Campaign controversy over anti-Israel vote helps Lisa McCormick

Bonnie Watson Coleman cast a vote in Congress last summer that many local residents contend would undermine Israel's economy as part of a plan to destroy the nation, which has suffered repeated military attacks by hostile neighbors since its 1948 founding, and the issue has surfaced in the primary election campaign as she faces progressive challenger Lisa McCormick.

Shortly after she cast the vote last summer, Monroe Mayor Gerald Tamburro and East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen made public statements condemning the vote and a former executive director of the New Jersey Israel Commission said the congresswoman is part of group that wants to destroy the Jewish state.

"To appreciate the anger directed at the Congresswoman, one might require a little history," said McCormick. "Israel was established as a Jewish homeland following World War II on lands, known as Palestine, controlled by the British government since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. The territory coincides with the eastern Mediterranean territory that Jews shared with Palestinians in ancient times, including Judea, Samaria and Galilee."

"The decision was no accident. Six million Jews were exterminated in Europe during the Holocaust and the League of Nations had called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in 1922," said McCormick. "Many Arabs were opposed to Jewish immigration to Palestine and began a series of attacks."

McCormick said that from 1948 to the present, Israel has faced threats—from enemy states like Iran, terrorists, and those seeking to delegitimize the country— that endanger a secure and stable democratic Jewish state.

"From that understandably fearful vantage, Israel and its supporters view the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement not as economic pressure to coerce the withdrawal from occupied territories, but as a ploy to undermine and destroy the nation," said McCormick. "America has with Israel an obligation to defend our ally and the only democracy in the Middle East. Voting against the resolution seems like a move intended to send a message."

“International efforts to isolate Israel are a continuing pattern of anti-Israeli bias that we often see at the United Nations and from nations whose own human rights records are deplorable,” said Monroe Mayor Gerald Tamburro, who was the first Democratic elected official to publicly scold Watson Coleman for being the only member of the New Jersey delegation to vote against a resolution that passed the House 398-17.

“Unlike most other nations, Israel’s very existence has been under threat ever since its founding 71 years ago,” Tamburro said. “Many of those behind this movement are those that failed to destroy Israel militarily and now want to destroy it economically.”

“The BDS movement is a euphemism for destroying the State of Israel,” according to Bob Yudin, a former executive director of the New Jersey Israel Commission. “By voting the way she did, without coming out and saying, ‘I want Israel destroyed,’ that’s what she did.”

East Brunswick Mayor Brad Cohen said Watson Coleman's vote on the resolution unfairly targets Israel and “is nothing less than institutional Anti-Semitism.”

“This is the only way to secure the safety and security of all people living in the region. Voting against H.Res. 246 only hampers any effort toward peace,” said Cohen.

“Obviously, we’re disappointed that the congresswoman voted against the resolution,” said Rabbi David Levy, New Jersey’s regional director of the American Jewish Committee.

The resolution affirmed the federal government’s opposition to the boycott and won near-unanimous support in the House, passing 398-17.

“Everyone that has really been anywhere the last couple months knows exactly what this is about,” Mark Levenson said. “You’re either for BDS or you’re against BDS, and the BDS movement denies the right of the Jewish people to the homeland, looks to exclude Israel from the cultural and academic life of the rest of the world and violates core goals of university and cultural development … it really was very unfortunate and disappointing and also dispiriting that Rep. Coleman could not bind herself to vote for this resolution.”

New Jersey ranks fourth among the states with greatest Jewish populations, with the 523,950 Jews living here surpassed only by Florida, California and New York.

There are significant Jewish populations in several 12th congressional district communities such as East Brunswick, Monroe, West Windsor, East Windsor, Lawrence, Princeton, Plainsboro, South Brunswick and Scotch Plains.

McCormick said Israel is among America's 25 largest trading partners with about $30 billion or $35 billion in total goods and services exchanged annually.