White House Speechwriter Ben Rhodes Tapped for Holocaust Memorial Board
Image by Getty Images
By Josefin Dolsten January 17, 2017
(JTA) — President Barack Obama has tapped Ben Rhodes, a White House speechwriter and proponent of the Iranian nuclear agreement, to serve on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
Obama said Tuesday that he had chosen Rhodes, currently the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, to serve on the council, which Congress established in 1980 to commemorate the Holocaust and raise money for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Rhodes, the son of a Jewish mother and an Episcopalian father, was closely involved with American efforts to reach the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which Israel bitterly opposed and Jewish groups were mixed on. Rhodes has called the agreement “historic” and said it helps ensure Iranian nuclear activity “remains exclusively peaceful.”
A May New York Times profile, rebutted by some, suggested that Rhodes created a false narrative around negotiations with the Iranian leadership to help present the deal as more favorable.
Rhodes, who has worked for Obama since 2007, also served as deputy director of White House speechwriting and as a senior speechwriter for Obama’s presidential campaign.
On Monday, Obama said he would appoint 10 people to serve on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.
Among his picks were Daniel Benjamin, an American diplomat who served as the coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department from 2009 to 2012; Raffi Freedman-Gurspan, a White House senior associate director for public engagement and the first openly transgender White House staffer, and Sarah Hurwitz, Michelle Obama’s head speechwriter.
The council has 68 members, including 55 presidential appointees, who serve five-year terms, along with senators and representatives and members of the education, interior and state departments.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
