NY Jewish Week: Aid Debate Rattles Pro-Israel Democrats
By Stewart Ain
Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, stressed that both Warren and Buttigieg were speaking not about settlements but annexation of the West Bank, something she said virtually every American Jewish organization opposes because it would “permanently impede prospects for a two-state solution.”
“We are speaking in hypotheticals,” she stressed. “No one is proposing blanket aid cuts to Israel, and the two said their comments were predicated upon Israeli annexation of the West Bank.”
But she added that her organization does “not support conditioning or reducing assistance to Israel. We strongly support the [aid package] negotiated by the Obama administration.”
In a Facebook post, the JDCA insisted that the RJC’s ad “won’t work” and noted that since Donald Trump became president “Jewish support for the GOP has been halved because Trump doesn’t share our values, and Jews know the real shanda is in the White House. Jewish voters are both pro-Israel and three times more likely to support Democrats, because Democrats’ policies align with our values on a wide range of issues, including Israel. It’s a shanda the RJC would amplify and support Trump’s policies, which are antithetical to Jewish values.”