American Jewish Committee Backs Keystone Pipeline

By JTA November 19, 2014

The American Jewish Committee urged President Obama to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, virtually alone among Jewish groups in endorsing the project.

“The Keystone XL pipeline is critically important for U.S. energy security, our economy and relations with Canada, our neighbor and ally,” Richard Foltin, AJC’s director of national and legislative affairs, said Wednesday in a statement.

Obama opposes the pipeline, heeding environmentalists who say its tar extraction methods damage the environment.

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved the pipeline, and an effort to pass a Senate bill, also backed by the AJC, failed Tuesday by a single vote.

Other Jewish groups have not weighed in on the pipeline.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO