Malinowski misleads
Tom Malinowski’s piece in NJJN (“Morality and decency trump demagoguery,” Aug. 2) was disturbingly misleading. However, with Malinowski’s associations with groups as hostile to Israel and as spotty on their concern for anti-Semitism, I suppose misleading would be the only possible strategy when approaching the Jewish community.
You are who you keep company with. Malinowski is a former Washington director of Human Rights Watch, an organization criticized by its own founder for its rampant anti-Israel bias and for being a leader of the BDS movement. For instance, they were a lead organization pushing the UN’s Goldstone report that in essence declared Israel was wrong to defend itself from thousands of missiles fired at their civilians.
Under former Secretary of State John Kerry, he was an assistant secretary of state, and consistently supported the dangerous Iran deal, despite the knowledge that Iran would use money from the agreement to fund terrorism, effectively handing over hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah to build missiles to terrorize and kill Israelis.
Malinowski is proudly endorsed by J Street, an organization Alan
Dershowitz said “can no longer claim to be pro-Israel.”
As part of the Obama administration, he allowed the UN Human Rights Council to condemn Israel, lobbied against supplying the Israel Defense Forces with American weaponry, and lobbied against supplying Israel with armored bulldozers and other supplies unless they stopped construction on housing in neighborhoods over the 1948 armistice line. Malinowski supported the United States’ abstention from the vote condemning Israel at the end of Obama’s term, breaking long-standing tradition, and enabling the United Nations to successfully gang up on Israel. Incidentally, the same UN condemnation declares that the Western Wall is a settlement and doesn’t belong to Israel.
Where does he stand on the statements by N.Y. congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Where does he stand on the eight members of Congress who met with and strongly support Louis Farrakhan? Where does he stand on Linda Sarsour? These people should be strongly condemned! I doubt you’ll hear an unequivocal response from him to these individuals. He can’t, because this is who he represents and the company he keeps.
He talks about concern for anti-Semitism and equating Zionism with racism, or Israel’s right to exist. What has he done to prevent or protest the documented dramatic increase of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activities on college campuses throughout the country? He worries about the government in Hungary but what has he done to protest the much more dramatic, influential, and important anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom’s Labour Party? One answer to these questions may be found in his campaigning this week with Sen. Cory Booker, who is currently facing questions of his own regarding Israel after being photographed holding a sign reading “From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!” Malinowski has made no effort to clarify his own views.
Please ask yourself, is there another candidate for Congress today who either supported directly or associated with organizations and individuals who have been more hostile to Israel?
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is the United States’ greatest security partner in the region, and the bond and alliance between Israel and the U.S. dates back to modern-day Israel’s rebirth. At a time when Jews around the world need a partner on the global stage, with existential threats facing Israel, and spreading European anti-Semitism, Jews need partners in Congress who feel as strong about this unbreakable friendship as Rep. Leonard Lance has reliably been. Malinowski, in contrast, will not be one.
I am surprised that your paper would provide space to a candidate currently running for Congress rather than interviewing him and asking him tough questions. Such questions should have been directed to his long history of employment by an organization disproportionately critical of Israel, Human Rights Watch. You could also have asked him whether he still opposed Israel’s construction of its defensive border wall to prevent suicide attacks by Palestinian terrorists and whether he still opposed allowing Israel to purchase armored bulldozers and armaments. Malinowski is not running against Donald Trump but against Leonard Lance, who has been a leader in support of Israel and a friend of the Jewish community. After reading Malinowski’s opinion piece, I am glad to see that he is opposed to Nazis and bigots on the right, but I didn’t see any criticism by him of the bigots in his own party.
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