Four of five members of the board of a campaign promoting President
Bush's policies in the Iraq war are Republican Jews.
The board of "Freedom's Watch" includes Ari Fleischer, Bush's former
press secretary; Matt Brooks, the executive director of the Republican
Jewish Coalition; Bradley Blakeman, a senior White House staffer in
Bush's first term; and Mel Sembler, a longtime RJC leader and former
ambassador to Rome.
Brooks told JTA that the fifth member, William Weidner, a casino
operator in Las Vegas, is not Jewish. However, Weidner's wife, Lynn,
is Jewish and is active in that city's federation. Blakeman is the
group's president.
Brooks said it would be a mistake to regard the group as having a
Jewish direction.
"It's a coincidence that several of the board members are Jewish," he
said, noting that half of the donors contributing to the group's first
$15 million ad campaign are not Jewish.
The ad blitz will promote Bush's "surge" policy in Iraq ahead of
September, when Congress is set to assess the success of the influx of
additional U.S. troops into Iraq.
Brooks said the aim ultimately is to build a grassroots organization
that would promote Republican domestic and foreign policies and would
replicate similar groups backing Democrats.
"This is a clear message to conservatives and Republicans and others
who see what has happened on the left to let them know with Freedom's
Watch that the cavalry is coming," Brooks said.
Of eight donors named Thursday in Politico, a political newspaper,
four are Jewish: Sembler; Richard Fox, the chairman of the Jewish
Policy Center, an RJC-affiliated think tank; Ed Snider, the founder of
the Philadelphia Flyers ice hockey franchise who has been elected to
several Jewish Sports Halls of Fame; and Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas
casino operator who recently launched a giveaway newspaper venture in
Israel.
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