Bizarre support

It is bizarre that 300 US “Jewish leaders” signed a letter backing Democratic congressman Keith Ellison to chair the Democratic National Committee.

Ellison was for years a devotee of the antisemitic Nation of Islam and its leader, Louis Farrakhan. During this period, he co-sponsored a vicious antisemitic speech by Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) titled “Zionism: Imperialism, White Supremacy or Both?” while ignoring pleas from Jewish law students not to do so.

In 2016, Ellison approvingly tweeted a Hebron window sign falsely accusing Israel of expropriation and portraying Israeli security precautions as “apartheid.” In 2014, he was one of only eight members of Congress to vote against a bipartisan bill to provide $225 million to Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.

In 2012, Ellison traveled across the country, raised funds and spoke at mosques in New Jersey, urging Arab-Americans to defeat Jewish, pro-Israel Democratic congressman Steve Rothman. In 2010, he spearheaded the “Gaza 54” letter to President Barack Obama, which falsely accused Israel of wreaking “collective punishment” on the Gaza Strip; the letter is still being used to promote the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Ellison has been the recipient of substantial campaign contributions from donors with a history of connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. He has addressed the radical Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group with ties to Hamas, which the US has designated a terrorist organization, and has defended CAIR on the floor of the House.

Ellison’s efforts to insert anti-Israel provisions into the 2016 Democratic platform, and now his opposition to the Royce bill opposing UN Security Council Resolution 2334, should also be of grave concern to the 300 “Jewish leaders.” MORTON A. KLEIN New York The writer is national president of the Zionist Organization of America.