Cleveland
As the clock ticks down to tonight’s set of debates in Cleveland, the Democrats have set up their spin shop to try and sway the press. The venue they chose, the Radisson Hotel Cleveland-Gateway, may sound like an ordinary hotel, but beneath the surface lies an awkward controversy for the ostensibly pro-Israel DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The hotel is adjoined to a beautiful historic building, owned by the Cleveland-based religion known as the United Church of Christ (UCC). The church, per its webpage, owns the hotel.
Earlier this year, the UCC made news for taking a strong stand against the state of Israel, voting to divest and abstain from Israel and Israeli companies. The group almost approved, as Dexter Van Zile reported here, “a resolution declaring Israel to be an apartheid state. This resolution received a majority of votes at the general synod, but failed to get the two-thirds supermajority it needed to pass.”
The church disputes that the resolution would have labeled Israel an “apartheid state” saying that it merely would “recognize the actions of Israel against the Palestinians in the West Bank and around Gaza as acts of apartheid.”
At the time of the vote, the church released the following statement:
As DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz repeatedly claims to be a “staunch supporter” of Israel, one wonders why her organization would choose to give a group that hates Israel their money.
The church has plans to sell the hotel and their headquarters, but lease back the building. Cleveland’s Plain Dealer reports that a deal has been struck, but that “the sales, at an undisclosed price, could occur by mid-August.”
