Reply To: Raphael Warnock

Two prominent Orthodox rabbis from Georgia are speaking out about their concerns over Rev. Raphael Warnock and past statements he has made about Israelis and Palestinians.

“We are concerned and hurt by the manner in which the Reverend brushed aside his past rhetoric against Israel and the Jewish community, and even blamed his opponents for ‘trying to use Israel as yet another wedge issue,’” Rabbi Ilan Feldman from Atlanta’s Congregation Beth Jacob and Rabbi Avigdor Slatus from Congregation Bnai Brith Jacob in Savannah wrote in a letter to the Warnock campaign this week.

Rabbi Feldman sad in an interview “This is not about politics,” he said. “This is about a danger sign.”

Specifically, Feldman said he is worried about a letter that Warnock signed in 2018 after a trip of international clergy to the Middle East. In the letter, the clergy compared the military presence of the West Bank to “military occupation of Namibia by apartheid South Africa.”

Feldman also pointed to Warnock’s 2018 sermon in which the pastor said the Israeli military shot down “unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey.”

“I can’t characterize what’s in a man’s heart,” Feldman said of Warnock. “I can only say that certain comments provide a safe haven for those that do have anti-semitic views.”

But Rabbi Feldman maintained the statements Warnock made before the 2020 Senate campaign ever began are what he is focused on.
“That, to me, means more than what somebody says when they’re trying to get my vote.”