Jewish leaders like National Jewish Advocacy Center CEO Mark Goldfeder and ‘Woke Antisemitism’ author David Bernstein have already left Heritage’s anti-Semitism task force, while the Zionist Organization of America called on Roberts to resign
The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) cut ties with the Heritage Foundation’s National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism on Tuesday morning, saying in a letter shared with the Washington Free Beacon that the group “cannot grant legitimacy to an effort to combat antisemitism operated by the Heritage Foundation while Heritage is validating antisemitism and giving it a platform.”
“To keep us within a coalition hosted by Heritage would have required a full-throated retraction and apology from Mr. Roberts,” the CJV’s executive vice president, Rabbi Yaakov Menken, wrote in the letter, referencing Heritage president Kevin Roberts’s videotaped statement defending his “close friend” Tucker Carlson for conducting a friendly interview with Hitler and Stalin supporter Nick Fuentes.
“He would have needed to articulate that he (a) had not previously listened to critics of Carlson’s antisemitism, (b) did not recognize how the lies spread by Carlson align with Nazi and pre-Nazi Jew-hatred, (c) apologized to the Jewish and allied advocates whom he tarred with name-calling and straw man arguments, and (d) disavowed, personally and on behalf of Heritage, working with Carlson, [Candace] Owens, and others of their ilk, recognizing the fundamental and obvious difference between permitting free speech and platforming hate.”
The move comes as Heritage’s anti-Semitism task force bleeds members in the wake of Roberts’s defense of Carlson.
Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, became the first to leave it on Sunday, issuing a letter of resignation in which he stated that Roberts’s decision “to defend and even celebrate Tucker Carlson’s decision to platform Nick Fuentes—a figure whose record of overt racism, sexism, and antisemitism is beyond dispute—makes continued participation impossible.”
David Bernstein, author of Woke Antisemitism, also resigned from the task force over Roberts’s remarks, and the Zionist Organization of America demanded that Roberts leave Heritage in its own statement sent Monday.
“Unless Kevin Roberts retracts and apologizes for his praise for Jew-hating Israel-basher Tucker Carlson, who legitimizes and mainstreams antisemites like Nick Fuentes, and publicly condemns and ends Heritage Foundation’s relationship with Tucker Carlson, Roberts is not fit to continue as Heritage Foundation’s president.”
The task force’s chairs sent a Monday night email detailing a conversation in which Roberts allegedly apologized over his handling of the issue. They asked member organizations to “stick with us” as they “work closely with Kevin and the leadership of the Heritage Foundation on this matter.”
“The fight against antisemitism in our movement requires all hands on deck,” the email concluded.
The CJV letter mentions a speech Roberts gave at Hillsdale College on Monday night in which Roberts discussed anti-Semitism on both right and left.
“Yet although he apologized for how he expressed himself, he maintained his alarming backing of Tucker Carlson, who is doing his best to make antisemitism acceptable in the conservative movement—the very phenomenon Roberts himself decried,” Menken wrote. “Sadly, in response to our requirement that Heritage disavow working with Carlson and other antisemites, Roberts said the opposite.”
When asked what Carlson would have to do to lose Heritage’s backing, Roberts said, “We don’t forsake friends,” before adding, “That doesn’t mean we’re endorsing every word of his content—or even a lot of the content.”
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