Rep. Steve King turned heads over the weekend when he scolded Jewish Democrats for not being sufficiently supportive of Israel. In comments first reported on BuzzFeed, the Iowa congressman said he does not “understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their president.” He later added that “everyone in the discussion knows I’m right.”
King’s suggestion that the vast majority of Jews in America are somehow bad Jews by voting Democratic is a regular talking point among Christian Right speakers.
Here is a look at other right-wing leaders who have denounced American Jews for daring to vote against the GOP:
1) Bachmann: Jews ‘Sold Out Israel’
Before leaving Congress, Michele Bachmann denounced Jewish voters for having supposedly “sold out Israel” by showing support for President Obama.
She told Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council that she found it “shocking” that many Jews “support the political priority and the political ambitions of the president over the best interests of Israel.”
2) Family Research Council Angry With Jewish Money
Like Bachmann, FRC’s Perkins has said that it’s “ironic” that while “the Democratic Party works against the benefit of Israel in many ways,” many Democratic members of Congress are “mostly aligned with a lot of the Jewish lobby” and “enjoy the money coming from the Jewish community.” He also criticized “liberal Jewish folk” for supporting marriage equality, which he alleged will somehow harm Israel.
Jerry Boykin, the group’s executive vice president, criticized American Jews for believing that Adolf Hitler was a leader of Germany’s far-right.
3) American Jews Are Simply ‘Confused’
Like Boykin, Sandy Rios of the American Family Association thinks that American Jews are simply ignorant or “confused.”
“The Jewish vote in this country is so confused,” Rios said in 2012. “So many of the Jews in this country are atheist and their hearts are with this president, at least their political concerns are with this president. They are with him on all the issues, you know abortion, all the things you might list.” She went on to say that while “most of the Jews in this country are far left, unfortunately,” even more dangerous are “Jewish atheists” who “sometimes turn out to be the worst enemies of the country.”
Rios has also claimed that “Jewish leftists in this country are eager to embrace Islam” and warned that “powerful Jewish forces” are out to suppress freedom.
4) ‘Self-Hating Jews’ Run Obama Administration
Conservative legal activist Larry Klayman marked Independence Day last year by blasting the “self-hating” Jews in the Obama administration who “lose no opportunity to distance themselves from their Judeo-Christian heritage in the style of Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky and indeed the evil Fuhrer Adolf Hitler himself, who many historians have concluded had Jewish roots on his father’s side of the family.”
“These types of Jews, some of whom are present in the Obama White House to give Obama cover for his anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli acts and practices, are among the greatest enemies of the Jewish people,” he said, claiming that they help those “who are dedicated to [Israel’s] destruction.”
In another column, he went even further in criticizing the supposed “leftist Jewish influence” behind “anti-family institutions like gay marriage” and the “outright criminal behavior of the Obama administration,” writing: “I am more than embarrassed and appalled as a Jew to see my own people at the forefront of a number of scandals now perpetrated by the Muslim-in-Chief, Barack Hussein Obama, and his leftist Jewish government comrades and partners in crime. It is time for the great majority of Jews, who are honest law-abiding citizens, to speak up and play a role in helping to put these felonious liberal Jews in a place where the sun don’t shine – meaning prison.”
He said that while the Jews who oppose such liberals are the “true Jews” who “police their own house and [do] not allow criminal behavior to go unaddressed, no matter what the source,” those who do not fight Obama are “more akin to ‘Hitler’s Jews.’”
5) Tom DeLay’s Message To The Jewish Community
Since leaving the House, Tom DeLay has refashioned himself as a Religious Right crusader, and has a message for the “liberal Jews, Democrat Jews in America”: ditch Obama.
He said that such Jews should “never forget that this president, in everything that he has done, he has tried to undermine Israel” and push Marxism on America.
