Don’t Vote For The Jew!

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Is the words on this campaign poster against Rep. Steve Rothman in the upcoming Democratic Primary.  The latest tactic in campaigning.  Now it is outright anti-Semitism.

A Democratic primary race in northern New Jersey has devolved into a highly competitive proxy war over Israel, pitting the state’s pro-Israel community against a growing constituency of Arab voters who have accused a sitting congressman of putting Israel’s interests before America’s.

As the race between Democratic Reps. Steve Rothman and Bill Pascrell nears its Tuesday finish, veteran political observers on the ground have expressed concern at the way the battle between the two veteran lawmakers has transformed into a troubling ethnic brawl.

“One side says, ‘We want this Jew out of office’ and, frankly, it’s pretty unsettling,” Ben Chouake, president of NORPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee based in Englewood Cliffs, told the Free Beacon. “They emphasized [Rothman] is a Jewish congressman.”

Others say they simply cannot recall a congressional race becoming a referendum on a candidate’s religion.

 

“For the first time in recent American political history, we are witnessing a proxy battle between supporters and detractors of Israel, and it’s playing out in the Ninth District of New Jersey,” said one veteran campaign strategist who is knowledgeable about the district.

The race took an unprecedented turn on Monday when an Arabic campaign poster (see above) supporting Pascrell surfaced. It urged the “Arab diaspora community” to “elect the friend of the Arabs” and billed the race as “the most important election in the history of the [Arab] community,” according to a WFB translation of the sign.


“I don’t read Arabic well, but I am pretty sure that the pro-Pascrell posters that have appeared across the district are not calling to elect the candidate who supports a strong relationship between America and the only democracy in the Middle East, one which is rooted in progressive Western values—women’s rights, gay rights, tolerance, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc.,” said Josh Block, a Democratic strategist and former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Observers such as Susan Rosenbluth, publisher of the New Jersey-based Jewish Voice and Opinion, say the race took an anti-Semitic turn in late February, when a prominent Arab supporter of Pascrell accused the state’s Jewish voters of being more loyal to Israel than America.

“Unquestionably, this primary election is pitting two otherwise harmoniously coexisting communities: the Muslim and Jewish communities,” Aref Assaf, president of the New Jersey-based American Arab Forum, wrote in a New Jersey Star-Ledger column headlined “Rothman is Israel’s man in District 9.”
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