The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) recently announced that Barack Obama has named its former executive director, Ira Forman, as his Jewish outreach director.  Mr. Forman's tenure at NJDC includes the publication of anti-Christian hate material under color of Judaism, which could easily evoke reciprocal ill feelings from Christians who do not realize that NJDC has almost as little to do with Judaism as the Westboro Baptist Church has to do with Christianity.

NJDC's "Bubbie versus the GOP" cartoon videos for the 2004 election, which Mr. Forman commissioned personally, include scenes of Republicans sewing a cross into the blue field of the American Flag along with a cabal of red-robed Republicans around a lectern with a cross on its front.  Depiction of the Cross, along with Christian ministers and Jesus, in a "This is the Enemy" context makes the video a form of anti-Christian hate media, just as depiction of the Star of David in the indicated contexts (flag, cabal) would be anti-Semitic.  The movies are no longer available but .pdf summaries are available here while we have the offending screen shots on file.

NJDC on Mr. Forman's watch also smeared the Christian computer game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" by saying falsely that it encourages the player to kill everybody who will not convert to Christianity.  The Anti-Defamation League did not like the game's exclusionary Christian emphasis but added:

The game is designed to make force an option only used by players if necessary when their forces are attacked by those hunting them, and any characters that kill others in the game are penalized. Conversion to Christianity in the game is not depicted as forcible in nature, and violence is not rewarded in the game.

Double standards are routine to NJDC and Mr. Forman, who in 2007 condemned Mitt Romney for appearing at the Henry Ford Museum.  "Mitt Romney's embrace of Henry Ford and association of Ford's legacy with his presidential campaign raises serious questions about either the sincerity of Romney's words or his understanding of basic American history," Forman said regarding Ford's publication of anti-Semitic material that he later retracted and repudiated.  Mr. Forman and NJDC were therefore eager to call Mitt Romney out for associating with a long-dead ex-anti-Semite but they were nowhere to be seen or heard when Mr. Obama and other Democrats posed arm-in-arm with a live and unrepentant one (Al Sharpton) in 2007.

The National "Jewish" Democratic Council therefore has its own long track record of falsehoods and, to use its favorite accusation against others, "smears."  It acquired most of this track record on Mr. Forman's watch.  The history of Mr. Obama's new "Jewish outreach coordinator" must therefore be made very clear to Jewish voters as frequently as possible before next year's election.

As a side note, Mr. Forman just went on record as saying that Barack Obama deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.  The Nobel Peace Prize has become a sick joke during the past years, noting that the committee passed over Irena Sendler, a Pole who risked her life to save more than 2,500 Jews from the Nazis, in favor of the self-serving and self-enriching global warming charlatan Al Gore.  NJDC naturally gave this a pass as well; after all, what has Irena Sendler done for the Democrat left lately, if ever?

Next we come to Eric Yoffie of the Union for Reform Judaism, or at least what Mr. Yoffie calls Reform Judaism; it comes across to us as the DNC and/or the Brady Campaign with Jewish holidays.  Mr. Yoffie came to our attention most recently for his denunciation of Glenn Beck.  The reference paraphrases Yoffie as saying, "[T]he pundit had expressed himself hatefully and rudely against President Obama, who is Israel's important and faithful ally."  Is "faithful ally" what Mr. Yoffie calls an individual who pressures Israel to reward terroristic violence with land concessions, and who equates Israeli civilians murdered by terrorists to Palestinian civilians who become collateral damage when terrorists use them as shields?

[Mr. Obama said,] We see that spirit in the Israeli father whose son was killed by Hamas, who helped start an organization that brought together Israelis and Palestinians who had lost loved ones.  That father said, "I gradually realized that the only hope for progress was to recognize the face of the conflict."  We see it in the actions of a Palestinian who lost three daughters to Israeli shells in Gaza. "I have the right to feel angry," he said.

Mr. Obama might as well equate the people who were murdered in the World Trade Center to Afghan civilians who were accidentally killed when our Armed Forces attacked Al Qaida.  If he doesn't understand the difference between willfully murdering civilians and killing them unintentionally -- often because terrorists have used them as shields, which is a war crime -- he has some real ethical problems.  Then again, noting that his Justice Department has armed Mexican drug gangs the way Iran arms Palestinian and other terrorists, maybe he really doesn't see a difference.

Mr. Yoffie's interpretation of Judaism is political indeed, as shown by his speech to the anti-Second Amendment Million Mom March in 2000:

Is the need for sensible gun-control a religious issue? You bet it is.

... Controlling guns is not only a political matter, it is a solemn religious obligation.

... We are ready for a knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred battle against the NRA, which is the real criminals' lobby in this country, and which is drenched in the blood of murdered children.

... The American people, I believe, are ready for a leader who will take on the fanatics and support sensible gun control.

It seems that the only thing Mr. Yoffie left out was the NRA's secret recipe for making matzos from the blood of those murdered children (the classical anti-Semitic blood libel).  As a Life Member of the NRA, I also resent Mr. Yoffie's depiction of us as part of a "criminal's lobby."

Mr. Yoffie also referred to guns as "idols."  Had he been in charge of the Jewish people in ancient times, we (including Christians, because the founder of Christianity was a Jew) would all be worshiping honest-to-Zeus idols because the Maccabees would have had no swords.  If he had been in charge of Israel in 1948, the region would have become Judenrein within a week because the Jews would have had no guns.

Mr. Yoffie and Mr. Forman have the First Amendment right to express political opinions, no matter how disagreeable.  They do not, however, have the right to associate these views with the Jewish religion, and it is both the right and duty of Jewish voters to denounce them whenever they seek to do so.

William A. Levinson, P.E. is the author of several books on business management, including content on organizational psychology as well as manufacturing productivity and quality.