Nice Jewish (Spin) Doctors
Forward reporter Beth Schwartzapfel has the latest dust-up stemming from the Republican Jewish Coalition’s ad campaign:
Lawyer and Democratic activist Paul Kujawsky is taking issue with the most recent in the Republican Jewish Coalition’s spate of print ads promoting Republican candidates that they identify as being strong on Israel. In the ad, Kujawsky, Vice President of Democrats for Israel, Los Angeles, is quoted as saying, “I am very worried that the Democratic Party’s pro-Israel stance will continue to show cracks and that the most Zionist Jews will continue to flow to the Republican Party.” The quote is taken from an October 17 Orange County Register article called “Democrats Turning Away From Israel.”
“The quotation is accurate,” Kujawsky told the Forward. “But they’re using it in a way that I didn’t intend.” In his interview with Orange County Register reporter Mark Ballon, Kujawsky identified what he perceives as a Democratic softening on Israel because he feels “we need to reform, not abandon, the Democratic Party,” he said—exactly the opposite of the message of the RJC’s ads.
“I’m sorry to hear that he’s upset,” Matt Brooks of the RJC told the Forward, but “based on what he said to this paper, we have a similar concern, which is the direction of the Democratic party. [His quote] expresses a point of view which agrees with what we’re trying to say.”
Kujawsky has complained to the director of the Los Angeles chapter of the RJC, and is in the process of writing letters of correction to the papers that ran the ads.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
