Last week, our Nathan Guttman reported on a briefing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held with leaders from major Jewish organizations to discuss the latest developments on the Israeli-Palestinian front.

While Rice invited the Republican Jewish Coalitiion to the event, the National Jewish Democratic Council was left out in the cold, a fact that has not been unnoticed by Jewish lawmakers, who took her to task in a letter yesterday.

Here it is:

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The Honorable Condoleezza Rice

The Secretary of State

U.S Department of State

2201 C Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20520

Dear Madam Secretary:

We write to express our concerns about a recent news report in The Jewish Daily Forward regarding a briefing on the Middle East which you held last week with Jewish organizations. Specifically, we are concerned that the briefing included representatives from the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a partisan political organization, and not the RJC’s Democratic counterpart, the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC).

We appreciate your continued efforts to keep Jewish organizations informed, especially as it pertains to U.S. policy in the Middle East. Nevertheless, we are concerned that such briefings have great potential to become partisan in nature if only one political wing of the organized Jewish community is included while the other is left outside looking in. It is certainly your prerogative not to include either the NJDC or RJC in future briefings. Should you choose, however, to include one of the groups in such a briefing, it would be appropriate and expected that the other be included as well.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

GARY L. ACKERMAN

Member of Congress

ROBERT WEXLER

Member of Congress

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN

Member of Congress

SANDER M. LEVIN

Member of Congress

HOWARD L. BERMAN

Member of Congress

ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ

Member of Congress

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