Foxman confirms: Jewish groups to take ’time out’ in Iran sanctions campaign
By Chemi Shalev | Nov. 2, 2013
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/west-of-eden/1.555822
DL National Director Abe Foxman has confirmed that leaders of major Jewish organizations have agreed on a limited “time out” during which they will not push for stronger sanctions on Iran.
“That means that we are not lobbying for additional sanctions and we are not lobbying for less sanctions,” Foxman told Haaretz as well as other U.S. media outlets.
Foxman was responding to a report in Haaretz on Friday that cited understandings reached among the leaders of four major Jewish organizations who participated in a Monday meeting at the White House with a group of senior White House officials led by National Security Adviser Susan Rice.
Immediately after the meeting, the newly established, ad hoc “quartet” of important Jewish organizations agreed to accede to the Administration’s request and to refrain from campaigning on behalf of stronger sanctions at this time.
The Haaretz revelation of the understandings reached among representatives of the Conference of Presidents, the American Jewish Committee, AIPAC and Foxman’s Anti-Defamation League, which were meant to be kept secret, sparked a flurry of denials from outside groups that had been kept out of the White House meeting - but also from others who were well aware of its outcome but were nonetheless miffed or embarrassed by its exposure.
Although the Haaretz report alluded only to a temporary “cease fire” in public campaigning and only in connection to additional sanctions, some officials were concerned that the publication might be misinterpreted in Congress as a signal that Jewish groups did not support stronger sanctions, or worse, that they would not oppose an easing of the sanctions already in place.