Joel Rubin, co-founder of J Street and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, was picked on Friday by the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign as its liaison to the Jewish community.
Rubin tweeted on Friday: “I’m thrilled to join the Bernie Sanders Campaign as its Director of Jewish Outreach. There’s no better time than right now for us to unite against hate & anti-Semitism.”
Rubin told JTA: “It’s really exciting because Bernie is building a movement here that is one that is essentially engaging the diversity of America. What we’re going to do is make sure that the Jewish voice and community is part and parcel of that movement.”
Back in early September, Joel Rubin supported Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar after Israel had refused to let them enter. Rubin told Fox News: “No, the Squad is not anti-Semitic. Omar has said things about Israel supporters that she has apologized for, but that does not mean that she hates Jews. She hasn’t gone on a tirade attacking Jews, like real anti-Semites do. There’s a difference between being critical of Israeli government policy and being anti-Semitic.”
So, expect more Bernie Sanders endorsements of “I’m not anti-Semitic, just anti-Zionist” politicians.
Rubin is also a fervent voice in favor of Trump’s impeachment, as he wrote in Al Jazeera on Dec. 19 (Impeachment will damage Trump – whether he is removed or not):
“Ultimately, regardless of what happens in the Senate, Trump will be damaged by the impeachment process. Either he gets acquitted by the Senate after an open trial with witnesses and still carries the label of ‘impeached,’ or he gets acquitted without a fair trial and is seen as politically protected and above the law.
“And looming, just ever so slightly, remains the prospect of him still suffering the political death penalty and getting removed from office, the first time ever for a president in American history.”
Rubin, who lost a Democratic primary race for Congress in Maryland in 2018, has been a fervent participant in the Democratic party’s efforts to vilify President Donald Trump’s removal of Iranian arch-terrorist Qasem Soleimani last Friday. Rubin tweeted:
“Donald Trump, this is how you start a world war. Remember that World War I started when a major leader was assassinated. Soleimani was evil, but it’s hard to not see this as anything but assassination. As Petraeus said: tell us how this ends. You can’t.”
Except that the June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo did not so much cause WWI as was the pretext that finally ignited a war which had been inevitable because Germany wanted it. If it weren’t the Archduke’s assassination, Kaiser Wilhelm II would have found a different pretext to launch his campaign to conquer Europe. The similarities between the assassinations of Ferdinand and Soleimani end at the fact that both were killed.
Incidentally, the online world has been warring since last Friday over whether or not the term Assassination is inherently negative, or merely a value-free description of the killing of a politician or any other distinguished person.
Dictionary.com suggests it is “to kill suddenly or secretively, especially a politically prominent person; murder premeditatedly and treacherously.” So, a little negative.
Wikipedia is totally neutral: “Assassination is the act of killing a prominent person for either political, religious, or monetary reasons. An assassination may be prompted by religious, political or military motives.”
Webster’s says it is “murder by sudden or secret attack often for political reasons.” But Webster’s also notes that character assassination is totally bad, calling it “treacherous destruction of a person’s reputation.”