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Holocaust hype enters the elections

By Lisa Hostein · October 27, 2008

Just days after an email to 75,000 Pennsylvania Jews suggested that a vote for Barack Obama could cause another Holocaust, at least two of the signatories to the letter are distancing themselves from it.
This after the political operative who apparently wrote the letter was fired.

The letter, paid for by the state Republican Party, caused a huge uproar, with e-mails flying back and forth.

Both I. Michael Coslov, the campaign chair of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, and Sandra Schultz Newman, a former state supreme court justice, are distancing themselves from the letter, saying they hadn’t actually read its contents before signing on.

Coslov said he doesn’t think Obama is “right for the Jewish people, but I don’t think he’s going to cause another Holocaust.”

Newman issued an apology to those who had e-mailed her objecting to the letter.

“I regret that I did not carefully review the final draft before it was released with my signature,” she wrote. “Some of the language was inappropriate and intemporate. I apologize to anyone who was offended by this misguided e-mail.”

But another Republican salvo continued the theme over the weekend. The Republican Jewish Coalition mobilized volunteers to distribute leaflets in heavily Jewish neighborhoods in suburban Philadelphia. The glossy leaflets also referenced the Holocaust indirectly.

Featuring a photo of Obama speaking in Germany, the sheet said: “Concerned about Obama? You should be. History has shown that a naive and weak foreign policy has resulted in tragic outcomes for the Jewish people.”

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Political tidbits: Palin greets Meridor, checking out the face of Obama’s Fla. campaign (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 27, 2008

• Sarah Palin meets with Israel Ambassador to the U.S. Sallai Meridor and tells him she looks “forward to ... working with your Jewish agency,” according to the Associated Press. (Is that some kind of reference to his old position as head of JAFI?) UPDATE: Here’s Palin’s full quote, and she was talking about Meridor’s time at the Jewish Agency for Israel: “I look forward to hearing about your work with the Jewish Agency and all the plans that we have. We’ll be working together.”
• Menachem Rosensaft charges the McCain-Palin campaign has resurrected McCarthyism, in the Huffington Post.
• A Jewish Republican state legislator in Ohio is attacked by his opponent for his military service in Iraq. Bob Belovich is charging that Josh Mandel “abandoned voters,” according to Joel Mowbray at Townhall.com.
• A phone banker for Obama tells the Huffington Post that she first tells Jewish voters that she understands their concerns about “voting for someone who is black” – and then finds Sarah Palin “is a great help in persuading” them to back Obama.
  
• The Sarasota Herald-Tribune profiles “Florida’s face for the Obama campaign,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz –and quotes her former professor predicting she’ll be the first Jewish president.
• Friends of Israel should vote for Barack Obama, writes Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) in the Jerusalem Post.
  
• The Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick writes that the prospect of an Obama-Tzipi Livni partnership is “enough to keep men and women of good faith up at night.”
• Delray Beach deli Poppie’s is the setting for today’s interviews of South Florida Jewish voters – who, just as the polls indicate, seem to be swinging towards Obama, according to the Toronto Star.
• Remember Cynthia McKinney, the congresswoman from Georgia whose father blames the “J-E-W-S” for her defeat in 2002? She’s running for president on the Green Party ticket, and is still talking about conspiracies, according to the Washington Post. She also got the endorsement of Roseanne Barr.
• Bradley Burston, in Haaretz, wants Sarah Palin to speak to liberals like they were “real Americans” too.
  
• The Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader talks to some Palin supporters from Oklahoma who think the vice presidential nominee is the “Deborah and Esther of our day” chosen “to defeat the modern enemy – Obama.”
• Jim Besser in The Jewish Week explores the reasons for the rise in Obama’s Jewish numbers.
  
• Rep. Robert Wexler tells the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne that McCain’s choice of Palin was an “unqualified negative” for the Republican in South Florida.
  
• There’s always a lot of criticism about the substance of American political campaigns, but YNet’s Yair Lapid is jealous while watching McCain and Obama – because Israeli political campaign are much less serious.
  
• Former Ehud Barak adviser Daniel Levy discusses what the 25th anniversary of the Hezbollah bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut can tell us about the presidential candidates.
• The Washington Post looks at who is behind the distribution of 28 million copies of the anti-radical Islam film “Obsession.”



John McCain is favored by a 12-point margin over Obama by Israelis, according to YNet.

• The New York Times endorses the “blind rabbi,” Dennis Shulman.

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Hollywood Jews for Obama, part MCM….

By Ron Kampeas · October 24, 2008

No big surprise here, but Gina Gershon is on board, emulating Sarah Palin (including a flag bikini shot that turned out to have been photoshopped):

Henry Winkler, in full Fonz mode, joins Ron Howard and Andy Griffith in reprising their ancient TV roles to back Obama in this bit, also from the Funny or Die website. Interestingly, all of the personas present themselves as onetime Republican voters - but in Winkler’s case, it’s not clear whether he’s referring to himself or Arthur Fonzarelli:

Finally, Natalie Portman and Rashida Jones (both are Jewish) have an interesting perspective on the financial crisis. Here’s a clue: Woof. (Literally.)

3 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, Sarah Palin

Political tidbits: Gallup poll reactions, Palin wig big in Brooklyn

By Eric Fingerhut · October 24, 2008

• A McCain supporter changes his mind in the voting booth and casts his ballot for Obama after talking to a group of Jewish women who convince him how historic Obama’s election would be. He also loans them his Dale Earnhardt jacket so they can cover up their Obama shirts and vote, according to Politico.
• Looking at yesterday’s Gallup poll, Shmuel Rosner, in Commentary, analyzes why Obama has gained ground in the Jewish community. Meanwhile, Salon’s Glenn Greenwald claims that Obama’s Jewish problem was a “baseless myth.”
• Should the Great Schlep have gone to Hillels? Jacques Berlinerblau wonders after noting that the Gallup poll found older Jews support Obama in slightly bigger numbers than younger Jews.
• Did Republicans, as Colin Powell charged on “Meet the Press,” spread the “Obama is a Muslim” rumor? Steven Waldman looks into that question in the Wall Street Journal, and finds that while John McCain is innocent, others aren’t.
  
• Hilary Leila Krieger looks at Obama’s Jewish political connections in the Jerusalem Post.
• Dennis Ross talks to Haaretz about being a surrogate for Obama in Florida.
• Just like in their television ad, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s new newspaper ad uses Hillary Clinton to attack Barack Obama, comparing Clinton and John McCain’s positions to the Democratic nominee’s stances on three issues and finding Obama the odd man out.
• The NJDC’s Aaron Keyak notes on the Huffington Post that Sarah Palin was campaigning with the senator who blocked a bill tightening sanctions on Iran.
• Jerry Stiller, Rhea Pearlman, Carl Reiner, Danny DeVito: They’re all old sitcom stars, and they’ve all cut pro-Obama ads for the Jewish Alliance for Change.
  
• Surrogates for the candidates debate at Jewish forums in Philadelphia and Palm Beach County.
  
• A London writer spends some time with some New Jersey Obama supporters who are worried the news is too good for their candidate.
• The Sarah Palin wig is a big hit in Brooklyn among Orthodox women, according to the New York Daily News.

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Breaking the 70 percent barrier

By Eric Fingerhut · October 23, 2008

First a poll of Floridians and now a national poll shows Barack Obama is making significant gains among Jews.

A Gallup October tracking poll found Obama leading John McCain among registered Jewish voters by a margin of 74-22 percent. Obama’s share of the vote in the monthly Gallup survey has risen five points since September and 13 points since July. The October poll was based on 564 interviews conducted Oct. 1-21 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percent.

In addition, a Qunnipiac University poll of Florida voters found Obama winning 77 percent of the Jewish vote, compared to just 20 percent for McCain. That poll, taken Oct. 16-21, surveyed 87 Jewish voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 10.5 points.

The polls suggest that after months of hovering around 60 percent, Obama appears to be in striking distance of the 75-80 percent of the Jewish vote won by the three previous Democratic nominees.

4 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, Florida, John McCain, polls, Presidential Race

Obama surrogates courting Jewish vote

By Eric Fingerhut · October 23, 2008

Polls show Barack Obama is ahead in Virginia, and the Obama campaign is working to ensure a victory by spending some time courting the Jewish vote with two well-known surrogates.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, and onetime Hillary Clinton supporter, Martin Indyk will be making his first public appearance on behalf of the Democratic nominee tonight at the Weinstein Jewish Community Center in Richmond for a program entitled “A Discussion about Senator Barack Obama, the Middle East and Israel.”

Then, on Tuesday, October 28, a similar program is slated in Virginia Beach with former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross at the Sandler Center for Performing Arts.

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Political tidbits: Obama up big among Fla. Jews, Shulman gaining on Garrett? (UPDATED)

By Eric Fingerhut · October 23, 2008

• Did the Great Schlep work? A new Quinnipiac poll has Florida Jews going 77-20 for Obama. That number would put Obama in line with Jewish support of the Democratic candidate in the last few presidential elections – and that’s in a state where a lot of resistance to Obama among Jewish voters had been reported a couple months ago. UPDATE: According to the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, the Jewish sample in the poll was 87 people, or 6 percent, which gives it a sizable margin of error of plus or minus 10.5 percent.
• “Blind Rabbi” Dennis Shulman and incumbent Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.) have their first debate, and it’s not friendly. The candidates clashed over Israel and health care, reports the New Jersey Jewish News.
• Meanwhile, Politico speculates that the GOP is worried about losing Garrett’s seat, although a party spokeswoman denies it. For his part, Garrett just started running a television ad calling Shulman “too extreme for New Jersey” and sent out a mailer accusing Shulman of supporting “talking to terrorists.”
  Shulman’s campaign responded by calling Garrett “desperate” and comparing him to Karl Rove and Michelle Bachmann
  
• The head of Vote From Israel claims the deciding votes in a close presidential election could come from the 42,000 U.S. voters living in the Jewish state, reports the Jerusalem Post.
• Some Jewish Democrats complain to the Forward that the Conference of Presidents circulated invitations to John McCain’s “tele-town hall” meeting on Sunday.
  
• Howard Fineman blogs at Newsweek that Jewish donors frightened by Sarah Palin were one reason Barack Obama raised so much money in September.
• If John McCain won’t bring up Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a campaign issue, then Jonathan Mark of The Jewish Week doesn’t trust McCain to speak out against anti-Semitism as president.
  
• The economic crisis is dampening enthusiasm for McCain among the Russian Jewish community, reports The Jewish Week.
• And some in the Jewish community see the economic crisis forcing increased engagement with Iran under a new president, writes Jim Besser in The Jewish Week.
• The Forward reports on the Obama campaign’s courting of the Brooklyn Orthodox community at a sukkah in Williamsburg.
  
• Whitefish salad, nova, bagels, latkes and a couple black and white cookies were on the menu when Obama visited a South Florida deli with Reps. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) on Tuesday afternoon, reports Jake Tapper at ABC News.
• How does an editor decide whether to publish a letter that contains false information about the presidential candidates? The Jewish Week’s Gary Rosenblatt explores that issue.
  
• Larry Yudelson, in the Jerusalem Post, finds problems in McCain’s repetition of the phrase “Judeo-Christian values.”
• Eitan Haber, in YNet, is not excited, to say the least, about a Barack Obama presidency and it implications for Israel.
  
• Obama adviser Dan Kurtzer is optimistic about Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in an Obama presidency, according to the New Jersey Jewish News.
  
• Alan Dershowitz’s research assistant objects to the Harvard law professor’s endorsement of Obama, in the Jerusalem Post.
• Washington Jewish Week talks to some young Jews who made The Great Schlep.
• Could Wyoming have a Jewish member of Congress? Some polls say it’s possible, according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.

3 Comments | Share This | ads, Barack Obama, Congressional races, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida, Iran, Israel, John McCain, Local races, New Jersey, New York, polls, Presidential Race, Sarah Palin, Tidbits

Getting back to those unsolicited endorsements…

By Ron Kampeas · October 22, 2008

What does it mean when a terrorist endorses a presidential candidate?

It apparently depends on who’s being endorsed.

The campaign to elect Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) president lashed out Wednesday at the Washington Post for a longish inside-the-paper article about an endorsement the senator received from a longtime contributor to Al Qaeda website.

Quoth the Post:

“Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the “failing march of his predecessor,” President Bush.

The campaign has a point: a single comment was worth 100 words tops, if anything at all. (Although I would have liked to see more detail from the expert who tells the Post such views are commonplace on jihadist websites.)

In a conference call, Jim Woolsey, a former CIA boss and a top national security adviser to McCain pointed out that terrorists and their supporters are less than likely to blurt out their innermost political leanings on the web.

“This individual knows that his endorsement is a kiss of death,” Woolsey said. “He is clearly trying to damage John McCain and not speaking from his heart.”

To stress the point, Randy Scheunemann, the campaign’s top foreign policy adviser, read a laundry list of endorsements and near endorsements Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) had earned from the less than savory.

One of the near-endorsements was from Ahmad Yousef, a sometimes adviser to Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister of the Gaza Strip. Yousef did not straight-out endorse Obama, but on Oct. 19 he told World Net Daily, a conservative website, that Hamas figures saw Obama as bringing a more “even-handed” approach to the Middle East.

“We as Palestinians are thinking that we might have better luck with a new administration, maybe, if Obama wins the election. I do believe he will change the American foreign policy.”

Scheunemann made clear he was reading the endorsements “without comment,” in other words he was not going to stoop to the Washington Post’s alleged low.

Except that the campaign already did, in April, the last time Yousef delivered an almost-endorsement in an interview with WND.

This time around, Yousef pushed back against interviewer Aaron Klein’s efforts to get him to say he preferred the Democratic ticket. Yes, he said, Haniyeh would welcome Obama on a post election visit to Gaza; McCain would be equally as welcome.

And then Yousef let drop a bombshell:

“To be honest with you, yes, there are also people from the Republicans, from the Bush administration who contacted us and who behind the scenes they did some contacts and some discussions with Hamas,” he said. “It is not just members of the Democratic Party or figures from the Democratic Party. No. This is the Republicans also who send delegations to talk with Hamas with their leaders in Damascus, in West Bank and also in Gaza.”

Say what? Government officials in touch with Hamas? That would be against the law

Here’s the relevant passage:

No funds authorized or available to the Department of State may be used for or by any officer or employee of the United States Government to negotiate with members or official representatives of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, or any other Palestinian terrorist organization (except in emergency or humanitarian situations), unless and until such organization–

(1) recognizes Israel’s right to exist;

(2) renounces the use of terrorism;

(3) dismantles the infrastructure in areas within its jurisdiction necessary to carry out terrorist acts, including the disarming of militias and the elimination of all instruments of terror; and

(4) recognizes and accepts all previous agreements and understandings between the State of Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

There are a couple of lessons here:

1) Unsolicited endorsements are just that - unsolicited. They are newsworthy insofar as they say something about how an influential power or point of view sees itself affected by an election, but they say nothing about the candidate. And endorsements from terrorists - people who kill civilians for a living - should be taken with, well, Lot’s wife.. Especially from a single commenter. (I honestly don’t think, as Woolsey implied, that one should assume that the endorser believes the opposite of what he is saying out loud. It’s more likely that terrorists like to create mischief and attract attention.

2) Don’t bury the lead!

0 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, John McCain

JCER’s newest project, post-schlep

By Eric Fingerhut · October 20, 2008

The latest entrant in the Jewish newspaper ad wars is the Jewish Council for Education and Research. The group that came up with “The Great Schlep” is making a $30,000-40,000 ad buy in three Jewish newspapers over the next couple weeks – all six localized editions of the Jewish Journal in South Florida, as well as the Detroit Jewish News and the St. Louis Jewish Light.”

The group worked with ad hoc coalitions of supporters for some of the ads to come up with locally-driven content, said a spokeswoman for the group.

For instance, in Detroit, the ad features a quote from Obama talking about restoring “confidence in our economy” and states “Don’t be complacent. John McCain has not left Michigan” – a response to the decision of the McCain campaign earlier this month to shift resources from the state elsewhere. The St. Louis ad features a list of local Obama supporters.

The ad appearing in Florida is more provocative. Headlined “Sarah Palin: Anti-Choice Radical,” it features a photo of anti-abortion protesters laying down in a street and charges Palin wiith “carrying water” for the “Christian right” on the issue as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

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Schlepping with the pro-Obama schleppers

By Ami Eden · October 20, 2008

JTA’s Ben Harris was on the ground in Florida for “The Great Schlep.” Here’s his video report:

Here’s his companion article on the senior vote in Florida, and whether race will end up being as big a factor as some observers think:

‘Schlep’ puts focus on Jewish seniors, race issue
By Benjamin Harris
BOCA RATON, Fla. (JTA) – Fred Wolff is pretty explicit in laying out the reason why he won’t support Barack Obama on Nov. 4.

A survivor of the Dachau concentration camp who came to the United States as a teenager, Wolff told JTA he typically favors Republican candidates. This year he would have preferred former governors Mike Huckabee of Arkansas or Mitt Romney of Massachusetts.

But despite his misgivings about John McCain, the Republican nominee, Wolff said there’s one reason he would never consider supporting Obama.

“I think that many of the blacks – I was going to say shvartzes, but I’ll say blacks – many of the blacks are anti-Semitic,” Wolff said. “I’m not going to vote for the black guy. No, never. I don’t want him. I don’t like the crowd that surrounds him. They may be quiet right now, and they may be even hiding in the bushes. But you wait, if he wins, they’re going to come out.”

While Obama has labored for months to beat back false claims that he is a Muslim and soft on Israel, the talk as the election heads into its final weeks has focused on the one aspect of the Democrat’s biography he is powerless to change: his skin color. And with polls showing Obama lagging in Jewish support behind earlier Democratic presidential candidates, concern among some of his supporters has grown that older Jewish voters, clustered in critical swing states and besieged by advertising stoking concerns about his position on Jewish issues, could tip the balance to McCain.

It was precisely this worry that led a new pro-Obama group, JewsVote.org, to urge young Jews to visit Florida over Columbus Day weekend to lobby their grandparents on Obama’s behalf. The effort, known as “The Great Schlep,” received a huge boost last month from foul-mouthed comedian Sarah Silverman, who appeared in an Internet video touting the Schlep that has been viewed more than 7 million times.

Following in the footsteps of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and several coventional media outlets, Silverman painted older Jewish Floridians as balking at backing Obama because of his race.

The data suggest that such concerns might be overblown.

A recent survey by the American Jewish Committee found that Obama’s support was greater among older Jews than younger ones, a finding that some observers have said is too unbelievable to be true. On the ground in Florida, many grandparents of “schleppers” told JTA that they were leaning toward the Democratic candidate anyway, even before their grandchildren paid them an unexpected – if highly appreciated – visit.

“I think that elders are getting a bad rap with the assumption that they are going to allow racism to cloud their judgment about what really is the best choice for our country and our interest in being advocates for Israel and the Jewish people,” said Rabbi Dayle Friedman, who directs a center for Jewish aging at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia and is a vice chair of Rabbis for Obama. “My experience with elders is that they are far more open minded than people give them credit for.”

Several surveys of American Jews have shown Obama hovering at around 60 percent, about 10 points below where John Kerry was polling at a similar point in the presidential race four years ago.

“Over the years, there’s been some slippage in the numbers in terms of support for the Democrats,” said Ari Wallach, the co-founder of JewsVote and its parent organization, the Jewish Council for Education and Research.

The Great Schlep is “a way of ensuring that that does not continue, not only down here in Florida but across the country,” he said.

The Obama campaign, which drew a small army of Jewish volunteers to Florida thanks to the Silverman video, dismissed the sluggish poll numbers and expressed confidence that Obama would top Kerry’s figure of 76 percent of Jewish support.

“We don’t have a Jewish problem, the Republicans have an election problem,” Halie Soifer, the campaign’s Jewish vote director in Florida, told a group of Jewish volunteers from across the country on Oct. 10.

Soifer said McCain’s dip in the polls is giving Republicans nightmares, prompting them to hurl every slur imaginable in an effort to reverse the decline. And while she acknowledged that race may play a role in the minds of the Jewish voters she has targeted, insinuations about Obama’s background are being heard less and less.

“We are seeing a surge in support,” Soifer said. “I go to condos where I used to go a few months ago. And there was skepticism at that time. They didn’t know enough about Senator Obama. And now people just want to know how they can help.”

Among those former skeptics are Kenny and Selma Furst, lifelong Democrats and residents of one of the mythic “condos” and retirement communities that dot the South Florida landscape. Selma Furst had heard all the rumors about Obama’s religion and his stance on Israel, but there was one thing that really made her uncomfortable.

“If I may say the color wasn’t what I really wanted,” said Selma Furst. “And I just thought that no, I don’t think he’s going to be good. And I wasn’t too crazy about his wife.”

The Fursts’ grandchildren are fervent Obama supporters, and through e-mails and phone calls they were eventually able to sway their grandparents. So much so that Furst organized a Sunday afternoon meeting at their retirement community in Tamarac so their grandson, schlepper Mike Bender from Los Angeles, could address their friends.

By the end of Bender’s Oct. 12 speech, the 100 or so elderly voters were chanting “Yes, we can,” the unofficial slogan of the Obama campaign.

But even before hearing Bender’s pitch, the bulk of the crowd appeared to be solidly backing Obama. Several said that if Jewish voters had any fears about Obama, they were trumped by concerns about McCain’s choice of running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

“I wouldn’t vote for Sarah Palin if I didn’t vote at all,” said Estelle Zucker, a resident of Kings Point in Tamarac. “I think McCain made a big mistake by taking her.”

A lifelong Democrat, Zucker confessed to being on the fence in this election for the first time in her life. Obama’s “friends,” Zucker said, are anti-Semitic. She also worries about his position on Iran and Israel.

“That’s why I can’t go full-heartedly into this election, but I definitely will not vote for McCain,” Zucker said. “I don’t like Sarah Palin. She could be very nice – I like nice ladies – but I don’t like what she stands for.”

32 Comments | Share This | Barack Obama, Florida, John McCain, Presidential Race