I care very deeply about Israel. I became an Israeli citizen when I spent 6 years living there.

Please send this email to everyone you know who cares about Israel. If the embedded links don’t work for you, you can cut and paste the URLs at the email’s end into your browser.

QUESTIONS

1) WHAT ARE OBAMA’S VIEWS ABOUT ISRAEL?

2) WHAT IS OBAMA’S RECORD ON ISRAEL?

3) WHAT DO ZIONIST ORGANIZATIONS SAY ABOUT OBAMA?

4) WHAT DO ISRAELIS SAY ABOUT OBAMA?

5) WHAT DO ARABS SAY ABOUT OBAMA?

6) IS HAMAS FUNDING OBAMA?  DOES HE HAVE ANTI-ISRAEL PEOPLE ADVISING HIM?

7) CAN WE TRUST MCCAIN?

8 ) DIDN’T OBAMA FLIP-FLOP ON JERUSALEM?

9) DOES IT BOTHER YOU THAT OBAMA IS A MOSLEM?

10) WHO ARE YOU VOTING FOR?

11) WHO WROTE THIS EMAIL?

12) WHAT ARE YOUR SOURCES?

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Deborah E. Lipstadt is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. The author of the seminal book Denying the Holocaust, in the year 2000 Lipstadt was sued for libel in British court by Holocaust denier David Irving. In a landmark decision, she won the case by proving that her accusations against Irving were true.

In her wide-ranging endorsement of Barack Obama, Lipstadt writes that she is “firmly in the Obama/Biden camp… as an American, a woman, and a Jew.” Lipstadt discusses many topics, including: anti-abortion legislation and its potential impact on our ability to follow Jewish law; the relationship between the candidates’ proposed policies and the Jewish obligation to give tzedaka; and Obama’s solid support for Israel and the confidence in him expressed by Israeli leaders across the political spectrum.

Click here to read Lipstadt’s endorsement.

September 14, 2008

Dear Friends,

I am writing this letter to you at a time of great urgency for our country and the Jewish people. I have not been so alarmed about the future of America and Israel since I was in college during the Vietnam War and Israel’s wars of survival in 1967 and 1973. I believe the choice of our country’s next president will determine the future of our country’s most fundamental values, including the protection of civil liberties and individual freedoms like a woman’s right to choose and the separation of church and state. Equally important, Israel’s survival may depend on the decisions of the next president. I believe that John McCain and Sarah Palin are the wrong choice to be our new national leaders at this crucial time. I would like to share with you how I reached this conclusion and why I wholeheartedly support Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

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Cambridge, MA (October 3) – Janette Hillis-Jaffe, An Orthodox Jewish supporter of Senator Barack Obama who lived in Israel for five years, has released a ground-breaking video (www.JewsObamaIsrael.com) encouraging other Jews who love Israel to join her in supporting Obama.

Hillis-Jaffe, who lived in Israel during the Second Intifada and the start of the Iraq War, knows first-hand the existential dangers that Israel faces. Her fond memories of her life in Israel will forever be marred by fear and violence. “I remember the terror of sealing my son Tani’s nursery against the threat of nerve gas and practicing strapping Tani into his toddler-sized HazMat suit while praying that it would never be necessary,” Hillis-Jaffe explains. “And there were so many suicide bombings near our home that Tani started asking about the explosions, and I had to lie to him about what they were.”

When Hillis-Jaffe heard the anti-Obama rumors circulating in the Jewish community, she was as concerned as anyone. However, when she researched the claims, she found that they were the exact opposite of the truth. “The material on Web sites like JewsForObama.com and njdc.org, and the substantive endorsements by many long-time supporters of Israel, made it clear to me that Obama has always had close ties to Jews and been a strong supporter of the Jewish state.”

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If you care about the well-being of Jews and Israel, by now the incessant Republican attacks on Barack Obama may have persuaded you to be wary of the Democratic candidate. Parse the poison, however, and you will see that it is nouvelle racism grafted to pure unadulterated right-wing bunk.

This election’s top Swiftboating trick (the Jews for Obama Newsletter calls it “schvitz-boating”) is to make you believe Senator Obama is both a secret Muslim and in the thrall of loudmouthed Christian minister Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Right-wing operatives make snide references to black-Jewish conflicts of the past—Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson’s “Hymietown” statement, the Crown Heights riots—in a transparent attempt to associate Obama—merely because of his race—with hostile African-Americans, and to imply that he sympathizes with the enemies of the Jewish people. Scurrilous emails link Obama to the leader of the Nation of Islam, despite the senator having expressly stated: “I decry racism and anti-Semitism and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan.”

Slash-and-burn opposition forces—including, shamefully, Senator Joseph Lieberman—want you to believe Barack Obama is “anti-Israel,” when, in fact, his record of support for the Jewish state has been attested to by such “pro-Israel” lawmakers as Senators Carl Levin, Ben Cardin, Russ Feingold, Ron Wyden, Barbara Boxer and Frank Lautenberg, and by no less a conservative voice than the New York Sun. The attackers also hope you’ll swallow their claim that the candidate is soft on Iran, though he has declared emphatically, “I will do everything in my power—everything—to ensure that Iran does not achieve a nuclear weapon.”

Having so often been the target of rumors and disinformation, Jews ought to be suspicious of crazy and loaded accusations. But some in our community—reportedly many senior citizens, and Jews for whom Israel is a political litmus test—have fallen for the smear and scare tactics.

Read more from Moment magazine…

© Rabbi Menachem Creditor

I’ve received both affirmation and hate-mail in recent weeks for having joined a group called Rabbis for Obama (rabbisforobama.org), a grassroots organization of rabbis from all movements and backgrounds. Here is why I joined.

My primary reason for endorsing a political candidate, especially given the dangerous overlap between religion and state involved, is that there is a terrible and effective Lashon Hara/Slander campaign against him within the Jewish community.

Read more from Rabbi Creditor’s blog…