washington | With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, the fight for Jewish votes is getting down and dirty.
In several battleground states, the Bush-Cheney campaign has been circulating barrages of e-mails decrying the supposed endorsement of Democratic nominee John Kerry by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
In Florida, a forum at a synagogue featuring conservative commentator and columnist Dennis Prager was canceled abruptly after the Tampa shul was torn by partisan feuding.
“It was really vitriolic,” said Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. “And this kind of thing is happening all over the place.”
This week the Bush-Cheney campaign was circulating an article from the right-of-center WorldNetDaily Web site, citing an anonymous Palestinian official claiming that Arafat “thinks Kerry will be much better for the Palestinian cause and for the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition also attacked Kerry because of the recent endorsement of the Democrat by the Arab-American PAC and the Muslim American PAC.
“Clearly these groups do not support President Bush because of his unwavering support for Israel and his relentless war against Islamic terrorists,” Brooks said in a statement. “Both of these groups obviously believe Sen. Kerry will not support Israel like President Bush has and will not be as resolute in the war on Islamic terrorists.”
But Jewish Democrats say the last-minute guilt-by-association campaign points to a faltering Jewish-GOP effort.
“They’re desperate,” said Ira Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. “So they’re complaining that Kerry has been endorsed by the same groups that endorsed Bush in 2000.”
In Florida, John Kerry told voters in West Palm Beach on Monday, Oct. 18, that he will do a better job than Bush of “holding those Arab countries accountable for funding terrorism.”
“We’ll do a better job of protecting the state of Israel than they are today,” Kerry said. Supporters held signs distributed by the campaign that said “Jewish Americans for Kerry” and wore stickers and T-shirts that said “Kerry-Edwards” in Hebrew.
Bush, campaigning in Florida, is getting some mileage out of his weekend signing of a new law requiring the State Department to keep better tabs on anti-Semitism around the world and to create a special office to do the job.
The only problem: His own State Department vehemently opposed the legislation.
“Today, I signed the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004,” he told a Jewish audience in Florida, the state with the biggest contested group of Jewish voters in the nation. “This law commits the government to keep a record of anti-Semitic acts throughout the world, and also a record of responses to those acts.”
Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), who sponsored the bill, said he wasn’t surprised by the presidents’ statements.
“Coming two weeks before the election, I would think both President Bush and Sen. Kerry will use every favorable piece of legislation in the campaigns,” he said, adding that both presidential candidates were on record supporting the legislation.
But he was less charitable toward other members of the administration.
“The State Department fought my bill in a mean-spirited and ugly way,” he said. “It acted in a singularly hostile fashion. Had I not taken on the department, this legislation would never have gotten to the president’s desk.”