ADL, Major Jewish Groups Snub Invite to Trump Hotel Hanukkah Party in DC

[CORRECTION: The AJC just wrote to me to tell me they attended.]

More and more Jewish groups are backing out of the high-profile Hanukkah party; even White House Jewish liaisons refused invites to be honored at the Trump Hotel bash.

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen (New York), HAARETZ

NEW YORK – Malcolm Hoenlein may be standing in a largely empty, ornate Trump International Hotel ballroom late Wednesday afternoon during the Conference of Presidents’ now-infamous Hanukkah party.

It is well known that eight of the Conference of Presidents’ left-of-center member organizations, including the Union for Reform Judaism and National Council of Jewish Women, pulled out of the event. They cited reasons ranging from the fact that the party is being co-hosted by the embassy of Azerbaijan, a Muslim-led country with a questionable human rights record, to the fact that it is being held in a new hotel property owned by the president-elect, which raises questions about the appearance of trying to curry favor with him.

What has not been known, until now, is that several of the Conference’s centrist member groups – core constituents including the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, Hadassah and Jewish Federations of North America – are also refusing to attend the party.

Sources at the ADL, AJC and Hadassah confirmed that they will not participate, as did someone close to JFNA.

“These groups seem to care more about displaying their partisan anti-Trump animus than about the serious mistake of offending the next president of the United States, which would negatively impact our joint duty to promote strong U.S.-Israel relations,” Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America – which is definitely attending the Conference party – told Haaretz. “I doubt these groups would have complained if we had booked a ‘Clinton’ hotel after a Hilary Clinton victory.”

What’s more, the Conference invited the current and three former Obama White House liaisons to the Jewish community to be honored and attend its party. All declined to participate at any level. To be fair, they will all likely be at the White House Hanukkah reception – Obama’s final Jewish party in the White House – which starts at 6:30 P.M. local time. 

The Conference’s Hoenlein did not respond to several emails sent by Haaretz seeking his comment.
His organization’s party, timed to allow people to go to both its party and the White House reception, is slated to take place at the Trump hotel a few blocks away from 4 P.M. to 6 P.M. The Conference gathering will take place in the Trump hotel’s Lincoln Library, which the hotel’s website describes as having 16 foot coffered ceilings, ornate millwork, gilded mirrors and velvet draperies. 

The mainstream Conference member agencies have not put made public statements about their decision.

“Nobody’s going. The reasons are obvious,” said one Washington Jewish insider. “It is highly embarrassing for Malcolm Hoenlein.”

Hoenlein “obviously did not anticipate the backlash” against holding it in a Trump hotel, said another. “He really didn’t know what he was doing.”

Some of the mainstream Conference member executives offered public explanations for why they aren’t going. 

Janice Weinman, Hadassah’s CEO, told Haaretz that her organization has an executive committee meeting ending just in time for her to take a 4 P.M. flight to Washington for the White House party.

Someone close to the JFNA said that its leaders “are traveling home” and “have other commitments.”

One of the White House Jewish liaisons struck a different tone, telling Haaretz, “are you kidding? I was getting invitations to the protest and I know half the people who are going to that,” speaking of the If Not Now-organized demonstration planned for outside the hotel.
If Not Now is a grassroots protest group whose main focus has been the Israeli occupation, but since Trump’s election has been busy demonstrating against the Trump administration and the Jewish groups it views as cozying up to the president-elect. Hundreds of people turned out to protest outside the Zionist Organization of America’s recent annual banquet, which expected to host Trump adviser Steve Bannon. His Breitbart News agency has proudly promoted white supremacist groups. Bannon never showed up.

The remaining Conference of Presidents member organizations apparently still planning to attend the Hanukkah party include relatively small groups like the ZOA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (or CAMERA) and Emunah of America as well as some larger ones like the Orthodox Union.

“A number of the groups are seemingly not that distressed by the Trump administration’s direction. It seems pretty clear that there is a strong desire to protect access for the full agenda, one piece of which is Israel,” said Gideon Aranoff, CEO of Ameinu, one of the Conference member institutions that earlier pulled out of the Chanukah party. 

“From our perspective it’s worse for the Jewish community, worse for Israel, and worse for Jewish-Muslim relations to appear to be currying favor with the Trump administration, so holding this event at his hotel is a terrible mistake,” Aranoff told Haaretz.

December 16, 2016 | 82 Comments »

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  3. Economist Said:

    They define themselves by their actions. Antisemitism exists without someone else having to define it, any more than it takes definition to create a tree.

    How do you define Jewish antisemites?

  7. Birdalone Said:

    I took a college course in 2005: History of Antisemitism”. 1st stage was the ancient Greeks, because the Jews refused to adopt their pantheon of animist gods.
    2nd Stage was the Roman Catholic Church, to deflect blame from the Romans’ crucifixion of Christ
    3rd Stage was the racial ‘classification’ of Jews in the early 19th century, leading to Hitler.

    Who Is Haman?

    Before I come to Haman and his doctrine there still is one point to clear up concerning Mordechai the Jew. Mordechai saves the life and the throne of Ahasuerus. He discovers a plot against the king, and since the story is told in romantic-poetic and not in political-historical terms, we are not told whether this is an imperialist, fascist, or Trotskyist-Maoist plot. Or perhaps it was a plot instigated by Haman himself? And now we come to the central theme which is the first presentation of anti-Semitic theory and practice. Thousands of anti-Semitic books have been written since them in every country and every language, which are all nothing but a repetition and amplification of the same basic theme stated by Haman: “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom; their laws are different from those of every other people, and they do not keep the king’s laws, so that is not to the king’s advantage to tolerate them.” (Esther 3:8)

    No clearer, more succinct definition of anti-Semitism has been formulated since. All the three elements are there: Desire for domination, particularism, disloyalty. But Haman was not only the first anti-Semite theoretician, he was also a man of action who submitted to his king, and to all the kings and rulers throughout the ages, the model plan for the FINAL SOLUTION — this time not in Berlin and not at the Kremlin, but at Shushan: “To destroy, to slay, and to annihilate all Jews, young and old, women and children, and plunder their goods” ( Esther 3:13).

    “It is against their own insoluble problem of being human that the dull and base in humanity are in revolt in anti-Semitism. Judaism, nevertheless, together with Hellenism and Christianity is an inalienable component of our Christian Western civilization, the eternal “call to Sinai” against which humanity again and again rebels.”

    – Herman Rauschning, The Beast From the Abyss, pp. 155-56

    “For the Jews have long been in revolt not only against the Romans, but against humanity; and a race that has made its own life apart and irreconcilable, that cannot share with the rest of mankind in the pleasure of the table nor join in their libations or prayers or sacrifices, are separate from ourselves by a greater gulf than divides us from Sura or Bactra of the most distant Indies.”

    – Philostratus – The Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 3rd Century CE Teacher

  12. @ honeybee:
    I see DJT as a Viking, his mom was Scottish & father a Saxon: maybe that hair is hiding his horns?

    Just kidding – Viking history is greatly under-appreciated. Vikings colonized what became Normandy after annual Viking terror in Paris led to a land swap for peace.
    Vikings called Rus settled Kiev.
    Vikings changed Scotland’s DNA, leading to a British Empire military by fierce Scots.

    I started seeing DJT as a Viking when I was researching Norse mythology a few months ago.

  13. @ yamit82:
    @ Economist:
    @ Birdalone:

    After great though and study I have come to the conclusion the Vikings Tribes of Scandinavia were , in fact, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Why do I say this ??? Look at their helmets!!!! The helmets have holes in them.? Why ???? the holes are use so the Vikings could place the helmets over the horns on their heads. Look at the pictures of Vikings, horn poking through their helmets. Vikings had horn on their heads, so they are the Ten Lost Tribes, THE REAL JEWS.

    http://media.photobucket.com/user/dragonmooncreations/media/Misc%20Art/warriorcopy.jpg.html?filters%5Bterm%5D=viking warrior&filters[primary]=images&filters[secondary]=videos&sort=1&o=23

    s

  14. @ Edgar G.:
    Trauma memories last forever don’t they? The Pope changed that curse on every generation of Jews as Christ-killers around 1966.

    I still remember the signs in the 1950’s: No Jews or Dogs allowed. During segregation, so no need to mention ‘colored’. (My early lesson was when my mom found me playing with the water fountain in the grocery store that was labeled “COLORED” – I wanted to see the colored water, but it looked same as water from “WHITE” fountain.)

    Jumping into the anti-Semitism deficit? Farrakhan, Nation of Islam. In 1994, I had a close friend in NJ. He was originally from SC, an architect who had graduated from Tuskegee. Suddenly he started saying “The Jews were responsible for all slavery”, and that slavery was as widespread in Europe as the Confederacy. To that, I replied “the Europeans had so many peasants to oppress they never had many African slaves.” To the bigger charge: “Everyone made money off the African slave trade, including some Jews, but, Jews always remember we were slaves in Egypt.”

    My friend did not believe that. I asked “you grew up in [blank], SC. You must have gone to Sunday School. Moses? Parting of the Red Sea? Let my people go?”

    He replied, he never paid attention in Sunday School. Later, he did tell me he had researched the European slavery charge and found I was correct.

    But all of it was because he had started listening to Farrakhan’s radio broadcasts in the NY metro area. My ‘friend” decided to be all-black, no Jews allowed.

    Explains quite a bit about the resurgent anti-Semitism on the far left, and in the African-American community. And probably why Obama44 is pushing Tom Perez for DNC chair and Keith Ellison is fading.

    I took a college course in 2005: History of Antisemitism”. 1st stage was the ancient Greeks, because the Jews refused to adopt their pantheon of animist gods.
    2nd Stage was the Roman Catholic Church, to deflect blame from the Romans’ crucifixion of Christ
    3rd Stage was the racial ‘classification’ of Jews in the early 19th century, leading to Hitler.

    I wrote my paper on the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” and Henry Ford Senior’s “International Jew”. His focus was on the Federal Reserve Bank, a design by the Warburg brothers. Direct line to Ron Paul’s rants against the Fed, ‘owned by foreign bankers’, code for ‘Rothschilds.

    The ALT-Right today is Ron Paul’s contribution to American anti-Semitism. Which is why I really hope DJT finds a Protestant for next Fed chair, like Sheila Bair. and regret his choice of Mnuchin for SecTreas.

    That’s enough. I am still afraid to finish unpacking from my move in February because the crew was obviously a RonPaul cohort and I fear any more anti-Semitic surprises after also being charged 60% more than the quote. Greenblatt’s faux-ADL refused to even answer my complaint. That is when I knew the ADL had been hijacked by the Sorosleft.

    The worst stereotype floating thru America today is “all Jews are rich”. Wish I had done more to get rich just to make it easier to survive the wreckage of America’s economy.

    Still better off than most, but the divide here is now a chasm.

  15. Addendum to J-Street, NY Times, the importance of “calling a spade (in this case, anti-semitism) a spade” Liberals only believing what they want to see, what they are pre-disposed to see, and “who ya gonna believe, me or your lying eyes”

    Eddie Murphy Raw – wasn’t me

    https://youtu.be/u_f6qFBQD9U

    And while we’re on the subject. Here’ s how Oslo came about in a nutshell Rabin,(Carrie Fischer) versus Arafat: (John Belushi)

    Blues Brothers & Carrie

    https://youtu.be/aY4YOsjCI-Q

  16. @ Economist:

    Vibration becomes sound because it vibrates ear drums and gets translated into sound by nervous systems and brains. A fist striking a nose becomes violence because blood spurts and somebody screams, “ouch.” An anti-semitic group claiming to be “Jewish” and to be “pro-Israel” is only exposed as anti-semitic when we expose it as such. Otherwise, what are we doing here? Only this evening, I heard a — presumably Jewish — woman in a restaurant complaining to her male friend that somebody she knew didn’t believe in the two state solution. Even though we point out that the demographic bomb is a fake, the TSS is a Trojan Horse, and the land belongs to us not them ad nauseum, they continue to believe what they want to believe — even in the unlikely event they will ever be exposed to our arguments and evidence, in their mutually reinforcing cocoon. Though, I was heartened to see the recent Breitbart article citing an approximately 97 percent drop in circulation figures by the New York Times leading to them giving up 8 floors of their building — citing restructuring as the reason, yeah, right. Correction: 95.7 percent drop in quarterly profit.

    http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/11/02/new-york-times-reports-95-7-percent-fall-quarterly-profit/

    I mean, like the saying goes, “Who ya gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?”

  19. @ Birdalone:

    I had exactly the same experience about which I’ve written here. When I was much younger in Ireland, where I was born and grew up, I was a member of an acting group because of a girl who was there. I became friendly with a fellow, a ferbrente Catholic, but otherwise a nice enough guy. I often used to drop him home when I had my late father’s car. One night after pulling up and our usual little chat, it turned to religion, and out of the blue, this fellow said, “You killed our god you killed Christ. I was open-mouthed, thinking sort of he was kidding me. This was around 1952 or so, modern times I thought. So he gave me a drosha about the Jews and being handed down through all time to me….. He then asked if he could feel my forehead, Puzzled, i asked why and he said because you’re born with little stubs of horns under your hair and I just wanted to feel them….. (THis also happened to me one time down the country, where I was playing at a dance and in the interval went across the rd to a pub for the usual drink. A guy came up to me and said he heard that I was a Jew, and asked could he feel my forehead. So I obliged, took off my hat, and let me tell you he was very puzzled that he hadn’t found anything except hair).

    To get back to my acting friend, he also told me that we were born with little tails which were amputated at birth….. The priests taught them that, he said. He also told me that he’d never looked at a bible, because when I quoted something from the New Testament which I was sure he’d recognise, he didn’t understand. The priests issue a little book of rules (I think called a Missal) about what prayers to say, how many times to do this and that, and they are forbidden to look at a bible. To say I was flabbergasted is putting it mildly.

    AnywayI told him a few home truths, and that finished me with him, the acting group and the girl…. I never regretted it, but I realised only then how extreme was the ignorance of the Irish Catholic. That stopped about 10 or so years later when a controversial man being interviewed on radio called the Bishop of Sligo (or Galway-not sure) an imbecile. It causes a huge furore all over the country but gradually from then on the power of the Church began to be eroded. Now it’s held in contempt there but open Anti-Semitism has filled the vacuum..

  20. Sebastien Zorn Said:

    @ Economist:

    Does J street define itself as anti-semitic? No. They need our help.

    They define themselves by their actions. Antisemitism exists without someone else having to define it, any more than it takes definition to create a tree.

  24. @ honeybee:

    As would many of the men who post on the Pundit.

    So true. I knew DJT would win when, during the GOP convention, Eric Bolling on Fox News said something like “who would you want to look at for 4 years: Melania or Bill Clinton?”

    as for yamit82’s definition of anti-Semitic? I had a lovely Baptist roommate at a Student Council Leadership training at a college in FL, in 1968. She asked me why I was not going to Sunday chapel. When I told her I am Jewish, she asked if she could see my horns. That is what Southern Baptists were taught back then. I did not think it anti-Semitic at all. The Catholic kids on our block called us Christ-killers, and I never forgot that.

    Ironic that the Southern Baptists today are the most pro-Israel of all the Protestant denominations. UCC and Unitarians are all in on BDS.

  28. Probably JStreeters or New Israel Fund or Peace Now or Breaking the silence and on and on. These Left Wing Jews are stuck in time to Marxist Russia.
    Forget where the Left has taken us here in America. They hold on to their Liberal views like Super Glue and please don’t try to discuss it with them. They will not change.

  30. designer Calvin Klein just said he would definitely ‘dress Melania Trump’ launching a yuge! missile in the War Against All Those Trumps.

    Awaiting Ralph Lauren…

    not like Israpundit is going to follow the soft power battles, but the fashion world is a big part of the media. The entire fashion world is secretly thrilled to have so many beautiful Trumps to Make Glamour Great Again.

  32. yamit82 Said:

    We are preparing a million Tents to accommodate stupid American Jewish refugees.

    I won’t need a tent, I have a friend in Israel the will take me in if I bring Apple Cobbler

  36. Everybody is living in their own cocoon for the most part. Most Americans are not prone to collective scape-goating and few Whites and Asians, but about 30 percent of Blacks and Hispanics, and nearly all Muslims will blame us for something, anything, no matter what. Most people will believe whatever they are predisposed to believe. The biggest danger is letting these Muslims and their supporters have access to our educational system. I just read about another case of elementary school students this time in NY state being exposed to inflammatory Palestinian propaganda. We absolutely can’t have these people here. Look on Pamela Geller’s site. I googled: elementary school and found a lot of similar articles though I didn’t find the one I just mentioned.

  37. bernard ross Said:

    I dont agree.. I think there is a significant American population which is pro Jewish and pro Israel… unlike europe which is significantly anti Israel morphing into anti Jewish.

    I disagree….The degree of Israel support is always weighed in the context of comparison to views and support of Arabs and Muslims but when Israel is compared to England Canada France and even Mexico Israel is at the bottom of such lists. As you know it’s all in the context of specific questions that determine results. Most Americans still hold anti Jewish stereotypes even those who claim to support Israel. If I were to use ADL data some 33% of Americans are antisemitic. I think that’s low because they us a very narrow definition but even if 33% is correct that’s a third of the American population. Germany of 1936 according to Gallop was only 44% antisemitic and America during the war had an even higher % than Germany according to Gallop polls and surveys at the time.

    Still not sure now what being pro Israel really means in any practical sense in America. It was never a campaign issue except peripherally. Mostly proforma lip service. Even the so called evangelicals are losing support for Israel in favor of leftist and pro Arab sentiments and this has been documented in many articles I have read in past couple of years…. The falling away of course is among the young millennials.

  39. @ Birdalone:

    American Jewish anti-Trumpism is like Jews trying to be more Catholic than the Poop. They must show their loyalty to those who hate them, which says to me they are very insecure..I believe if the Librul Left gentiles reversed themselves on all current positions then the Jews would follow…. in total lockstep even leading the pack.

  40. yamit82 Said:

    We are preparing a million Tents to accommodate stupid American Jewish refugees.

    Is that wise, perhaps they should be vetted first as a danger and threat to Israel.

  41. yamit82 Said:

    ill now the only difference between antisemitic America and Europe for example is that State institutions still offer them some protection

    I dont agree.. I think there is a significant American population which is pro Jewish and pro Israel… unlike europe which is significantly anti Israel morphing into anti Jewish.
    yamit82 Said:

    if the economy collapses or another war then all bets are off.

    If the muslim problem increases, the Jews will be seen to support the muslim immigration threat and trying to keep the extent of the danger censored to ordinary citizens…… Soros and Zuckergerg.
    Jews looking for trouble….. poking the bear they dont even notice. In Soros case I dont beleive he is a jew, perhaps that was a cover story he or others concocted. Lots of other Jews connected with the side of the muslims….. supposedly defending against islamaphobia… aiding and abetting the largest collective on earth who want to kill the Jews. Pro jews will get tired of making excuses for these Jews.

  42. @ bernard ross:

    We are preparing a million Tents to accommodate stupid American Jewish refugees. Till now the only difference between antisemitic America and Europe for example is that State institutions still offer them some protection but if the economy collapses or another war then all bets are off.

  43. False report by Haaretz. 200 attendees, incl PLO, Egypt, & Turkey! Real news, URLS included here: Only Algemeiner, JTA, and JNS have real news reports on this event, which also honored nations who helped Israel during recent forest fires

    http://www.jta.org/2016/12/16/news-opinion/politics/a-tale-of-two-hanukkah-parties-obamas-last-and-trump-internationals-first

    http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2016/12/15/hanukkah-party-at-trump-hotel-draws-high-profile-crowd-despite-jewish-groups-boycott#.WFQ_oGciw2w=
    “…200 attendees…including ambassadors and diplomats from Belarus, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Romania, Russia, Tajikstan and Turkey. …”
    https://www.algemeiner.com/2016/12/15/muslim-ambassadors-receive-menorahs-as-gifts-at-leading-jewish-groups-hanukkah-party-at-trump-hotel-in-dc/

    “…Less pleasing to [Edwin] Black, however, was the Jewish media’s reporting on the party, which drew controversy over its location — a hotel owned by President-elect Donald Trump.

    “I was struck by the massive misreporting and under-reporting about such a historic event,” Black said. “The Jewish media must not allow itself to fall into the ‘fake news’ milieu.”

    “Several Jewish publications falsely reported that the room would be empty,” Black continued. “But not only was the room full, some of the biggest names in the Jewish community in DC did not get invitations, because it was overflowing. Yet these publications have not corrected or retracted their stories.”
    …”

  44. FACEBOOK EMPOWERS FAR-LEFT GROUP TO BURY “FAKE NEWS”
    Snopes political “fact checker” is a mouthpiece for Hillary Clinton & the Democrats
    http://www.infowars.com/facebook-empowers-far-left-group-to-bury-fake-news/
    George Soros Finances Group Helping Facebook Flag ‘Disputed’ Stories
    http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/12/16/soros-finances-group-helping-facebook-flag-disputed-stories/

    Jewish groups and Jewish individuals increasingly being identified with 5th column behaviors. First, they defend the muslim immigration which is at present one of the greatest existential threats to the US citizens, then they defame and libel the symbol of the only candidate who ran on protecting the USA agianst that threat, and now they continue to be seen as fighting against the choice of the citizenry of their host nation for security against the threat…..Jews are being seen in the forefront of censoring the news which both exposes the threat and calls attention to its danger… hence Jews are seen as facilitating the threat in various ways… one way being in a conspiracy to keep the host population ignorant of the alien threat by censoring information that could keep them out of danger.

    This is a great error which could only be committed by Jews ignorant of their past pogroms and holocausts. When their american neighbors observe the Jews and their orgs trying to bring them danger and keep them ignorant they will not accept whatever excuses the Jews come up with… like “principles”.

    these Jewish orgs are a great danger to all jews through their incredible ignorance as they paint a large target on the backs of all Jews. Did they not notice that it is already dangerous to be a Jew in America… that this danger has massively increased by hundreds of time over the last 8 years of the leftist muslim dem party alliance? The Jews are sedated and in slumber, making lots of public noise, seeking to insult their host nation and unseeing of the approaching Krystalnacht.

    I read a comment which said “wont someone start a facebook that is not controlled by Jews”? this is not just about goyim behavior but is also a reaction to the lunatic behavior of Jews who cant see the approaching dangers.

    Soros brings the muslim floods, manipulates elections…. while zuckerber censors the information which might expose these threats…. not a great omen for Jews.

  47. This is a time for everyone to separate right from wrong. The Jewish leftists and elitists are on the wrong side of history. These people are a burden and no asset to Israel and the Jewish cause. They should be cut loose. In their place we should embrace Jews of faith, true Zionists and our many Christian friends such as the 3.4 million member Christians United For Israel.

  49. @ Economist:

    True dat !!! As I have said many times on this blog, I use to listen , as a girl , to my Father respond to the ADL’s telephone request for money. It was always a recitation of the ADLs my faults ending with the phone being slammed down.
    My Uncle had a word in Yiddish he use for German Jews that I would not repeat.