Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington CEO Ron Halber told reporters at a JCRC event on Dec. 3 that Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has “become the leading senator agitating against Israel in the United States Senate.”
In response, a spokesperson for Van Hollen accused Halber of being an “apologist for the Netanyahu government,” Jewish Insider reported on Dec. 3.
“I thought that the way [Sen. Van Hollen’s] staff responded to Ron [Halber] was wrong. It was a personal insult, and as we’re trying to elevate our form of political discourse, it was, quite frankly, beneath him and beneath his office,” Howard Libit, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, told Baltimore Jewish Times. “That type of insult is not what I would expect to see coming from Sen. Van Hollen and his office.”
Libit said that he has been in touch with Halber and plans to meet with Van Hollen in the next few days. “He certainly knows that we disagree on Israel, and we’ve had that conversation, but I just think the words used here were wrong, and I want to make sure he understands that.”
“Sen. Van Hollen, I think, has dramatically lost his way with support for Israel,” Halber told reporters at the JCRC’s annual “Lox and Legislators” breakfast. “His social media is filled with a lack of empathy for Jewish suffering. It’s filled with a lack of empathy for Israel’s strategic position. It’s almost like he cannot wait for the next opportunity to jump down Israel’s throat. … That’s not the Sen. Van Hollen that so many people in this room worked hard to get elected.”
“On the issue of Israel, I would say the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community feels betrayed by him,” Halber added.
In attendance at the event were Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), who gave remarks during the breakfast. In addition, Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) and April McClain Delaney (D-Md.), as well as more than 60 locally elected officials and more than 300 members of the JCRC and the greater Washington Jewish community, were also in attendance.
Jewish Insider reported that the Van Hollen spokesperson, in a statement, accused Halber of “running cover for the Israeli government and failing to represent the range of viewpoints in Maryland’s Jewish community.”
“Senator Van Hollen is committed to a values-based foreign policy that holds our friends and our adversaries to the same standards. That’s why he continues to support the people of Israel, but the actions of the Netanyahu Government have increasingly not aligned with our values,” the spokesperson said.
“The Senator often speaks with Marylanders who hold varying perspectives here and has met on many occasions with families of hostages and victims of the heinous Hamas attacks of Oct. 7th. Instead of representing the diversity of views that, in the Senator’s experience, are held by the Jewish community of Maryland, Ron Halber has become an apologist for the Netanyahu government,” the spokesperson added.
In response, Halber told Baltimore Jewish Times: “We are diverse geographically. We are diverse religiously and we’re diverse politically, and the job of the JCRC is to find the unifying priorities, values and interests, and to weave them into a position that the majority — and I’m not going to say everybody, but the majority — of the Jewish community feels comfortable with and I think we do that with … poise and skill.”
The JCRC works on behalf of over 100 different agencies, organizations and synagogues within the DMV region, including advocacy groups for local policy, foreign policy pertaining to Israel, Holocaust education and more.
“We’ve drawn lines where we support and conveyed that to the senator, and we’ve just unfortunately been continually disappointed in his leadership and his lack of empathy for Israel’s strategic position, his constant [social] media posts of negative things about Israel,” Halber continued. “Nobody’s telling him not to believe what he wants to say, but his message would be better received if he showed balance. There’s all this never-ending [commentary] about Israel … and the Jewish community I think is tired of it.”
“He’s a very smart man. He’s a legislator who has been around. … I like Sen. Van Hollen and I’ve worked with him on many, many domestic issues. It’s just on the Israel issue where we part ways and that’s OK,” Halber added. “His near obsession with anti-Israel videos and posts in his [social] media feed are not in tune with the viewpoints shared by the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community in Maryland, and he’s got a very large Maryland Jewish constituency and I don’t think he is taking their viewpoints into concern when he is doing that.”
Halber also noted at the event that he met with Van Hollen about a year ago and asked him to show more empathy and understanding when speaking about the situation with Israel, which Halber said Van Hollen hasn’t done.
“I think it’s very easy to stand with Israel when you’re crying over Jewish victims, but it’s harder to stand up with Israel when she’s doing the right thing,” Halber stated at the Dec. 3 event. “And I think the senator has shown a lack of strategic understanding of Israel’s dilemma. And I’m not saying he’s got to be Israel’s cheerleader, but it would be nice if he had more balance in his remarks.”
“The hard thing is to show up when your friends need you, and right now, we’ve needed him, and he hasn’t been there,” Halber added.
Additional reporting by Suzanne Pollak.
I believe there is a difference between many of the community including some of our leaders who believe that any criticism of Israel is unwarranted versus many of us who believe that supporting Israel at all costs and ignoring some of the policies that included killing thousands of innocent lives should be open to criticism. As a child of a family with few survivors from the Holocost, I truly understand the importance of Israel. However, questioning some of Israel‘s policies is not necessarily anti-Jewish or anti-Israel and we should accept as Jews, that some of Israel‘s policies should and can be questioned without being considered anti-Jewish.. Only historians in the future will judge this objectively.
When I first read some of the original politician’s statements, including Jamie Raskin, I interpreted them in that context and thought they were not anti-Israel, but criticism of some of Israel’s policies which appeared to have two very different implications.
The fact that Van Hollen endorsed Mamdani (a Socialist extremist who openly supports Israel’s elimination) is all that one needs to know about him.