RJC, JDCA, trade barbs over Georgia Senate runoff

• Date: 06 December 2020
• Published date: 06 December 2020
• Author: OMRI NAHMIAS
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

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...