(JTA) — U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann said American Jewish organizations are selling out Israel in favor of the Obama administration.
Bachmann (R-Minn.) made the accusation this week during a telephone interview with Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council and host of the online radio show that is featured on the conservative Christian group’s website.
“What has been shocking has been seeing and observing Jewish organizations who, it appears, have made it their priority to support the political priority and the political ambitions of the president over the best interests of Israel. They sold out Israel,” Bachmann said.
She said this in reference to a Feb. 27 letter by major Democratic donors, many of them Jewish, to party congressional leaders urging them not to advance new Iran sanctions legislation. “This is clearly against Israel’s best interest,” she said.
President Obama in January said he would veto legislation introduced in the Senate the previous month that threatened to torpedo international negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized the interim agreement reached in November between six world powers, including the United States, and Iran as “a bad deal.”
The so-called P5+1 agreement freezes some aspects of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief. Israel under Netanyahu is demanding total dismantlement of sites that are suspected as being connected to Iran’s presumed nuclear weapons program as a precondition for sanctions relief.
Earlier in the interview, Bachmann said that Obama “was helped enormously by the Jewish community. He made all sorts of promises in 2008 to the Jewish community through [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. He did it again in 2012 when he was running to be re-elected. He made promises that he would have Israel’s back, and in return the Jewish community gave him their votes.”
“The Jewish community gave him their votes, their support, their financial support and as recently as last week, 48 Jewish donors who are big contributors to the president wrote a letter to the Democrat [sic] senators in the U.S. Senate to tell them to not advance sanctions against Iran.”
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