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• The RJC PAC’s first slate of endorsees for 2022 is getting media attention. JNS reports:

The Republican Jewish Coalition PAC announced its first endorsements of the 2022 election cycle on Thursday, throwing its support behind five freshmen members of Congress seeking re-election… [T]he candidates include California Republican Reps. Mike Garcia, Young Kim and Michelle Steel; and Florida Republicans Reps. Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar.

• Ron Kampeas at JTA notes the diverse backgrounds of the RJC PAC endorsees:

The first slate of 2022 endorsees named by the political action committee affiliated with the Republican Jewish Coalition is made up of three Latino and two Asian lawmakers, all of them relative newcomers to the US House of Representatives.

The RJC did not note the diversity of the five lawmakers in its release Thursday, but Jewish Republicans for years have been at the vanguard of efforts to attract voters from constituencies where Republicans have historically fared poorly.

The best way to help these candidates is to donate to them through the RJC PAC.

• In 2019, the RJC worked with WPA Intelligence (WPAi), a leader in data science, to build the most sophisticated, advanced data program ever used in Jewish politics to identify persuadable Jewish voters, effectively deliver our messaging, and turn them out to vote in the key battleground states of Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, Georgia and Michigan. Our success was clear: President Donald Trump received 30.5% of the Jewish vote in 2020, up 6 points from his 24% share in 2016 and the highest percentage of any Republican presidential candidate since 1988. And in Florida, where the RJC invested $5 million targeting Jewish voters, an historic 43% of the Jewish vote went to President Trump. The RJC’s efforts made a difference in the Jewish vote for the Republican presidential candidate in 2020.

Our partner, WPAi, was awarded a 2021 Gold Pollie Award for their work with us. The Pollies are presented by the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC). WPAi won in the category of Best Use of Analytics for “Science-Driven Strategies for High-Difficulty Ethnoreligious Targeting.”

President Joe Biden has nominated Sarah Margon to be assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. Margon’s record – and her views about Israel – make her the wrong person for the job. Jonathan Tobin writes:

[Margon] has also been a “conflict policy adviser” for the leftist Oxfam charity, as well as a foreign-policy adviser for the Open Society Foundations, the group through which billionaire George Soros has funneled much of his vast wealth into a variety of causes. Those two items alone would raise questions about Margon’s attitude towards Israel. Oxfam is a bitter critic of Israel, a major funder of Palestinian groups and a promoter of boycotts of Israeli settlements. While operating under the guise of philanthropy, as a report from NGO monitor documented, Open Society’s funding fuels the conflict in myriad ways and does its best to undermine and attack Israel.

But far worse is the fact that Margon has also served for several years as head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch.

Of all the non-governmental organizations that have devoted themselves to the cause of demonizing Israel, Human Rights Watch is arguably the worst and the most vicious. Just this last week, it issued yet another report falsely branding Israel as an “apartheid state.”

…Democrats may claim that Margon will merely be taking orders from [Joe] Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. But just as the appointment of Robert Malley signaled the administration’s determination to return to a policy of appeasement of Iran, so, too, does the choice of Margon indicate what can be expected on policy towards Israel. Indeed, Biden would have been hard-pressed to find anyone else who would be more likely to undermine the alliance with Israel or to support those seeking to delegitimize it.

The RJC spoke out publicly against Margon’s nomination. RJC National Chairman Senator Norm Coleman said:

President Biden and Secretary Blinken claim to oppose the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, but now they want to install a supporter of Israel boycotts in a senior role. They say they favor a peace settlement based on a two-state solution, but they want to elevate someone who supports the idea of a single "equal" Israeli-Palestinian state replacing Israel, eliminating the Jewish state entirely.

US Presidents have great leeway in choosing their advisors, and the Senate historically has confirmed almost any qualified nominee for an administration post. But Sarah Margon’s nomination to a key role at the State Department dealing with democracy and human rights is completely inappropriate. She is an anti-Israel activist whose work makes a mockery of the concept of "human rights." Her nomination will be resolutely opposed by Republicans and the Jewish community, who value the Jewish state and our strategic alliance with her. Those Democrats who profess to support Israel must join in the vote to reject this nomination.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, now in the 16^th year of his 4-year term in office, has once again canceled parliamentary and presidential elections. Reuters reports that Abbas blamed Israel for the delay, which many Palestinians understood as an excuse to avoid elections that Abbas’ Fatah organization might lose to Hamas, as happened in the last parliamentary election in 2006. There is also political strife within Fatah.

Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch write at Israel Hayom that Fatah tried using violence against Israeli Jews to shore up its political strength:

There is nothing that boosts Palestinian leaders' popularity like their leading terror campaigns against Israel. This is the reason why suddenly, after months of relative quiet, Jerusalem Arabs and Palestinians throughout Judea and Samaria started attacking Israeli citizens and soldiers, and Hamas launched more than 40 missiles into Israel last week.

… [Fatah’s] intensified incitement started on The Tune of the Homeland, a quiz show broadcasting highly violent, pro-terror songs. To ensure maximum effect, the show was broadcast during the 4:00-5:00 p.m. time slot for children's programming.

… Not wanting to be upstaged by the new anti-Israel "uprising" coming from Abbas's Fatah, Hamas realized that it had to compete with Abbas or lose political points. And so, one night without warning, Hamas competed with Fatah in the manner that it knows has the most influence and launched more than 40 missiles at southern Israel in "defense of Jerusalem."

Read more here.

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