WASTE

I print this JFNA Briefing in its entirety:

"Jerry Silverman Meets With President Obama in Advance of Presidential Visit to Israel  March 7, 2013

Today, Jerry Silverman, president and CEO of The Jewish Federations of North America, along with other national Jewish leaders, met with President Obama at the White House to discuss the President's upcoming trip to Israel. “On behalf of The Jewish Federations of North America, I very much appreciated the opportunity to meet with the President about his upcoming trip to Israel and the Middle East. As Jews and as Americans, we are proud to see our President visit our ancient homeland and engage with the Israeli people. The President’s trip is yet another demonstration of the continued strength of the deep and historic bonds between the United States and Israel.”

I am so happy for Jerry, aren't you? Do you see anywhere in this Briefing that JFNA (not Jerry) was invited by the Conference of Presidents along with representatives of each of its 51 member organizations (and the White House added "other activists"); that this Briefing was about as filled with information as a blank page (for the details, read Nathan Guttman's informative 10 paragraph article on the meeting in The Forward at www.forward.com; and is CEO Jerry that needy that he had to be instead of an important donor or other lay person? (You may recall that when Michael Siegal, who is, after all, the Board Chair, chose to accept an earlier White House invitation, CEO Silverman was rumored to have been stomping around his office muttering that it was he who should have been there!!)

I wrote an FOB that this was so pathetic; that leader wrote back that "pathetic is almost sweet; this is just ____ ugly." It was also pointed out to me that when the State of Israel was created it "...ceased to be our ancient homeland and became our Modern State." Ohhhh, but that's in Israel's Declaration of Independence and that's so 1948.

Rwexler