This is a Ron Kampeas story at the JTA. And, as with all Kampeas stories, assume that it’s a bunch of lies put together by an idiot who assumes that his readership is too lazy and blinkered to bother doing its own research or noting the contradictions in his claims. Sadly, he’s right.
Step 1. Fake grievance.
“NON-ORTHODOX MOVEMENTS LEFT OUT OF TRUMP’S MEETING WITH JEWISH LEADERS” – Ron Kampeas, JTA
This is a lie. Plenty of non-Orthodox figures and groups are coming to the meeting.
As support for this lie, Kampeas quotes a Democrat official who, unlike Ron, at least keeps her spin somewhat vague.
“It’s clear the Trump White House invited a subset of the Jewish community and intentionally excluded others,” Halie Soifer, the director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in an email. “As with everything this president does, this meeting appears to be defined by narrow political calculation as opposed to genuine outreach to the Jewish community.”
Halie is sorta telling the truth. Trump excluded anti-Israel lefties and the groups that ally with them.
Also not invited was the Anti-Defamation League, the country’s leading Jewish civil rights group. Nor was J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East policy group, HIAS, the lead Jewish immigration advocacy group, or the Israel Policy Forum, a group dedicated to a two-state outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
HIAS specifically shed its Jewish identification, it backs Muslims, signs on to statements with anti-Israel hate groups and attacks Israel.
J Street is an anti-Israel group. As is the Israel Policy Forum. The ADL has begun heading in the same direction.
The JTA wasn’t upset about ZOA not being invited to the White House. So this is, as usual, fake news from a fake service.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, another anti-defamation group, also was not invited, although its founder, Rabbi Marvin Hier, delivered a blessing at Trump’s inauguration.
So the lack of invites isn’t a snub. It isn’t excluding non-Orthodox from the meeting because also there will be…
Among the groups which did make the cut were the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Hadassah, the National Council of Young Israel, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Zionist Organization of America, the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity, the Coalition for Jewish Values, the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
Most of these groups are non-Orthodox. They are more loosely pro-Israel.
The Coalition for Jewish Values and Young Israel are Orthodox. The others aren’t.
Some of these groups have been critical of the Trump administration. What is being excluded is the hard-core anti-Israel left, JVP, IPF, J Street, and their allies, like HIAS and J Street.
Ron Kampeas knows this. He’s choosing to spin this as an Orthodox vs. Reform and Conservative issue in order to continue pushing the divisive politics of the Left. The question is when will Jewish papers stop running JTA’s divisive and hateful pieces?
If your paper carries the JTA, ask its editors how they can justify doing so in the face of divisive and fake news articles like these?
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