"That Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff rely on Johnson to boost their campaigns is a direct endorsement of Johnson’s bigoted statements about the citizens of the only Jewish country in the world.”
By OMRI NAHMIASDemocratic US Senate candidate Jon Ossoff attends a campaign event at the Georgia State Railroad Museum in Savannah, Georgia, US November 12, 2020. (photo credit: REUTERS/DUSTIN CHAMBERS/FILE PHOTO)
WASHINGTON - The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) slammed Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, candidates for US Senate from Georgia, saying that the two “will stand with the large anti-Israel contingent of the Democrat Party.” Georgia’s Senate runoff will take place on January 5 and will decide which Party will control the chamber.Matt Brooks, Executive Director for RJC, said in a statement that the two campaigned “with anti-Israel Democrat Congressman Hank Johnson (D-GA-4).”“Hank Johnson, Jon Ossoff’s mentor and former boss, enjoys referring to Israelis as ‘termites,’” said Brooks. “He used the phrase when speaking to the group called Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation – a group that supports the antisemitic BDS movement. That Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff rely on Johnson to boost their campaigns is a direct endorsement of Johnson’s bigoted statements about the citizens of the only Jewish country in the world.”“Calling Jews 'termites' is dehumanizing and on par with the propaganda that the Nazi regime used to desensitize the German people to the eventual Holocaust,” Brooks continued. He went on to say that Johnson “accused individual Israelis of simply walking into Palestinian homes and stealing those homes with impunity. That is an absolute lie, and as a Member of Congress, Johnson knows it’s a lie.”“Jon Ossoff certainly knows what Johnson has said about Jews from Israel, and Raphael Warnock either knows, or is being purposefully ignorant,” Brooks added. “Today it became even more clear that they will stand with the large anti-Israel contingent of the Democrat Party, ensuring that they will not stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel.”Halie Soifer, Executive Director for the Jewish Democratic Council of America, rejected Brooks’ criticism, and issued a release saying that “Hank Johnson apologized for this incident when it occurred four years ago, and Ossoff and Warnock's records of support of Israel are strong. Jewish voters are smarter than [the] RJC assumes with these guilt by association attacks.”“Georgia voters are sick of the concerted campaign of corruption, recklessness, and lies emanating from the GOP, starting with the ongoing Republican/RJC refusal to recognize that Georgians decisively rejected Donald Trump and selected Joe Biden as our next president,” Soifer added.She went on to say that “Georgians are also disgusted by the GOP's uses of hatred for political purposes, including Senator David Perdue’s antisemitic attack on Ossoff, which the RJC blatantly excused, in addition to Senator Kelly Loeffler's association with right-wing QAnon extremists.”“This attack on Ossoff and Warnock is an example of ongoing GOP efforts to vilify Democrats using Israel and disinformation as a political weapon to distract from the real issues facing Georgians in this election, such as the pandemic threatening lives and livelihoods,” she said.
