Conservative Jewish Groups Oppose Biden’s Anti-Israel Pick, Sarah Margon, for Human Rights Post

Sarah Margon (Alex Wong / Getty)
Alex Wong / Getty
Joel B. Pollak

Politically conservative Jewish groups are calling for President Joe Biden to withdraw his nomination of Sarah Margon to a key human rights post over her anti-Israel views.

Biden nominated Margon to be the Assistant Secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor last month. Currently, she is the foreign policy director at George Soros’s philanthropy, the Open Society Foundations. She was formerly the Washington, DC, director of Human Rights Watch, which often adopts strident anti-Israel positions.

Biden is supposedly against the “boycott, divestment, sanctions” (BDS) movement, an anti-Israel movement that is widely viewed as antisemitic because it targets Israel — and only Israel — over its policies regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

However, Margon has supported boycotts in the past, notably Airbnb’s attempted boycott of “West Bank” listings in 2018.

Columnist Daniel Greenfield, writing at the Jewish News Syndicate, notes that Margon has supported Israel’s destruction.

On Tuesday, the Republican Jewish Coalition issued a statement formally opposing Margon’s nomination to the position:

Sarah Margon has made her career at some of the most virulently Israel-hating organizations around. For several years, she ran the Washington office of Human Rights Watch, a terribly misnamed, bitterly anti-Israel organization that issued a report just last week calling Israel “an apartheid state.”

President Biden and Secretary Blinken claim to oppose the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, but now they want to install a supporter of Israel boycotts in a senior role. They say they favor a peace settlement based on a two-state solution, but they want to elevate someone who supports the idea of a single “equal” Israeli-Palestinian state replacing Israel, eliminating the Jewish state entirely.

US Presidents have great leeway in choosing their advisors, and the Senate historically has confirmed almost any qualified nominee for an administration post. But Sarah Margon’s nomination to a key role at the State Department dealing with democracy and human rights is completely inappropriate. She is an anti-Israel activist whose work makes a mockery of the concept of “human rights.” Her nomination will be resolutely opposed by Republicans and the Jewish community, who value the Jewish state and our strategic alliance with her. Those Democrats who profess to support Israel must join in the vote to reject this nomination.

Greenfield also noted:

Sarah Michelle Margon is one of a number of anti-Israel activists Biden picked, including Maher Bitar, who was pictured dancing in a keffiyeh in front of a banner reading, “Divest from Israel Apartheid” and is now Biden’s senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council, and Hady Amr, who described being “inspired by the Palestinian intifada” and is now Biden’s point man on the conflict between Israel and the terrorists fighting to destroy the Jewish state.

Reema Dodin, Biden’s deputy White House legislative director, has argued that “suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people.”

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), America’s oldest pro-Israel group, has posted Greenfield’s article on its website.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, We Told You So!: The First 100 Days of Joe Biden’s Radical Presidency. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

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