaign against Dean to what he said was the character assassination of Ron Brown in 1989, after Brown was elected DNC chair.
"The Republicans (citing Brown's relationship with Rev. Jesse Jackson) immediately started this drum beat about how bad Ron Brown would be for the Jewish community and the pro-Israel cause. It was proven to be absolutely without foundation."
Grossman added, "As someone who has devoted his life to the pro-Israel cause I would not have supported Howard Dean as chairman of the party if I did not believe he would be supportive of Israel."
Lieberman also criticized the RJC ad. "This Republican ad prints my critical reaction to something Howard Dean said about the Middle East in the presidential campaign, but fails to complete the story," Lieberman said in a statement released by his Senate office. "Governor Dean responded to me and others by calling his comments a mistake. I'm confident that, as party chairman, Howard will uphold the Democratic Party's historic commitment to support and strengthen our democratic ally Israel."
Steve Rabinowitz, a Democratic strategist and former Clinton White House staffer, said it was disturbing that "Republican partisans are willing to go so far as to associate [Dean] with terrorists, and that they seek to make Israel a partisan issue at a time when the country and the region have coalesced around a process."
But Kenneth Baer, another Democratic strategist and former Clinton White House staffer, said the attack was predictable. "This comes as no surprise. The Republicans were going to exploit this. They were going to resurrect all the old quotes of Howard Dean and use it as part of their continued drive to make inroads in the Jewish community," Baer said.
Dan Gerstein, a former speechwriter for Lieberman and now an independent consultant in New York, said Dean's election was a "big mistake for the party," since "he can't solve the huge credibility problems we have on national security and values."
President George W. Bush won roughly 25 percent of the Jewish vote in the last election. Different polls in 2000 showed Bush winning between 19% and 22% of the vote.
RJC Executive Director Matthew Brooks defended the attack on Dean in an opinion piece distributed this week. "The National Jewish Democratic Council's hurried and politically motivated defense of the new DNC Chairman Howard Dean should worry not only the American Jewish community, but everyone who hopes for a bipartisan commitment to stand with Israel in the war on terror."
The RJC and the NJDC fired off competing lists of quotations from Dean – and about Dean – each trying to make their respective points about the new chairman's record.
Baer said Dean and the Democrats needed to rid themselves of the impression that the Democrats "either aren't good for Israel or aren't strong on terrorism."
Dean ran in the presidential primary as an anti-war candidate and some Democrats have expressed concern that his position could hurt the Democrats in the 2006 mid-term elections and the 2008 presidential election as they compete in an environment when national security and the war on terrorism is a top concern of Americans.
"He felt, and I think a lot of Americans feel, going to war against Iraq this time around simply was not in America's best interest," Grossman said in Dean's defense.
"Howard Dean's job over the next three to six months is to sit down with groups of [Democratic] leaders around different parts of the country and have some conversations so that people will be very clear about who he is and what kind of chairman he'll be."
The momentum has been steadily leftwards for the last 100 years or so, and I tend to be pessimistic, but it's true that there are signs that you are right. I hope that you are. I do think that people are really starting to get fed up with having our universities act as centers for socialism and political correctness. Agreed that the Churchill thing is probably opening sleeper's eyes.
I am personally an admirer of Bush, and voted for him. I do think, though, that on a fundamental level, his viewpoint bears some similarity to that of the Dems. In that he seems to believe that it is the job of government to order society. Even if his ideas on how to order it differ from the ideas of the Left.
Yeah, one does not think of Long Island as exactly a haven for conservatism.
"....And Jay Footlik, John Kerry's liaison to the Jewish community..."
Man....imagine being named "Footlik"....
Foxman's got his own power base to protect, just like Je$$e Jacka$$ and the NAALCP poverty pimps. And that means making sure "his people" don't leave the democrat plantation.
If the RJC really wanted to drive their point home, they'd pull out some footage of Howard Dean working the crowds during the Rat primaries, crowds where Palestinian flags were plentiful and American flags were absent.
Well, I hope you guys are right, and maybe you are - after all, the tide does turn every 6 hours.
Reagan, IMO, has been the only president in recent years to understand or even care about the ideals of our founding fathers. But I don't at all think our leftward march was halted in 1980. Slowed down for awhile maybe. Sped up under Clinton. Moving slower with W, but still moving.
Stepson? I thought the kids he had were his own.
Do you remember President Reagans quip about liberals believing in Marxism, and conservatives don't because they actually read Marx.
My mistake, I thought you said Deans stepson, I didn't see the kerry referance.
Oh, yes Kerry and his constituents are running around trying to quiet Dean down. It's quite funny actually. I just think Kerry should worry about his own family first.
The Democratic party is now dominated by the Left, and the Left internationally is openly antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-American.
In the U.S., the Lefty pols (but not academia) try to hide their antisemitism.
Like changing the way they 'talk' about abortion, they'll try to be careful about how they talk about and to Jews. But their committment to abortion-on-demand and their antisemitism will remain the same.
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