Washington, D.C. (February 19, 2014) -- The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) today responded to the announcement that President Obama has appointed Robert Malley to serve as a senior director of the National Security Council, a powerful post inside the White House.

RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks stated:

"We are profoundly disappointed to see Robert Malley return to a senior role in Mideast policy making. His record on regional issues is deeply troubling.

"In 2001, after participating in the Camp David talks as a member of the Clinton foreign policy team, Malley wrote an article in the New York Review of Books that blamed Israel, rather than Yasser Arafat, for the failure of those negotiations. In 2008, Barack Obama severed ties with Malley, then an informal advisor to his presidential campaign, after it was revealed that Malley had met with Hamas terrorists.

"In his second term, Obama has brought back a number of former campaign advisors, who had been put aside for holding unpalatable views in an election year. Malley is the latest and perhaps most disturbing of these. His appointment demonstrates that Pres. Obama was never as in sync with mainstream pro-Israel and Jewish community positions as he pretended to be during his campaigns.

"With the stakes so high, Jewish Americans have more reason than ever to be alarmed by Obama’s personnel choices and the signals they send about the direction of foreign policy - especially with regard to the Middle East and our traditional allies there."

Washington, D.C. (February 19, 2014) -- The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) today responded to the announcement that President Obama has appointed Robert Malley to serve as a senior director of the National Security Council, a powerful post inside the White House.

RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks stated:

"We are profoundly disappointed to see Robert Malley return to a senior role in Mideast policy making. His record on regional issues is deeply troubling.

"In 2001, after participating in the Camp David talks as a member of the Clinton foreign policy team, Malley wrote an article in the New York Review of Books that blamed Israel, rather than Yasser Arafat, for the failure of those negotiations. In 2008, Barack Obama severed ties with Malley, then an informal advisor to his presidential campaign, after it was revealed that Malley had met with Hamas terrorists.

"In his second term, Obama has brought back a number of former campaign advisors, who had been put aside for holding unpalatable views in an election year. Malley is the latest and perhaps most disturbing of these. His appointment demonstrates that Pres. Obama was never as in sync with mainstream pro-Israel and Jewish community positions as he pretended to be during his campaigns.

"With the stakes so high, Jewish Americans have more reason than ever to be alarmed by Obama’s personnel choices and the signals they send about the direction of foreign policy - especially with regard to the Middle East and our traditional allies there."

Washington, D.C. (December 11, 2013) -- The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) released a statement today regarding efforts by top Senate Democrats to block consideration of stronger sanctions against Iran.

RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks stated, “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson are preventing the Senate from considering legislation to impose stronger sanctions on Iran. In August, the House passed a bill that would impose stronger sanctions on Iran’s energy sector and limit Iran’s access to money in overseas accounts, among other provisions, to reduce the funds Iran has available for its nuclear program. Senate action on similar language has been promised but has been delayed repeatedly by the senior Democrat Senators who control the agenda.

“Determined to prevent consideration of a bipartisan amendment strengthening sanctions, Senator Reid has delayed the Defense authorization bill until the last minute and is now trying to ram the bill through the Senate without allowing any amendments at all. Senator Johnson has stalled action on the sanctions bill before his committee.

“We call on the Senate Democrats to allow Senators to vote on Iran sanctions legislation. Sanctions are the most effective method so far for bringing pressure to bear on the Iranian regime. They brought Iran to the negotiating table and they are our best means of keeping the pressure on Iran to stop their nuclear program. It is time for the Senate to take action on tough Iran sanctions.”

Washington, D.C. (December 11, 2013) -- The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) released a statement today regarding efforts by top Senate Democrats to block consideration of stronger sanctions against Iran.

RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks stated, “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson are preventing the Senate from considering legislation to impose stronger sanctions on Iran. In August, the House passed a bill that would impose stronger sanctions on Iran’s energy sector and limit Iran’s access to money in overseas accounts, among other provisions, to reduce the funds Iran has available for its nuclear program. Senate action on similar language has been promised but has been delayed repeatedly by the senior Democrat Senators who control the agenda.

“Determined to prevent consideration of a bipartisan amendment strengthening sanctions, Senator Reid has delayed the Defense authorization bill until the last minute and is now trying to ram the bill through the Senate without allowing any amendments at all. Senator Johnson has stalled action on the sanctions bill before his committee.

“We call on the Senate Democrats to allow Senators to vote on Iran sanctions legislation. Sanctions are the most effective method so far for bringing pressure to bear on the Iranian regime. They brought Iran to the negotiating table and they are our best means of keeping the pressure on Iran to stop their nuclear program. It is time for the Senate to take action on tough Iran sanctions.”

Washington, D.C. (November 23, 2013) - Responding to President Obama's announcement of a flawed deal with Iran, RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said:

"Tonight, Americans saw how much damage a President with naive, misguided ideas can do to our nation's security and reputation. No matter which of the conflicting reports are correct as to the deal's specific provisions, the whole world can see the very alarming bottom line: President Obama's diplomacy is giving cheer to Tehran's rogue regime and causing alarm among our friends in the region - including Israel, Saudi Arabia and most other Gulf states. Congress and the American people need to speak out against this flawed deal."

Washington, D.C. (November 23, 2013) - Responding to President Obama's announcement of a flawed deal with Iran, RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said:

"Tonight, Americans saw how much damage a President with naive, misguided ideas can do to our nation's security and reputation. No matter which of the conflicting reports are correct as to the deal's specific provisions, the whole world can see the very alarming bottom line: President Obama's diplomacy is giving cheer to Tehran's rogue regime and causing alarm among our friends in the region - including Israel, Saudi Arabia and most other Gulf states. Congress and the American people need to speak out against this flawed deal."

Thursday, November 7, 2013
By: RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks

Comparisons of Presidents Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter are not meant as a compliment to either man. But it is inevitable to compare them, especially when examining their foreign policies. These two presidents share a perspective on America’s role in the world that is at odds with the idea of strong, confident American leadership. Both reduced American power in the world, contrary to America’s national interests and moral principles.

In the 1970s, Carter believed that America’s options in foreign policy were limited by what he saw as the inexorable forces of modernization shaping events in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Given our “detente” with the Soviet Union, he felt it was time to move the U.S. away from worries about Soviet expansionism and toward a new role: Acting as “midwife” at the birth of new, modernizing democracies led by “populist,” progressive movements.

In practice, he undermined traditional autocracies that had been stable governments, friendly to the U.S., and allowed their countries to fall to armed insurgents, mostly financed and trained by Moscow. Because of his flawed ideology, he misread the intentions, values, and worldviews of other international political actors, as Jeane Kirkpatrick noted at the time. His policies created more dangerous problems for this country. Carter opened the door to communist expansion into Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Southeast Asia and to the fall of the Shah of Iran to Khomeini’s theocrats.

Obama’s ideology is likewise flawed. He is convinced that America’s foreign policy options should be limited, in humble penance for past crimes, real or imagined, that America committed (particularly those he can blame on President George W. Bush). Obama rejects the idea of American exceptionalism. He wants to pull the U.S. out of military entanglements and shrink the size of our military, preferring the process of negotiations and “diplomatic solutions” to the use of American power.

His policies have led to a string of bad outcomes in the Middle East. We have abandoned the Iraqis and the Afghanis to the anti-Western sectarian forces with the biggest guns. Obama’s inexplicable preference for the Muslim Brotherhood over both Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian military leadership has helped fuel great instability in Egypt, including pogroms against Christians. His handling of the Syrian civil war did nothing to help the 100,000 civilians killed there and the millions of refugees. Instead, he strengthened Assad by turning him into a nonproliferation partner and gave the Russians the kind of foothold in the region they haven’t had since they left Egypt in 1973. And most frightening of all, Obama’s insistence on pressing Congress not to enact tougher sanctions on Iran, coupled with his starry-eyed view of the new president, Hassan Rouhani, has allowed that country to move its uranium and plutonium processing to a point where they may be weeks, rather than months or years, from developing nuclear weapons. Our long-time allies in the region, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and Israel, are rightfully deeply concerned about U.S. policy and what it means for them.

Obama has withdrawn the U.S. from pursuing its own national security interests and from standing with its allies. He has left the field to the wolves — Russia, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaida.

In World War II, the United States took up the mantle of world leadership. It has made us the main target of anti-Western, anti-democratic forces (the “Great Satan”) and the envy of our allies. We accept these facts because we are the only country with both the physical ability and the philosophy to lead on a global scale. Our strength — military, diplomatic and economic — has helped liberate whole countries, contributed to a strong global economy and improved the daily lives of millions of people around the world. We have not acted solely for our own gain, but out of moral principles grounded in the truths that all men are created equal and are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” We are, in fact, an exceptional country.

At an international “town hall” forum sponsored by MTV in February 2002, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was challenged with this question: “[H]ow do you feel about representing a country commonly perceived as the Satan of contemporary politics?”

He answered:

“We have sent men and women from the armed forces of the United States to other parts of the world throughout the past century to put down oppression. We defeated fascism. We defeated communism. We saved Europe in World War I and World War II. We were willing to do it, glad to do it. We went to Korea. We went to Vietnam. All in the interest of preserving the rights of people.

“And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? Did we say, ‘Okay, we defeated Germany. Now Germany belongs to us? We defeated Japan, so Japan belongs to us?’ No. What did we do? We built them up. We gave them democratic systems which they have embraced totally to their soul. And did we ask for any land? No, the only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead. And that is the kind of nation we are.”

That statement reflects a self-understanding of America that has shaped our foreign policy for most of the last century, through both Republican and Democrat administrations. The exceptions have been the Carter years and the Obama years.

The criticism of Obama’s foreign policies, like that of Carter’s before him, is not about the bumbling mistakes of someone new to the international stage. It comes from an understanding that the core ideology on which those policies are based is deeply flawed. By making the U.S. smaller in the world, we do not endear ourselves to old opponents or old friends. We empower our enemies and weaken our friends. Ultimately we endanger ourselves physically and leave others unprotected. That is not the American way.


This article was published in the Washington Jewish Week, November 7, 2013.

Thursday, November 7, 2013
By: RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks

Comparisons of Presidents Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter are not meant as a compliment to either man. But it is inevitable to compare them, especially when examining their foreign policies. These two presidents share a perspective on America’s role in the world that is at odds with the idea of strong, confident American leadership. Both reduced American power in the world, contrary to America’s national interests and moral principles.

In the 1970s, Carter believed that America’s options in foreign policy were limited by what he saw as the inexorable forces of modernization shaping events in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Given our “detente” with the Soviet Union, he felt it was time to move the U.S. away from worries about Soviet expansionism and toward a new role: Acting as “midwife” at the birth of new, modernizing democracies led by “populist,” progressive movements.

In practice, he undermined traditional autocracies that had been stable governments, friendly to the U.S., and allowed their countries to fall to armed insurgents, mostly financed and trained by Moscow. Because of his flawed ideology, he misread the intentions, values, and worldviews of other international political actors, as Jeane Kirkpatrick noted at the time. His policies created more dangerous problems for this country. Carter opened the door to communist expansion into Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Southeast Asia and to the fall of the Shah of Iran to Khomeini’s theocrats.

Obama’s ideology is likewise flawed. He is convinced that America’s foreign policy options should be limited, in humble penance for past crimes, real or imagined, that America committed (particularly those he can blame on President George W. Bush). Obama rejects the idea of American exceptionalism. He wants to pull the U.S. out of military entanglements and shrink the size of our military, preferring the process of negotiations and “diplomatic solutions” to the use of American power.

His policies have led to a string of bad outcomes in the Middle East. We have abandoned the Iraqis and the Afghanis to the anti-Western sectarian forces with the biggest guns. Obama’s inexplicable preference for the Muslim Brotherhood over both Hosni Mubarak and the Egyptian military leadership has helped fuel great instability in Egypt, including pogroms against Christians. His handling of the Syrian civil war did nothing to help the 100,000 civilians killed there and the millions of refugees. Instead, he strengthened Assad by turning him into a nonproliferation partner and gave the Russians the kind of foothold in the region they haven’t had since they left Egypt in 1973. And most frightening of all, Obama’s insistence on pressing Congress not to enact tougher sanctions on Iran, coupled with his starry-eyed view of the new president, Hassan Rouhani, has allowed that country to move its uranium and plutonium processing to a point where they may be weeks, rather than months or years, from developing nuclear weapons. Our long-time allies in the region, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and Israel, are rightfully deeply concerned about U.S. policy and what it means for them.

Obama has withdrawn the U.S. from pursuing its own national security interests and from standing with its allies. He has left the field to the wolves — Russia, Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaida.

In World War II, the United States took up the mantle of world leadership. It has made us the main target of anti-Western, anti-democratic forces (the “Great Satan”) and the envy of our allies. We accept these facts because we are the only country with both the physical ability and the philosophy to lead on a global scale. Our strength — military, diplomatic and economic — has helped liberate whole countries, contributed to a strong global economy and improved the daily lives of millions of people around the world. We have not acted solely for our own gain, but out of moral principles grounded in the truths that all men are created equal and are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” We are, in fact, an exceptional country.

At an international “town hall” forum sponsored by MTV in February 2002, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was challenged with this question: “[H]ow do you feel about representing a country commonly perceived as the Satan of contemporary politics?”

He answered:

“We have sent men and women from the armed forces of the United States to other parts of the world throughout the past century to put down oppression. We defeated fascism. We defeated communism. We saved Europe in World War I and World War II. We were willing to do it, glad to do it. We went to Korea. We went to Vietnam. All in the interest of preserving the rights of people.

“And when all those conflicts were over, what did we do? Did we stay and conquer? Did we say, ‘Okay, we defeated Germany. Now Germany belongs to us? We defeated Japan, so Japan belongs to us?’ No. What did we do? We built them up. We gave them democratic systems which they have embraced totally to their soul. And did we ask for any land? No, the only land we ever asked for was enough land to bury our dead. And that is the kind of nation we are.”

That statement reflects a self-understanding of America that has shaped our foreign policy for most of the last century, through both Republican and Democrat administrations. The exceptions have been the Carter years and the Obama years.

The criticism of Obama’s foreign policies, like that of Carter’s before him, is not about the bumbling mistakes of someone new to the international stage. It comes from an understanding that the core ideology on which those policies are based is deeply flawed. By making the U.S. smaller in the world, we do not endear ourselves to old opponents or old friends. We empower our enemies and weaken our friends. Ultimately we endanger ourselves physically and leave others unprotected. That is not the American way.


This article was published in the Washington Jewish Week, November 7, 2013.

Washington, D.C. (October 25, 2013) - The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) today responded to news that the Obama White House is urging Congress to delay a new Iran sanctions bill.

RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said, "Despite President Rouhani's 'charm offensive,' Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons capability continues unabated. By moving aggressively to ratchet up economic pressure on Tehran, Congress enhances the prospect that the regime will alter its dangerous course."

The House of Representatives passed a bill tightening restrictions on oil sales in July and the Senate Banking Committee has already delayed consideration of comparable legislation once at the Obama administration's request.

"The Obama administration continues to waffle and send mixed messages in its dealings with the Iranian regime, and that has emboldened the regime while stirring deep concern among our allies," Brooks observed.

"When the Senate reconvenes next week, we hope that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson and Majority Leader Harry Reid will press forward on strong sanctions against Iran. We cannot soften the U.S. position on sanctions unless and until the Iranian regime stops talking and takes measurable, concrete action to end the pursuit of nuclear weapons."

Wednesday, July 17, 2013
By: RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks

When President Obama came into office in 2009, he had big plans: close Gitmo, strengthen the economy, cut unemployment, make friends with the Muslim world, make peace in the Middle East, and bring about the day when “the rise of the oceans began to slow, and our planet began to heal…”

Many of those plans, including the ones about making friends with the Muslim world and bringing peace to the Mideast, failed miserably in Obama’s first term. His second term is looking pretty tough, too. So like many an embattled president, Obama has called his old-time friends to the White House, to circle the wagons and advise him at the highest levels of government.

There are half a dozen old friends of the President who became Cabinet members, were nominated to a Cabinet post, or were chosen to be a top advisor in his second term. Some of these names were too controversial to put forward for Senate confirmation before, but here they are today, to reassure the President that his early ideas were the right ones and to “have his back” in the policy fights to come as he tries to flesh out his administration’s legacy. The record of each one’s relationships with Pres. Obama and especially his or her record on Israel and Middle East issues raise serious concerns.

Robert Malley
Robert Malley is reportedly a frontrunner for the post of deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs and special advisor on Syria. Malley went to Harvard Law School with Barack Obama. He served in the Clinton administration and was a member of Clinton’s Mideast policy team during the Camp David talks in 2000. Malley blamed Israel for the lack of success of those talks. Later he acted, in the Obama presidential campaign’s words, as an informal advisor to candidate Obama. The campaign severed ties with Malley in May 2008 after the British Times newspaper reported that Malley had met directly with representatives of Hamas, a group on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. Malley has long advocated for bringing Hamas into the Mideast peace process. Malley served on J Street’s Advisory Council.

Samantha Power
Samantha Power has written and worked extensively on human rights and genocide, which brought her to the attention of then-Senator Barack Obama. She was a senior advisor to Obama’s presidential campaign until March 2008, when she resigned in the backlash to having called Hillary Clinton “a monster” in a public interview. She joined Obama’s State Department transition team and became a special assistant to the President on the National Security Council regarding human rights. She was the first head of the President’s Atrocities Prevention Board, which was silent on the violence in Syria and in South Sudan, and other conflicts. She has made several controversial anti-Israel remarks in the past. She was nominated to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, replacing Susan Rice in that post.

Susan Rice
Susan Rice served on the National Security Council under President Clinton and later went to the Brookings Institution. She was a senior policy advisor to presidential candidate Obama and was on his transition advisory board. President Obama restored the position of ambassador to the United Nations to a Cabinet level post when he chose her for that job in 2008. Rice was a controversial ambassador who was criticized for missing important U.N. sessions. In an official statement explaining the U.S. veto on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements, she said, “Our opposition to the resolution before this Council today should therefore not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity. On the contrary, we reject in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity… Continued settlement activity violates Israel’s international commitments, devastates trust between the parties, and threatens the prospects for peace.” Rice famously lied on the Sunday morning talk shows about the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. She became the symbol for the administration’s evasions and lies about what happened that night. In the subsequent uproar, she withdrew her name from consideration for Secretary of State. President Obama has now named her national security advisor, a post that does not require Senate confirmation.

Chuck Hagel
Chuck Hagel and Barack Obama became friends as members of the U.S. Senate. As a veteran Senator, Hagel advised freshman Senator Obama on various issues. He served as an advisor to presidential candidate Obama. After retiring from his Senate seat in 2008, Hagel entered academia. Pres. Obama nominated him to be Secretary of Defense in January 2013. Hagel’s views on Israel and Iran caused the RJC and several other major groups to protest his nomination in the strongest terms. Hagel reportedly called the State Department “an adjunct to the Israeli Foreign Minister’s office” and said, “The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up [in Congress].” Hagel opposed sanctions against Iran and called for direct negotiations with the Iranian regime. He has also advocated for direct talks with Hamas and Hezbollah in the past. All but four Senate Republicans opposed his Defense nomination, but it was approved with unanimous Democrat backing in February.

Michael Froman
Michael Froman went to Harvard Law School with Barack Obama and was on the law review with him. He advised then-Senator Obama on economic policy and was central in helping presidential candidate Obama develop his economic team. Froman served as national security advisor for economic affairs. He was nominated to be U.S. Trade Representative in May 2013 and was confirmed in June.

Penny Pritzker
Penny Pritkzer is an old Chicago hand, part of a very influential family known for having owned the Hyatt hotel chain, the TransUnion credit bureau, and the Royal Caribbean cruise line, among other prominent holdings. Pritzker chaired the national finance committee for the Obama campaign in 2008. Thanks to her business connections and strong support for Obama, she raised the millions of dollars that helped get him elected President. She was considered a top choice for Secretary of Commerce in 2009, but was involved at that time in the breakup of Pritzker family-owned Superior Bank, in the subprime home mortgage meltdown. It was thought too controversial to put forward the owner of a large failed bank as a possible commerce secretary. She remained in the finance world until President Obama tapped her for commerce secretary in May 2013. She was confirmed on June 25.

In a second term, Presidents feel they have “more flexibility” to do what they want, whether the voters would approve or not. In this instance, President Obama has nominated some people who were too hot to nominate in 2009, but whose ideas and past statements are no longer a political issue. Some of those ideas – like Robert Malley’s take on the peace process, Susan Rice’s thoughts on Israeli policies, and Chuck Hagel’s views on Iran – raise particular concern about the trajectory of Obama administration policies in the next three years.