OPbama's new appointee to watch anti semitism JStreet member

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http://www.wnd.com/index.php?pageId=117248   











CZAR WARS
Obama appoints anti-Israel lobbyist to anti-Semitism post
J Street pick hints Jewish state to blame for hatred against its people
Posted: November 26, 2009
10:55 pm Eastern

By Aaron Klein
© 2009 WorldNetDaily


Hannah Rosenthal

President Obama's new anti-Semitism czar serves on the board of a controversial Israel-lobby group accused of working against the Jewish state, while her writings suggest Israel's policies are to blame for anti-Semitism.

Hannah Rosenthal, a former Health Department regional director under the Clinton administration, started her position earlier this week as the State Department's new special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. She previously headed the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella U.S. Jewish organization.

Rosenthal, however, serves on the board of J Street, a lobby group that is mostly led by left-leaning Israelis and that receives funds from Arab and Muslim Americans.

J Street brands itself as pro-Israel. It states on its website it seeks to "promote meaningful American leadership to end the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts peacefully and diplomatically."

J Street, however, also supports talks with Hamas, a terrorist group whose charter seeks the destruction of Israel. The group opposes sanctions against Iran and is harshly critical of Israeli offensive anti-terror military actions.

Even the Israeli government has been distancing itself from J Street, with its ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, refusing to attend its annual dinner last month. Israeli Embassy spokesman Yoni Peled told the Jerusalem Post his government has some "concern over certain [J Street] policies that could impair Israel's interests."

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The Powerline blog previously documented how far-leftist Israelis are influential in the J Street leadership, including former Knesset Speaker Avrum Burg, who generated controversy when he stated, "To define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end."

Another key J Street member, Mideast expert Henry Siegman, has compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.

Ed Lasky opines of the appointment of Rosenthal at American Thinker, "This is just one more pick by the president that has led many (especially the Israelis) to wonder about his claim to be pro-Israel. It is also one more step forward by J Street, a group with ties to George Soros, in their reach for power in Washington, D.C."

Rosenthal had also previously penned an opinion piece in The New York Jewish Week in which she claimed a mainstream Israel-solidarity rally in Washington, D.C., was being "dominated by narrow, ultraconservative views of what it means to be pro-Israel."

In a letter criticizing Rosenthal's depiction of the event, Anti-Defamation League chairman Abe Foxman noted that rally, which took place at the height of the Palestinian intifada, or terrorist war, included speakers Sen. Harry Reid, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Israeli minister Natan Sharansky. Foxman pointed out the speakers lobbied for peace:

At the rally, Reid called on "all who share our vision and hopes to continue to spread a message of peace: shalom, salaam, peace."

Sharansky declared, "Real peace, dear friends, depends on us."

Giuliani proclaimed, "All of us, all of you good people who have come here today, all of us wish for peace. We pray for it."

The Weekly Standard, meanwhile, took note of quotes in which Rosenthal seemed to imply Israeli policies were to blame for anti-Semitism.

"I'll tell you point-blank: I have two grown daughters, and I didn't think that my kids were going to have to deal with some of the same anti-Semitism that I did as the daughter of Holocaust survivors," Rosenthal said. "It's a scary time, with people losing the ability to differentiate between a Jew, any Jew, and what's going on in Israel."

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http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/11/obamas_likely_antisemitism_chi.asp   











Obama's Likely Anti-Semitism Chief Was Criticized by the ADL

Laura Rozen reported yesterday that the Obama administration was set to announce the appointment of a special envoy to monitor and combat global anti-Semitism. Per Rozen, rumor has it that the administration has settled on Hannah Rosenthal -- a Chicago lawyer who has precisely the kind of views that you'd expect of an Obama administration anti-Semitism czar.

Ed Lasky does a little Googling and discovers that Rosenthal has been criticized by ADL chief Abe Foxman, who was compelled to write an open letter to Rosenthal after she attacked the speakers an Israel Solidarity Rally for their "narrow, ultra-conservative views of what it means to be pro-Israel..." Those ultra-conservative views were apparently espoused by Dick Gephardt, Harry Reid, and Natan Sharansky among others who spoke that day. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but it strikes me that an anti-Semitism chief probably shouldn't have said something in the recent past that warranted a rebuke from the ADL.

Rosenthal is also on the advisory council of J Street and J Street PAC (she's not just pro-Israel, she's "pro-Israel, pro-peace") -- so Obama turned to an organization that opposes sanctions on the Holocaust denying regime in Iran and refuses to condemn the Goldstone report for his anti-Semitism czar.

Rozen links to a few statements from Rosenthal's past and declares that "She has a track record of involvement in countering anti-Semitism in the international context." One of the reports that Rozen links to includes this quote from Rosenthal:

    Then there was the dramatic rise in attacks on European Jews and their institutions as Israeli-Palestinian violence intensified. This followed a wave of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe after the Palestinian intifada erupted in September 2000...

    "I'll tell you point-blank: I have two grown daughters, and I didn't think that my kids were going to have to deal with some of the same anti-Semitism that I did as the daughter of Holocaust survivors," Rosenthal said. "It's a scary time, with people losing the ability to differentiate between a Jew, any Jew, and what's going on in Israel."

Parse that quote and it's pretty clear what Rosenthal is saying -- the Israelis have it coming, but the rest of the world needs to distinguish between the good progressive Jews who are not living on Palestinian land and the Israeli Jews who are committing daily atrocities in the name of colonialism and occupation. Indeed, the story goes on,

    Some European pundits on the left and right brushed off charges of latent anti-Semitism. They seemed to excuse the violence by blaming it on Diaspora Jews' presumed support for Israeli actions against the Palestinians.

    To some observers, however, that smacked of an age-old canard: that Jews themselves are the cause of anti-Semitism.

Some European pundits? That's exactly what Rosenthal did in the preceding paragraph. It is Rosenthal that tries to disabuse readers of the notion that Jews outside of Israel support the policies of the Jews living in Israel -- because if they did support those policies, well then they would be the cause of the anti-Semitism they encounter.

There is nothing that this administration could do vis-à-vis Israel and the Jewish community that would surprise me at this point, but appoint an anti-Semitism czar who has been criticized by the ADL, who has been a vocal critic of even left-wing Israeli governments, who sits on the advisory council of a group that is pro-Goldstone and anti-sanctions? Not that it matters all that much -- this could be the most irrelevant post in the entire federal government -- but that only makes the choice even more bizarre. Does this administration still feel it needs to prove its anti-Israel bona fides? Obama bowed to the Saudi King and gave Bibi the cold shoulder, he gave a speech in Cairo but refuses to address the Israeli public, he makes public demands on the Israelis and offers nary a peep of criticism for the Arabs. We get it, they're "even-handed." But this appointment -- like the Freedom Medal for Mary Robinson -- is just gratuitou