In the past week, two op-eds personally attacking Senator Jon Ossoff appeared in the Jewish press – by Michael Morris in the Atlanta Jewish Times and by David Zalik in The Jerusalem Post – purporting to speak on behalf of the entire Georgia Jewish community. Ossoff is running for re-election this year as the senior senator from Georgia.
Morris and Zalik do not speak for the Georgia Jewish community, nor even a majority of it. As Ossoff surges ahead in polls against his Republican opponent, Congressman Mike Collins, these attacks look like desperate rear-guard actions by right-wing elements to salvage Collins’s failing Senate campaign.
Ossoff grew up in Atlanta and had his bar mitzvah at its largest and oldest congregation, The Temple. Like many American Jews, he comes from a family that suffered deep losses in the Holocaust and European pogroms. He wears his Jewish identity proudly and has always been a strong supporter of Israel.
As Zalik confessed, Ossoff has voted 90% of the time to support arms sales and aid to Israel, as well as other congressional expressions of solidarity with it against its enemies.
What has agitated these two critics so profoundly is that Ossoff has not voted as they like on every vote relating to Israel that comes before Congress. He has, in particular, voted against three specific arms sales that were directly connected to violations of US law on the use of American weapons by our allies.
Zalik stated that a member of Congress should view Israel like a spouse in a marriage: staying faithful 100% of the time, and anything less is cheating. But a foreign state is not a spouse, and an alliance between countries is not a marriage.
It is the job of any US public official to act in the interests of the United States, which will not coincide with the interests of its allies 100% of the time. So voting against Israel’s legislative agenda when conscience, US interests, or both dictate doing so is not “infidelity;” it is integrity.
And it is competence and integrity, among other things, where Ossoff has the greatest edge over his opponent.
Rep. Collins is a loud proponent of the most extreme positions of the MAGA movement. He has historically supported a complete ban on abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother.
He has praised the January 6 Capitol insurrectionists, denied the validity of the 2020 elections, and endorsed US President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund to pay off cop-beaters and criminals. His most famous campaign visual is of him machine-gunning a voting machine.
For any Jew to support Collins shames all of us: he is closely associated with American Nazis and Christian Nationalists in his inner circle. His son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, who is close to Collins’s campaign and family business, routinely spreads Nazi and antisemitic propaganda to his 1.5 million followers on social media.
Collins’s former chief-of-staff, Kip Taley, is tied to Christian Nationalists, while Taley’s predecessor, Brandon Philips, was convicted of several violent criminal offenses.
Representing American Jews' sentiment
The question before all Georgia voters, including Jewish ones, is whether they want smart, competent, honest leadership. Ossoff has been an effective legislator in the Senate, serving Georgia’s interests and going after rampant corruption in the Trump administration.
Clearly a fighter, he is also known for working across the aisle with Republican colleagues to enact legislation good for the country and good for Georgia. That is why two Republican mayors in South Georgia, far from the blue urban districts in the state – Scott Matheson of Valdosta and Julie Smith of Tifton – endorsed Sen. Ossoff’s reelection.
American Jews, and Georgia’s Jews, are not “single issue” voters. While 86% of us support Israel, nearly two-thirds of us are critical of Israeli government policies, according to the most recent poll by the Jewish Electorate Institute.
Ossoff represents exactly that sentiment in the American Jewish community, and among American voters at large. And even more importantly, from the Georgia Jewish perspective, he is a native son we can all be proud of – for his honesty, his integrity, and his competence.
The writer is a native of Dalton and Atlanta, Georgia. He is an international lawyer working on business and environmental matters.