Iraq War: RJC vs. URJ = Pee Wee vs. Arnold

On Monday, the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ) leadership meets to consider a resolution calling for a “timetable for the phased and expeditious withdrawal of United States troops from Iraq” and comes down against the Bush administration’s “escalation” of U.S. troop strength there. The policy statement, however, doesn’t demand that Congress cut off funding for the war. [For more details, see our post of March 6.]

Nonetheless, the Republican Jewish Coalition [RJC] is shocked — shocked! — writes James D. Besser in the March 9 edition of the New York Jewish Week. (Click {here} to read his article.)

According to Besser, an RJC spokesman sputtered that the Reform movement is being “hijacked by politically motivated efforts to undermine the war on terrorism.”

But Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, isn’t fazed. Recent polls, he notes, show American Jews overwhelmingly oppose the war [see our post of Feb. 28.], and two-thirds of non-Democratic Jews currently line up against the war.

Ira Forman, director of the NJC’s counterpart, the National Jewish Democratic Council, gets the prize for pith. “I don’t get it,” he says.

If you read the polls these guys don’t even represent the views of most Republican Jews. Now they are picking a fight with the largest Jewish denomination in America — it’s like Pee Wee Herman trying to pick a fist fight with Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

— Barnett Axelrad