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Bitter battle over Lob at Conference of Presidents

Dianne Lob

WASHINGTON — The American Jewish community’s leading lobby coalition elected its next leader on April 28, in a confirmation vote that was anything but routine, having followed a week of tumult over her selection.

So instead of beginning her term as board chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on June 1, as originally planned, Dianne Lob will take over in April, 2021. Amid the change in the selection process, the members also opted to keep the current chair, Arthur Stark, in his post for another year.

The tensions informed the discussion ahead of the vote, which was 31-8 among the 49 members eligible to vote, with five abstentions. Another five were absent from the meeting, which took place over Zoom.

The delay appears to have short-circuited a fight over Trump-era immigration policy and cooperation with Muslim groups instigated by some of the umbrella organization’s more right-wing members.

William Daroff, the Presidents Conference’s CEO, emphasized Lob’s background as a child of refugees in his first official statement.

“Dianne is a visionary leader whose personal history embodies the Jewish-American story,” he said.

“As the child of refugees who fled Nazi Germany and the grandchild of family members murdered in the Holocaust, she understands the role of Jewish leadership during these uncertain times and the unique importance of the Jewish State of Israel in securing our survival.”

Lob is a Wall Street financier who recently finished a term as board chair of HIAS, an immigration advocacy group.

Over the past week, right-wingers within and outside the Presidents Conference launched a pressure campaign against the nomination, citing Lob’s involvement with HIAS, which has clashed with the Trump administration over immigration policy.

Leading the charge was Morton Klein’s Zionist Organization of America, which has strongly opposed efforts to resettle Muslim refugees from Arab countries in the US and Europe — something that has topped the HIAS agenda in recent years.

In an email to its more than 50 constituent organizations on Sunday evening, Stark and Lob blamed the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic for the proposed change.

“Given the extraordinary time in which we are living with the uncertainty caused by COVID-19 and its ramifications, this strategy is particularly relevant and impactful,” the statement said.

But others said they attributed the delay to the pressure campaign from Klein’s group, which spurred not just right-wing organizations to oppose Lob, but center-right groups to urge the Presidents Conference leadership to consider a compromise.

The nomination fight comes as the Presidents Conference is navigating its first professional leadership transition in more than three decades.

It underscores major, longstanding fault lines in an organization founded in 1956 with the goal of bringing the Jewish community together to speak with one voice on Israel-related issues to the US administration.

The injection of immigration politics into Presidents Conference deliberations underscores the degree to which the left-right divide in Jewish communal affairs has increasingly expanded beyond narrow Israel matters to reflect the country’s wider political discord.

The group mostly lobbies the US government’s executive branch, which is why Lob’s nomination was unusual, given the antagonistic relationship between HIAS and the Trump administration. HIAS has clashed repeatedly with the current administration on its immigration policy and has been lead plaintiff in at least two lawsuits against the administration.

One possible result of the delay in Lob becoming board chair is that Joe Biden, who is sympathetic to HIAS’ immigration posture, may be president when she does.

The White House, according to a Jewish organizational source, did not object to Lob as the conference chairwoman as long as immigration was not on the agenda — an easy ask, considering the Presidents Conference does not deal with domestic issues. A Trump administration official who deals with the Jewish community did not respond to requests for comment.

The vote leaves the Presidents Conference openly divided at a crucial moment. Lob has been forced into a defensive position, emphasizing in a letter to the group’s constituents her bona fides as the daughter of German refugees and her embrace of mainstream pro-Israel positions, including rejecting the boycott Israel movement as “reprehensible” and calling anti-Zionism “a modern form of Jew-hatred.”

Klein’s Zionist Organization of America has criticized HIAS for years, saying it allies itself with BDS advocates such as CAIR. and claiming that its work makes Jews in America less safe.

The rancor between Klein and HIAS erupted in 2018 with a complaint filed by HIAS against the ZOA, which accused the group of violating Presidents Conference rules by making ad hominem attacks. The complaint earned the ZOA a rare reprimand.

Klein’s campaign against Lob has unleashed countervailing criticism of the ZOA leader. The resulting compromise sparked furious reactions from Jewish women leaders and from those on the left who see the Presidents Conference as cowed by the right wing. Lob would be only the third chairwoman in the umbrella group’s nearly 65-year history, and the Presidents Conference has been slammed on social media for group photos that are exclusively male.

Some 70 Jewish students at top universities wrote to the Presidents Conference last weekend urging it to impose “appropriate institutional consequences” on the ZOA for what the students called Klein’s “pattern of racist and Islamophobic behavior.”

The Presidents Conference leadership making the decisions included Stark; his immediate predecessor, Stephen Greenberg; and its two professional leaders, longtime executive vice president Malcolm Hoenlein and Daroff, who is newly installed as CEO.

The pandemic frustrated efforts to push back against Klein’s initiative. Lob, a financier, was unable to personally meet with the leaders of the groups to assuage concerns. She will also forgo the traditional immediate inaugural trip to Israel post-election. That trip would have provided photo ops of Lob with Israel’s right-wing government and gone some way to tamp down criticism of her Israel credentials.

Klein in an interview prior to the vote said the compromise was “somewhat positive, but minimal” because Lob’s election, once it occurs, appears irreversible, even if it is delayed for a year. One of Klein’s complaints was that Lob appeared to be uninvolved in Israel issues. But he said the leadership transition could stave off his criticism.

“We do have almost a year to get to know her and see if she can learn more,” Klein said.




2 thoughts on “Bitter battle over Lob at Conference of Presidents

  1. Liz Berney, Esq.

    The purported 70 Jewish students’ letter was really a J Street letter. The letter deceptively failed to identify who these “students” really were. The “students” were almost all J Street U national board members, J Street regional officials, J Street chapter presidents, and national J Street conference speakers.

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  2. Barry Goldsmith

    I do not see it. Immigration from nazi GeRrmany is not the same As immigration of Moslems from the middle east into the USA. HIAS was getting paid per immigrant and the leaders of HIAS were pocketing six figure salaries. Do not forget that the Moslem Imam of Jeruselam was on the board that promulgated the “final soluion”. The increase in antisemitism that is reported elsewhere in the Ijn is not unrelated to the increase in Moslems in the US who view Jews as kin to apes and pigs. To moslems the hatred of Jews is institutional to their fath and can neverc˙changed. Barry Goldsmith

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