Read all about it in the Kos Diaries. More information from
Ari Berman at The Nation:
As RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman praised the election of his new counterpart Howard Dean, influential Republican front groups were already planning a mendacious offensive against the new DNC chair.
The first attack came courtesy of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a big money pro-Israel lobby group linking Jewish-American neoconservatives to the Christian Right and Israel's Likud government. On Monday the RJC began running full-page ads in major Jewish newspapers across the country featuring a large photo of militants strapped with explosives coddling a young Palestinian boy. Above that arresting image is a quote by Dean: "It's not our place to take sides." Below the photo are quotes by Democrats critical of Dean. The ad effectively equates Dean's election with the appeasement of suicide bombers.
Such smears are to be expected from a group whose board of directors includes members of the Project for a New American Century, top fundraisers for the Bush campaign and former Bush officials, including press secretary Ari Fleischer. The RJC took Bush on his first tour of Israel in 1998. Evidently, Republicans hope to peel off a few more Jewish votes by distorting Dean's record.
"Two issues stand in the way of Republicans gaining a significant percentage of the Jewish vote: abortion and the religious right," GOP pollster Frank Luntz told a RJC conference in 1998. "But we have an answer. The magic word is 'Israel.'" To that end, the RJC opposed the Clinton-inspired peace process, attacked notorious anti-Semite Joe Lieberman for reaching out to Louis Farrakhan and now advocates nuclear weapons assistance to Israel and the expansion of new settlements throughout both Gaza and the West Bank.
Pay close attention to that last paragraph. This is a group that not only opposes working towards peace in the Middle East, but in fact supports adding nuclear weapons to the already volatile Middle East conflict.
And they say Dean is out of the mainstream? Ha!