‘Not change, but chance’

‘Not change, but chance’

I suggest that you rename your newspaper The Democratic Jewish Standard. The Sept. 12 issue is replete with articles and observations praising or in favor of the Democratic candidates or negative articles on their Republican counterparts. This includes a lengthy article about 400 rabbis (presumably) nationwide who are supporting Sen. Obama. A good reporter would have had no difficulty in finding Republican-leaning rabbis, including one who leads a large congregation in Woodcliff Lake. The quoted rabbis seem to be upset mostly because of “smear tactics” against Sen. Barack Obama. No one points out that the reverse exists, especially against VP candidate Gov. Sarah Palin.

In addition, one commentator smears Palin because of her evangelical beliefs; although like President Kennedy, there are absolutely no indications that she would attempt to foist such beliefs on the public. How about mentioning that the Catholic faith over the centuries, and to this day, manifests a certain amount of anti-Semitism, but I see no comments about Sen. Biden being a Catholic.

However, I do fault both Obama and Biden for the fact that they, among a very small number of senators, voted against the Kyle-Lieberman amendment designating the Hezbollah- and Hamas-supporting Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization.

Because of Sen. Obama’s sparse voting record (how many “present” votes did he cast in Illinois? and how much time has he spent, as a senator, campaigning to be president?), we must turn to his associations. This is not “guilt by association,” which is a legalism, but judging one by the company he keeps. Just to mention a few, there are Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dorhn, Jeremiah Wright and Tony Rezko. Currently, many of his advisers are, at the very least, not favorable to Israel.

Again to remind you, at the recent AIPAC conference, Obama favored Jerusalem as being the undivided capital of Israel – but within 46 hours, he reversed himself by stating that this topic would be the subject of final stage negotiations. And this from one who states that “words matter.”

The two Democratic senators have the most liberal and third liberal voting records in the Senate. This is not change, but chance.

The editor responds: When more than 570 rabbis (count them at rabbisforobama.com) form an unprecedented organization to support a particular candidate – in this case, Sen. Barack Obama – that’s news, and a newspaper is right to report it. (By the way, the initial tally of local rabbis on the list was six; as of Monday, there were 13.) If hundreds of rabbis form an organization to support Sen. John McCain, we will report that news as well. We certainly do invite local rabbis to make their views known to us, and to our readers.

Meanwhile, as to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, we quote factcheck.org, a non partisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania (http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/soft_on_iran.html):

“John McCain is attacking Barack Obama’s opposition to the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which (among other things) called for labeling Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. McCain claims that Obama’s opposition means that he also opposed calling the IRGC terrorists. We find otherwise.

“Obama cosponsored an earlier bill that also called for designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization.

“The Kyl-Lieberman amendment did more than just label the IRGC terrorists. Obama stated at the time that he opposed the bill on the grounds that it constituted ‘saber-rattling.’

“McCain claims that Obama must oppose calling the IRGC a terrorist group because Obama’s Website doesn’t say anything about the IRGC. McCain’s argument is a glaring example of the logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam.”

Another “by the way”: The “rabbis for Obama” article appeared on Sept. 19, not Sept. 12 – and the articles pertaining to the election, in both issues, were not “praising or in favor of the Democratic candidates or negative articles on their Republican counterparts.”

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