The Investigative Project on Terrorism: "Raphael Warnock's Pro-Israel Statement Can't Erase His Anti-Israel Record"

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A major investigation by Investigative Project on Terrorism into the background of Georgia Democratic Senatorial Candidate Raphael Warnock has unearthed a slew of new unreported anti-Israel allegations, some so one sided, conspiratorial and unfounded that they could easily be categorized as anti-Semitic.

The investigation was co- authored by veteran investigative reporter Steven Emerson who is the founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and David Swindle, a freelance writer and journalist on national security affairs.

Although Warnock proclaimed his new pro-Israel position on November 9 2020, his past record as a Pastor is replete with vitriolic anti-Israel allegations and conspiratorial accusations, many of which the authors found to be demonstrably untrue. But Emerson and Swindle found that the most troubling were a series of incendiary propagandistic allegations that had not yet been reported in full. Moreover, Emerson and Swindle asked why Warnock has never been asked by the media to explain or reconcile his prior positions, which he now claims has been "misrepresented."

In their story, Emerson and Swindle revealed six of the most extreme allegations endorsed by Warnock in a letter he signed with other pastors published by the National Council of Churches in March 2019 condemning Israel using language that easily could have been lifted by the Hamas manifesto.

These included:

• That Israel has without any reason maliciously imposed a "perpetual blockade" around the entire population of Gaza "render[ing it] as one big densely populated prison."

In fact, Warnock intentionally omitted that Hamas, a genocidal Islamic terrorist group that controls Gaza; seeks to kill every Jew in Israel; has waged 3 wars against Israel and has launched more than 40,000 rockets.

• That Israel is deliberately "polluting" the water in Gaza, making it "undrinkable" in an effort to kill Palestinian children.

This is a modern day variation of the blood libel – the ancient belief that Jews poison non-Jewish children as part of secret evil rituals. In it, Warnock blames Israel for poisoning Gaza's water supply, causing the deaths of Muslim children. But in fact independent non-profit organizations, have for years found Hamas responsible for the increasingly polluted waters and crumbling health facilities by diverting as much of it humanitarian aid to for it Hamas military facilities.

• The most incendiary and most anti-Semitic of all the allegations that Warnock endorsed was to compare the behavior of the Jews to the unspeakable evil practiced by slave-owners and by the Nazis.

In fact, anything remotely drawing moral equivalence between Jews and slave owners or as Nazis is a blatant anti-Semitic slander. "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis," is specifically included in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism.

Emerson and Swindle quoted Rabbi Pesach Lerner, President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, who issued a the letter to Warnock's campaign in response to this specifically, "The statement's reference to silence of Christians during apartheid, slavery and the Holocaust could easily be read to infer that the behavior of Jews in Israel is somehow comparable to that of South African whites, slaveowners, or even Nazis. Such a dystopian vision can only be attributed to Antisemitism."

Contact: Steven Emerson [email protected] or 202 363 8602

SOURCE Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)