Note: I wrote this a while ago, but after listening to far-right MK (Member of Knesset) Aryeh Eldad speak at Hillel (most of what I'm pretty sure was an all-Jewish audience disagreed with him, at least based on the questions asked), I'm pretty pissed at right-wing Jews, regardless of country of origin. So I'm posting this
The Republican Jewish Coalition recently did some nasty "message-testing" of Barack Obama with Jewish voters in swing states. Rather than complain about it, let's take a look at what message testing would look like if it was done by the National Jewish Democratic Council to see what "concerns" about the Republican ticket would resonate with Jewish voters.
Of course, most American Jews tend to be far more liberal on both domestic issues and non-Israel-related foreign policy issues than is the American population at large. On Israel-related issues, American Jews tend to be approximately in line with the United States as a whole, but of course, we tend to care more about Israel than most Americans do. However, attacks on McCain for his desire to overturn Roe, eviscerate civil liberties and privatize Social Security will work just as well on the non-Jewish voter as on the Jewish voter. However, there are still plenty of "issues" of specific concern to American Jews on which to "message-test" McCain-Palin.
Let's start with John McCain. Though McCain has generally been considered a friend of Israel, there are still several "issues" on which one could message-test John McCain.
- "Did you know John McCain's finance chair led the Nixon administration's Nazi Germany-like attempt to purge Jews from the Bureau of Labor Statistics?"
Fred Malek was hired by the McCain campaign as their national finance co-chair. A post from 2007 by Marc Fisher of the Washington Post tells the story.
The Jews, Nixon said, were cooking the books, twisting the nation's official labor stats to make the economy look worse than it really was--all to make Nixon look bad. The president ordered Malek to look into the matter by counting the number of Jews in the agency.
Malek did as he was told and actually produced a report to the president in which the aide sought to identify Jews by examining their names.
Several Jews were demoted as a result of this report. A retired Jewish civil servant who had been investigated said in 2002 that the whole ordeal "felt like Nazi Germany."
- "Did you know John McCain embraced Pastor John Hagee, who claimed God sent Hitler to hunt down Jews?"
From the Huffington Post's Sam Stein
John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.
Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: "'And they the hunters should hunt them,' that will be the Jews. 'From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that."
Of course, after that bombshell came out, McCain dropped Hagee like a hot potato.
- "Did you know John McCain expressed concerns about a non-Christian becoming president?"
In the fall of 2007, John McCain gave an interview to BeliefNet where he stated:
"I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who has a grounding in my faith," the GOP presidential hopeful told the Web site in an interview published Saturday.
However, on the Republican side, the bottom of the ticket provides the most ammunition to use in a message-testing campaign. Though they've yet to get much play, the number of "questionable" ties of Governor Sarah Palin greatly exceeds anything claimed by Republicans about Barack Obama. Moreover, this is limited to what has come out in the 3 weeks since Senator McCain chose her as his vice-presidential nominee.
- "Did you know that during Sarah Palin's first campaign for mayor, a whisper campaign was run accusing her opponent of being sympathetic to Jews?"
Former Wasilla Mayor John C. Stein, though a Christian, has a last name which is generally considered 'Jewish.' This prompted a whisper campaign similar to today's nationwide "Obama's a Muslim" e-mail smear, and eventually became endemic enough to cause a TV Station to mistakenly assert that Palin was the first Christian Mayor of Wasilla.
While there's no evidence that her mayoral campaign was involved in the whisper campaign, there's also no evidence she denounced it or tried to stop it.
Afterward, a TV station called her Wasilla's "first Christian mayor." This prompted a letter from Stein, saying: "Really?" He listed eight previous mayors, all Christian, and added: "With a name like 'Stein' some suspected that I must be a non-Christian, have non-Christian blood or at least have sympathized with a non-Christian sometime in my career. I'm proud of such a reputation but I, my family and forbearers are of the Christian persuasion, too."
- "Did you know the church Sarah Palin attended for 25 years is part of a movement that trains young children to do battle to take dominion over the world in the name of the Lord?"
While apparently the battle is spiritual, not physical, it basically describes the Third Wave movement. Read my friend Bruce Wilson's article for more information.
- "Did you know than in Sarah Palin's current church, attacks on Israel by Palestinian terrorists are considered to be judgment on the people of Israel?"
- "Did you know that Sarah Palin's pastor considers the conversion of Jews to be 'a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism'?"
From Politico, describing the attendance of Sarah Palin of a sermon by David Brickner, the executive director of the "Jews for Jesus" organization.
Palin's pastor, Larry Kroon, introduced Brickner on Aug. 17, according to a transcript of the sermon on the church's website.
"He's a leader of Jews for Jesus, a ministry that is out on the leading edge in a pressing, demanding area of witnessing and evangelism," Kroon said.
David Brickner:
"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it."
- "Did you know that Sarah Palin was a supporter of Nazi war-criminal defender Pat Buchanan's presidential campaigns in the 1990's?"
The exact nature of Sarah Palin's relationship with Pat Buchanan is unclear. The man himself has claimed she was a brigader and fundraiser for him in his 1996 campaign.
An Associated Press article reveals that she attended, wearing a Buchanan button, a Buchanan rally in 1999.
She later claimed in a letter to the editor that she had gone "to be polite" and would have done the same for any politician of any party, which rings as a "cover your ass" statement given her history of extreme partisanship from the start of her career running for the non-partisan office of mayor of Wasilla. Either way, it is giving legitimacy to a candidate who spent the 1980's defending Nazi war criminals from deportation. Unless, of course, she actually would have gone to a David Duke rally in Wasilla "to be polite."
Though the McCain campaign has denied that she supported Buchanan, that is insufficient evidence given that campaign's demonstrated willingness to lie when the truth is inconvenient for them.
- "Did you know Sarah Palin has quoted a notorious anti-Semite in her campaign speeches?"
"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity," the vice-presidential candidate said, quoting an anonymous "writer," which is to say, Pegler, who must have penned that mellifluous line when not writing his more controversial stuff.
This was written by Westbrook Pegler, a man notorious for, among other things, calling Jews "geese."
Of course, Sarah Palin did not actually write the speech; former Bush speechwriter Matt Scully gets the credit for that. However, she gave the speech, and thus bears some responsibility.
- "Did you know Sarah Palin has been involved with the anti-Semitic John Birch Society?"
A photograph of Sarah Palin at her city council desk in 1995 shows her with an unopened copy of the newsletter of the John Birch society.
McCain-Palin spokesman Michael Goldfarb does not actually deny Palin's connections to the John Birch Society.
From the Politico article:
"This photo from the early to mid 90s shows the Governor having her photo taken in front of a three ring binder of information from local citizens presented regularly to Wasilla council members by the town clerk," said Palin spokesman Michael Goldfarb. "These binders featured material given by members of the public to all council members."
That is not a denial. The statement does not even mention the magazine, but merely tries to imply that it might have come from Wasilla citizens. It's possible that the binder itself may have come from citizens. However, the magazine does not have any holes punched in it and therefore did not come in the binder; it would have fallen out. And again, if Palin truly had no connections that they were aware of to the John Birch Society, Goldfarb would have made a fervent denial, like he did with the Pat Buchanan controversy (though a careful reading of that shows no denial of her having supported him, merely of having worked for an effort to elect him)
The John Birch Society claims that it is not anti-Semitic. However, while the organization itself may not espouse anti-Semitism, many of its members do. Most of the United States' most notorious white supremacists and anti-Semites came from the ranks of the John Birch Society. Tom Metzger (White Aryan Resistance), William Pierce (National Alliance; author of the Turner Diaries), David Lane (The Order), Willis Carto (Liberty Lobby, Institute for Historical Review), Ben Klassen (World Church of the Creator) and Westbrook Pegler (see above) were all members of the John Birch Society.
- "Did you know Sarah Palin expressed support in the Republican primary for Ron Paul, a man who has claimed that the pro-Israel lobby is 'By far the most powerful lobby in Washington of the bad sort ' and was the only member of Congress to oppose condemning Hamas' anti-Semitic children's television programming?"
In an interview with MTV during the Republican primary campaign:
In this interview, Palin calls controversial Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul "cool." "He's a good guy," she added. "He's so independent. He's independent of the party machine. I'm like, 'Right on, so am I.'
The Houston Chronicle covered Ron Paul's quote about the pro-Israel lobby. His lone vote against condemning Hamas came earlier this month
Of course, none of this necessarily means that either Senator McCain or Governor Palin is in the least bit anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. In fact, it is almost certain that they are neither. The purpose of this piece was to show how easy it is to, merely by twisting the facts just a little, insinuate disturbing things about politicians. Even Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition, is not immune. During the summer, after he questioned Senator Obama's support for Israel, I was able to use his donations to call into question his own support for Israel and for American Jews.