Text: Jewish senators defend Obama

By JTA Staff · January 22, 2008

The following is the text of a letter signed by seven Jewish members of the U.S. Senate defending Barack Obama against an Internet campaign to distort the facts about his religion and upbringing.:

From the office of Carl Levin
United States Senator

An Open Letter to the Jewish Community:

Over the past several weeks, many in the Jewish community have received hateful emails
thai use falsehood and innuendo about Senator Barack Obama’s religion and attack him
personally. As Jewish United States Senators who have not endorsed a candidate for the
Democratic nomination, we condemn these scurrilous attacks.

We find it particularly abhorrent thai these attacks arc apparently being sent specifically
to the Jewish Community. Jews, who have historically been the target of such attacks,
should be the first to reject these tactics.

We won’t dignify these falsehoods by repeating them in order to refute them. Instead, we
will express our outrage at these tactics, which are being used to demonize a good and
decent man and our friend and colleague. Attempting to manipulate voters into
supporting or opposing one candidate or another based on despicable and fictitious
attacks is disgraceful. These false and malicious attacks should not be part of our
political discourse.

All voters should support whichever candidate they believe would make the best
president. We sincerely hope that Americans will make that decision based on the factual
records of these candidates, not false charges circulated by anonymous mass emails.

Sincerely,

Carl Levin (D-Mich.)
Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)
Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.)
Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)
Ben Cardin (D-Md.)
Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
Russ Feingold (D-Wis.)