Two resumes from Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) offer different accounts of an early point in her career, raising questions about which version is most accurate and if there are political reasons why the two CVs do not match exactly.
The discrepancy is also drawing some criticism from pro-Israel quarters.
When the Michigan Democrat was being considered for assistant secretary of state in 2012, a resume she submitted as part of her application claimed that circa 2000-2001 she had served as a grant writer for the Follow-Up Committee on Arab Education (FUCAE). That group's website says it "is a professional body representing the Palestinian minority in Israel in all matters related to education."
However, her current work history on her LinkedIn profile for the same time period does not reference FUCAE, and instead says she worked as a grant writer for Isha L'Isha (Women to Women), which describes itself as "the oldest grassroots feminist organization in Israel and one of the leading voices of women's rights in the country."
Slotkin is Jewish, and is among the crop of freshman in the house who helped Democrats gain a majority in the lower chamber last November.
Her congressional office did not return requests for comment about the discrepancy.
Taken together, the resumes portray Slotkin as working both for a pro-Palestinian organization as well as an Israeli organization at a time marred by the emergence of the "Second Intifada," a wave of violence between Palestinians and Israelis.
The LinkedIn profile gives little description into the work for Isha L'Isha.
In the 2012 resume, she listed her title with FUCAE as the director of development, adding:
"Served as lead grant-writer and spokesperson for a Palestinian civil rights organization during the second intifada. Travelled regularly between Israel and the West Bank reporting on the civil rights status of Palestinians and Arab-Israelis, produced reports on conditions on the ground, briefed NGO, U.N. and international delegations on fast-changing events, and strategized with Israeli and Palestinian leaders and other non-profits on how to advocate more effectively for civil rights."
Rabbi Steve Burg, CEO for the pro-Israel group Aish HaTorah, said he finds Slotkin's work for FUCAE troubling, saying the group exposed themselves as anti-Israel just a handful of years later when the "High Follow-up Committee" published a manifesto.
"Included in the manifesto—the first ever produced by the community's supreme political body, known as the High Follow-Up Committee—are calls for Israel to be reformed from a Jewish state that privileges its Jewish majority into 'a state of all its citizens' and for sweeping changes to a national system of land control designed to exclude Palestinian citizens from influence," said a report from Al-Ahram.
"The document is likely to further increase tensions between the Israeli government and the country's Palestinian minority, and has already been roundly condemned in the Hebrew media," the report added.
The Follow-Up Committee on Arab Education was a smaller "steering committee" of the larger body, according to the 2006 "Future Vision" document.
"It's an organization that, I don't think they're elected, but it has some kind of NGO [non-governmental organization] representative status,""Burg told the Washington Free Beacon by phone. "But when you take the stance that Israel should not be a Jewish state, it says a lot about you. It comes across as advocating for education of Palestinians, but their stance seems to be much more about taking away the Jewish character of Israel than to advocate for the Palestinians."
Burg also said Slotkin's work for the group when set against the historical backdrop of the emergence of the Second Intifada is concerning to him as well.
"A person has a certain set of life experiences, and that’s not to say that someone's not different 20 years ago, when they're learning, they're growing, et cetera," Burg said.
"A person has to be very honest and straight about it. If these are your experiences or passions, if this is what you've done, you've got to—especially when you're a public servant—be forthcoming."
"We want to know, 'what has contributed to who you are today?' And to play a cat-and-mouse game with these kinds of experiences overseas is certainly extraordinarily problematic. And it kind of smells like catering to different constituencies in different ways."
Both resumes become largely congruent again when the chronology picks back up in May of 2002, in which she lists on both that she worked for the U.S. State Department as a political affairs officer. The formal resume Slotkin created for the 2012 application noted that work was as an intern, while her LinkedIn profile omits that information.
The Executive Services Directorate had previously released Slotkin's 2012 resume along with hundreds of others in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.