Maryland Senator Calls JCRC CEO a Netanyahu ‘Apologist’

Updated 12/10/2025

Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington CEO Ron Halber told reporters at a JCRC event on Dec. 3 that Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has “become the leading senator agitating against Israel in the United States Senate.”

In response, a spokesperson for Van Hollen accused Halber of being an “apologist for the Netanyahu government,” Jewish Insider reported on Dec. 3.

“Sen. Van Hollen, I think, has dramatically lost his way with support for Israel,” Halber told reporters at the JCRC’s annual “Lox and Legislators” breakfast. “His social media is filled with a lack of empathy for Jewish suffering. It’s filled with a lack of empathy for Israel’s strategic position. It’s almost like he cannot wait for the next opportunity to jump down Israel’s throat. … That’s not the Sen. Van Hollen that so many people in this room worked hard to get elected.”

“On the issue of Israel, I would say the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community feels betrayed by him,” Halber added.

In attendance at the event were Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), who gave remarks during the breakfast. In addition, Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) and April McClain Delaney (D-Md.), as well as more than 60 locally elected officials and more than 300 members of the JCRC and the greater Washington Jewish community, were also in attendance.

Jewish Insider reported that the Van Hollen spokesperson, in a statement, accused Halber of “running cover for the Israeli government and failing to represent the range of viewpoints in Maryland’s Jewish community.”

“Senator Van Hollen is committed to a values-based foreign policy that holds our friends and our adversaries to the same standards. That’s why he continues to support the people of Israel, but the actions of the Netanyahu Government have increasingly not aligned with our values,” the spokesperson said.

“The Senator often speaks with Marylanders who hold varying perspectives here and has met on many occasions with families of hostages and victims of the heinous Hamas attacks of Oct. 7th. Instead of representing the diversity of views that, in the Senator’s experience, are held by the Jewish community of Maryland, Ron Halber has become an apologist for the Netanyahu government,” the spokesperson added.

In response, Halber told Washington Jewish Week: “We are diverse geographically. We are diverse religiously and we’re diverse politically, and the job of the JCRC is to find the unifying priorities, values and interests, and to weave them into a position that the majority — and I’m not going to say everybody, but the majority — of the Jewish community feels comfortable with and I think we do that with … poise and skill.”

The JCRC works on behalf of over 100 different agencies, organizations and synagogues within the DMV region, including advocacy groups for local policy, foreign policy pertaining to Israel, Holocaust education and more.

“We’ve drawn lines where we support and conveyed that to the senator, and we’ve just unfortunately been continually disappointed in his leadership and his lack of empathy for Israel’s strategic position, his constant [social] media posts of negative things about Israel,” Halber continued. “Nobody’s telling him not to believe what he wants to say, but his message would be better received if he showed balance. There’s all this never-ending [commentary] about Israel … and the Jewish community I think is tired of it.”

Halber told Washington Jewish Week that while he has worked with Van Hollen in the past on numerous issues, the two have very different positions relative to Israel.

“He’s a very smart man. He’s a legislator who has been around. … I like Sen. Van Hollen and I’ve worked with him on many, many domestic issues. It’s just on the Israel issue where we part ways and that’s OK,” Halber said. “His near obsession with anti-Israel videos and posts in his [social] media feed are not in tune with the viewpoints shared by the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community in Maryland, and he’s got a very large Maryland Jewish constituency and I don’t think he is taking their viewpoints into concern when he is doing that.”

Halber also noted at the event that he met with Van Hollen about a year ago and asked him to show more empathy and understanding when speaking about the situation with Israel, which Halber said Van Hollen hasn’t done.

“I think it’s very easy to stand with Israel when you’re crying over Jewish victims, but it’s harder to stand up with Israel when she’s doing the right thing,” Halber stated at the Dec. 3 event. “And I think the senator has shown a lack of strategic understanding of Israel’s dilemma. And I’m not saying he’s got to be Israel’s cheerleader, but it would be nice if he had more balance in his remarks.”

“The hard thing is to show up when your friends need you, and right now, we’ve needed him, and he hasn’t been there,” Halber added.

Support for Halber, a number of Jewish organizations and community leaders issued statements in support of Halber and voicing disapproval of Van Hollen.

“American Jewish Committee (AJC) Washington DC is deeply disappointed by recent remarks made by a member of Senator Chris Van Hollen’s team attacking Ron Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington,” the AJC said in a statement. “The characterization of Ron, and any Jewish leader, as an apologist for the government of Israel traffics in dangerous tropes of dual loyalty. In this case, it is also wholly unwarranted, disrespectful, and ultimately detrimental to an open exchange of ideas and real efforts to make progress in the Middle East. If we are to contribute positively to the goals we all purportedly share, we must maintain civil and respectful relationships.”

In a Facebook post, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington said that it “deeply values the vital role Ron Halber and the JCRC of Greater Washington play in advocating for Israel, Jewish safety, belonging, and connection across Greater Washington.”

“Ron has worked tirelessly for years to build a stronger Jewish community and Greater Washington region,” the Federation added. “At a time of extreme divisiveness in our society, our public officials should not be contributing to these divides through
personal attacks.”

“I am stunned, offended, and frankly angry at Senator Van Hollen’s personal attack on Ron [Halber]. Ron is a respected communal leader who has spent decades serving Maryland Jews, advocating for security, and giving voice to a community that is anxious and afraid in this moment of rising hostility,” William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said in a statement posted on X.

“We can disagree about Israeli policy. We can debate strategy and tone. But labeling American Jews as apologists when they challenge you is not discourse. It is a smear. It cheapens the conversation at a time when Jewish anxiety is real and rising, and when we need leaders who hear us rather than dismiss us,” Daroff added. “Our community deserves respect. We deserve empathy. We deserve partnership grounded in good faith. We will speak up for those expectations.”

AIPAC also weighed in on the situation in a post on X. “What a shameful statement by @ChrisVanHollen about a prominent Jewish community leader. Disagreeing with you, Senator, doesn’t make American Jews apologists for a foreign leader. Resorting to this tired and toxic trope only reflects the shallowness of the Senator’s arguments.”

In addition, Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, criticized Van Hollen in a Facebook post and called the senator’s comments “unconscionable.”

“Politicians need to have thicker skins in responding to criticism, especially when it is directed at them by respected representatives of minority communities. That’s part of the job. Van Hollen has the right to cut off contact with the organized Jewish community even though I think that’s a toxic political choice. But he should not respond publicly like this,”
Kurtzer said.

“To characterize a pro-Israel view as an apologetic for a foreign government is to evoke unfounded suspicion of foreign interference and to cast the as therefore ‘un-American.’ This is dangerous stuff and politicians shouldn’t do it. Ronald Halber deserves an apology,” Kurtzer added.

According to a statement from the Zionist Organization of America, “a cursory review of press releases featured on Van Hollen’s website reveals a serious absence of balance. Since Oct. 7, Sen. Van Hollen has issued nearly 30 statements whose primary subject was attacking Israel, and just three condemning Hamas.”

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein added in the press release: “Senator Van Hollen has become a nightmare for his Jewish and pro-Israel constituents. There is no blood-libel of Israel that he will not repeat and spread. … His personal attack on JCRC CEO Ron Halber for being an ‘apologist for the Netanyahu government’ is absurd.”

The Washington-based Endowment for Middle East Truth said that, “instead of standing with Maryland’s Jewish-American and Israeli-American communities, the Senator has repeatedly chosen to side with those who agitate and promote hate.”

Sarah Stern, EMET’s president and founder, stated: “Over the last two years Senator Van Hollen has repeatedly chosen to step up his harsh, and at times hostile, rhetoric towards the world’s one Jewish state. While Jewish Marylanders indeed hold diverse religious, cultural and political views, the vast majority of them agree that Israel has a clear right to defend itself from those seeking its destruction, and to pursue offensive measures when its people are targeted, slaughtered and taken hostage.”

The JCRC’s executive committee came out strongly for Halber, stating that, “Recent personal attacks leveled against him by Sen. Chris Van Hollen are undignified, unwarranted, and untrue. Ron and his leadership team have our full backing
and support.”

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Additional reporting by Aaron Troodler and Suzanne Pollak.