Rabbi Gerald Skolnik Confronts Rumors from Obama Meeting

David Streeter — March 4, 2011 – 10:29 am | Barack Obama | Israel Comments (1) Add a comment

Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik, Vice President of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, published an op-ed in The Jewish Week that challenges the rumors that have emerged from the recent meeting held between President Barack Obama and nearly 50 American Jewish leaders, including NJDC President and CEO David A. Harris. Despite the significant praise Obama received from meeting attendees, rumors and doubts still persist about Obama’s commitment to Israel, including charges of outright hostility. Skolnick believes that those who continue to slander Obama on Israel “didn’t listen” to what Obama said and how he said it during the meeting.

Skolnik wrote:

Allegedly, some of my fellow Jewish leaders said that the President ‘implied that Israel bears primary responsibility for advancing the peace process,’ and that the President’s comments were either ‘hostile, naïve or unsurprising.’ Others perceived a ‘great hostility towards Israel.’

I sat at the same table as those whose sentiments were quoted above, and participated in the same meeting. I consider myself to be of sound mind and body, fairly knowledgeable about Israel, and as thoroughly committed to her security and survival as anyone I know.

And therefore it saddens me greatly to say that those statements are simply not true. They take little snippets of what the President said and distort them, deprive them of any context, and portray what was a candid and cordial event as an opportunity for the President to vent some imagined anti-Israel animus at American Jewish leadership.

How can it be, I’ve been asking myself these past few hours, that we were all at the same meeting, and came away with such radically different perspectives on what transpired there?

The answer to that question has to be a simple one. Some of my fellow members in the Conference went into that meeting with preconceived notions about the President’s attitude to Israel, notions that they were all too ready to have proven to be true. They heard what they wanted to hear, and emerged even more convinced of the truth of their opinions.

Here’s the problem. They heard what they wanted to hear. But they didn’t listen.

Skolnik also wrote that even though he has differences with Obama’s policies towards Israel, he believes that Obama’s concern for Israel is sincere and heartfelt:

I think it the height of irresponsibility to report that in our meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, the President displayed anything like the attitudes that I quoted earlier.

From my perspective, what the President did display was thoughtfulness, a keen command of the issues and sensitivities involved, a deep respect for his audience, and an analytical ability to see one of the most complex disputes of our time from a variety of different angles and perspectives.

I must tell you… I found it remarkably refreshing to be spoken to by a politician- and not just any politician, but the President of the United States- in a way that was not canned, or full of applause lines that some speech writer had inserted to guarantee that those in the room would hear what they wanted to hear.

Most of our time together was for questions from the floor. In his brief introductory comments, the President forcefully and eloquently spoke to the unbreakable ties between the United States and Israel, born of the common values shared between two vibrant democracies.

Now more than ever, as so many countries in that region experience unrest and upheaval, those ties are vitally important both to Israel and America. I left with no doubt as to his sincerity in this regard.

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