Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Michele Bachmann Accuses Jews of Selling Out Israel

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said American Jewish organizations are selling out on Israel in favor of the Obama administration.

Bachmann made the accusation this week during a telephone interview with Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council and host of the online radio show that is featured on the conservative Christian group’s website.

“What has been shocking has been seeing and observing Jewish organizations who, it appears, have made it their priority to support the political priority and the political ambitions of the president over the best interests of Israel. They sold out Israel,” Bachmann said.

She said this in reference to a Feb. 27 letter by major Democratic donors, many of them Jewish, to party congressional leaders urging them not to advance new Iran sanctions legislation.

“This is clearly against Israel’s best interest,” she said.

President Obama in January said he would veto legislation introduced in the Senate the previous month, that threatened to torpedo international negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized the interim agreement reached in November between six world powers including the United States and Iran as “a bad deal.”

The so-called P5+1 agreement freezes some aspects of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief. Israel under Netanyahu is demanding total dismantlement of sites that are suspected as being connected to Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons program as a precondition for sanctions relief.

Earlier in the interview, Bachmann said that Obama “was helped enormously by the Jewish community. He made all sorts of promises in 2008 to the Jewish community through [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. He did it again in 2012 when he was running to be re-elected. He made promises that he would have Israel’s back, and in return the Jewish community gave him their votes.”

“The Jewish community gave him their votes, their support, their financial support and as recently as last week, 48 Jewish donors who are big contributors to the president wrote a letter to the (Democratic) senators in the U.S. Senate to tell them to not advance sanctions against Iran.”

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.