Ever since President Barack Obama took office, Jewish
leaders
have been asking for a meeting with him. The White House, apparently
thinking Jewish support for Obama was in the pocket, put them off. But
a major Jewish leader says that after Newsmax.com reported on deep
concerns in the Jewish community about Obama’s Middle East initiatives
and statements, the White House responded quickly by asking 14 top
Jewish leaders to meet with the president on July 13.
Yet that important Jewish leader, Morton Klein,
president of
the Zionist Organization of America, says he was barred from attending
the meeting because of criticism he aimed at Obama.
In June, Newsmax reported that Klein and Malcolm
Hoenlein,
executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations, believed Obama’s Jewish support was
eroding as a result of his recent Middle East activities.
“The Hoenlein and Klein interviews [with Newsmax] got
the
ball really rolling,” Klein tells Newsmax. “This meeting was called
because they were getting very worried that more and more Jewish people
are expressing concern about Obama’s policies on Israel. The White
House wanted to stop the bleeding, as expressed in Newsmax interviews
and picked up elsewhere.” Klein says that “Newsmax was a significant
factor in this meeting happening.”
At 3 p.m. on July 13, Obama met for 45 minutes with
Hoenlein,
whose organization represents 50 major Jewish groups, and 13 other
Jewish leaders. Klein, whose organization of 30,000 members is the
oldest pro-Israel group in the country, was not invited. According to
press reports, only Jewish leaders known to be sympathetic to Obama
were invited to the meeting.
Klein’s White House contacts told him flat out that he
was
shunned because of his strong criticism of Obama. In his June interview
with Newsmax, Klein said that Obama may be the “most hostile president
to Israel” ever.
“They said to me, ‘How do you expect us to invite you
to a
meeting with the president when you keep criticizing the president?’”
Klein says.
Klein found the White House response to him surprising,
and
“remarkable that the president has said he wants to be bipartisan and
reach out to people who don’t agree with him and that he wants to hear
all good ideas, even if they’re different from his.”
Klein also found it ironic that he was chastised for
criticizing the president, and banned from a meeting with top Jewish
leaders, at the same time Obama has argued for sitting down and
negotiating with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez.
Klein said he told White House aides, “You won’t allow
me in
the meeting to discuss issues. And you want to negotiate with these
evil haters of America, but I can’t be at a meeting where I would
express my concerns very respectfully and responsibly?”
Klein says he has talked to several people who attended
the
off-the-record meeting. He was told that though the meeting was
amicable, Obama was asked why he is pressuring Israel and not the Arabs
on contentious issues.
Obama, Klein says, responded that he is dealing firmly
and forthrightly with the Arabs but the media are not emphasizing that.
Klein says the Jewish leaders did not bring up
important
matters about some of Obama’s statements, including his use of mistaken
statistics and analogies in his Cairo speech in June.
As a child of survivors of the Holocaust, Klein says he
was
particularly offended by Obama’s comparison of the suffering of
Palestinians with the Nazis’ murder of more than 6 million Jews during
the Holocaust. This issue was not raised, nor was Obama’s claim that
America has an astonishing 7 million Muslims.
Klein said Obama’s claim showed a willingness by him to
use phony figures to support a tilt toward Muslims.
“Every major survey shows there’s between 1.5 million
and 2.5
million Muslims in America,” Klein says. “Where does he get the number
7 million? This is the number that the Arab propagandists promote.
There’s no legitimate survey that shows a number of that nature.”
Liberal groups at the meeting were pleased with Obama’s
responses, Klein says. Others, like the Union of Orthodox Jewish
Congregations of America, expressed concerns.
Since his Newsmax interview in June, Klein doubts
Obama’s
meeting with a select group of Jewish leaders will help him. Klein
thinks Jewish support for Obama has dwindled even more in the past
month.
“In my own experience of speaking to many different
people and
speaking to synagogues around the country in the last few weeks, I’m
seeing an acceleration of concern about Obama’s position on Israel,”
Klein says. “Even supporters of Obama who voted for him are telling me
that they’re beginning to have concerns about him.”
For more on this, see Jewish
Leader: Obama May Be 'Most Hostile President to Israel’” and “Jewish
Leader: Jews ‘Very Concerned’ About Obama.”
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of
Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to
you free via
e-mail. Go here now.
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