EXCLUSIVE: Bipartisan Jewish leaders defend Bernie Moreno against evidence-free claim he brings "shame to Ohio"
A bipartisan group of Jewish leaders in Ohio is defending Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) after an evidence-free podcast aired that accused him of bringing “shame to Ohio” after his advocacy for an American who was held hostage in Gaza by Palestinian terrorists.
Bernie Moreno recently took issue with another Bernie, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), and what Moreno called Sanders moves to “parrot Hamas propaganda, refuse to acknowledge Hamas is holding an American, and [to] blame our ally Israel for defending herself” in a Senate floor speech.
At home in Ohio, podcaster Chris Quinn falsely claimed that Moreno “basically [stood] up in Congress to announce support for the mass slaughter of women and children and human suffering.”
Quinn’s claims are completely baseless, and four Ohio Jewish leaders — Jason Wuliger, the Chair of the Government Relations Committee Jewish Federation of Cleveland; Andrea Britcher, the co-Chair of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Columbus; Greg Miller, the Board Chair of Ohio Jewish Communities in Cincinnati; and Howie Beigelman, the president and CEO of Ohio Jewish Communities — wrote to tell him that in a letter obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter.
The Jewish leaders expressed their “shock and dismay at the way [Quinn] and [his] co-panelists vilified the state of Israel in its efforts to protect itself against an internationally recognized terrorist organization.”
“The unfiltered tropes and unsubstantiated claims expressed by you and your co-panelists – all of which went unchallenged during the episode – are the fuel that feeds today’s historic level of hatred targeting the Jewish communities which your news organization serves,” the signatories wrote.
The Jewish leaders continued in the letter to Quinn that, “worse yet, you go out of your way to comingle this hateful rhetoric with divisive political pandering, which only further isolates and exposes Jewish Ohioans to emboldened acts of intimidation and violence.”
“It is utterly unthinkable – if not completely irresponsible – that you assert that Senator Bernie Moreno, or any elected official from Ohio, that defends Israel’s right to defend itself somehow brings shame upon the state of Ohio,” they wrote.
While the group extensively fact-checked the errors of omission and commission, it noted that Quinn has the First Amendment right to be wrong.
“But, given your professional capacity and the fact that this program is created and delivered under the umbrella of a news organization, we should expect those personal opinions be grounded in substantiated and objective facts,” the group added.
The group also said they would like a face-to-face meeting at Quinn’s “earliest convenience.”
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