(The Jewish week).Republican Susan Kone, who hopes to unseat Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler next week, says the congressman has been too silent about President Barack Obama’s Middle East policies.
In an ad campaign she said she’ll take to Jewish newspapers and in a YouTube video emailed by her campaign Kone, an Upper West Side lawyer who founded an executive search and consulting firm, says Nadler “stood silent while Barack Obama has pursued the most anti-Israel policies of any president in U.S. history.”
The ad mentions that Nadler did not speak out when Obama asked Israel to open its nuclear facilities to U.N. inspectors without mentioning Iran, nor when the president said he would be open to negotiations with Iran’s leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has denied the Holocaust and threatened Israel with destruction.
“He’s one of the most silent of all members of Congress on Israel,” said Kone, who said she wants to be the first female Jewish Republican in Congress. In an interview, she said she decided to run because doctors were complaining to her about the Obama health insurance program.
According to Kone -- “this election is in large part a referendum on President Obama’s policies toward Israel as the district represents one of the largest and most diverse Jewish communities in the world. Congressman Nadler was the primary surrogate to the Jewish community - misleading Jewish voters during the presidential campaign that this Administration would be a true friend to Israel and that he would be a true friend to Israel. A true friend to Israel would not have stood silent in light of two years of insensitive treatment toward Israel - a true friend to Israel would not be helping to finance the campaign of a woman who signed the Gaza Letter of 54.”
Kone continued, "While many in the Jewish community including myself spoke upagainst the insensitive treatment of Israel, Mr. Nadler - who has a proclivity topontificate - remained deafeningly silent. He did however speak up loud and clear to argue that ACORN was, as he said, ‘entitled’ to continue to receive millions in taxpayer funding notwithstanding both established criminal behavior and a bipartisan vote of Congress to the contrary. He also spoke up loud and often against those who felt that the building of mosque near Ground Zero was a poor and insensitive choice of location. Nadler labeled opponents of the location of the mosque--including the families of the victims of September 11--as, in his words, 'shameful', 'hateful' and 'divisive'. He was quite vocal in his assertion that their passionate pleas for respect and understanding were, as he put it, 'hate speech' rather than 'hurt speech'.”
Nadler’s campaign spokesman , Ilan Kayatsky, said in an emailed statement “Congressman Nadler's decades-long record as a staunch and leading supporter of Israel in Congress speaks for itself. The baseless assertions in this video are easily rebutted by a quick search of the Congressional Record and are, frankly, absurd.”