|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A group of more than 70 Maryland rabbis sent a letter to U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) this week urging him to change his “rhetoric and actions that we believe mischaracterize the current [Israel-Hamas] war and undermine America’s support for the Jewish state.”
The organizers of the letter — which can be read in full here — included Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt of Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac. Rabbi Weinblatt is a member of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Advisory Board.
“Following the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust, we here at home have faced the worst wave of antisemitism in our lifetimes,” the letter said. “Yet to our dismay, rather than standing with us, your efforts in the Senate have only stoked deeper divisions and further isolated Israel and our Jewish community.”
Rabbi Weinblatt told Jewish Insider that Senator Van Hollen’s recent statements castigating Israel for its military conduct and the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip were “misguided” and served “no purpose other than to inflame an already tense situation, while also making our jobs as religious leaders in the Jewish community that much harder.”
He added that Van Hollen’s criticisms of Israel were “almost insulting” given the lengths the IDF goes to in order to avoid harming civilians, and noted there was “increasing recognition” among Maryland Jews that Van Hollen’s attitude was “outright unhelpful” because “it really only encourages Hamas, which prolongs the war and leads to more suffering.”
In a Senate floor speech last month, Senator Van Hollen accused Israel of perpetrating war crimes in Gaza.
“Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food,” he claimed. “That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.”
