News Brief

The Republican Jewish Coalition launched an effort opposing the Reform movement’s call for withdrawal from Iraq. “If you or someone you know is a member of the Reform movement, you should know that the movement’s leadership is pushing the Executive Committee of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Board of Trustees to adopt a dangerous and wrongheaded resolution opposing the U.S. efforts in Iraq,” the RJC said in an action alert sent out this week. It urged RJC members who belong to Reform synagogues to register their protests locally and nationally. “RJC will continue to speak out on this and make it clear that the Union for Reform Judaism does not speak for all Reform Jews or all Jews in general,” the RJC said. The Reform resolution, to be considered next month, expands on a 2005 resolution opposing the war by calling for phased troop withdrawal. It comes as polls show that more than three-quarters of American Jews think the Iraq war was a mistake.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice named Eliot Cohen to be State Department counselor. The appointment of Cohen, a neoconservative who teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, was announced last Friday. Cohen will serve as a special adviser and consultant to Rice. In 2005, when his son, an Army ranger, was shipping out to Iraq , Cohen sharply criticized the handling of the war in a widely cited Washington Post opinion piece. He also earned prominence last year when he wrote in the Washington Post that a paper on the Israel lobby by prominent academics Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer bore the hallmarks of anti-Semitism.