Palin says it three times: She won’t “second guess” Israel
Sarah Palin said she would not "second guess" Israel if it were to decide to strike Iran – and said it three times.
"We are friends of Israel and I don't think that we should second guess the measures Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security," said the Republican vice presidential nominee in response to a question from Charlie Gibson of ABC News about how she would react if Israel felt it was necessary to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. Gibson then asked a variation of the same question two more times, and Palin repeated a variation of the same answer, emphasizing she would not "second guess" the Jewish state.
It was Palin's first television interview since joining the Republican presidential ticket.
The Alaska governor also said that Iran must not achieve such weapons capability under its current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"Under the leadership of Ahmnadinejad nuclear weapons in the hands of his government are dangerous to everyone on this globe," she said. "We have to make sure that these weapons of mass destruction, the nuclear weapons should not be given to Ahmadinejad."
UPDATE: It's worth noting that Joe Biden, during a conference call last week with members of the Jewish media, essentially said the same thing when asked about the possibility of an Israeli strike.
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Biden will headline NJDC event
Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden will be the keynote speaker at this month's National Jewish Democratic Council conference in Washington.
The exact time of Biden's appearance is not yet set, said an NJDC spokesperson, but the conference begins on the afternoon of Sept. 23 and continues all day Sept. 24. The speech will be the first time Biden has spoken in front of a meeting of a national Jewish organization since his selection last month as Barack Obama's running mate.
Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean will also speak at the parley.
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Political tidbits: Biden talks Israel, Palin gets the Jewish e-mail treatment
- "A strong America is a strong Israel," Joe Biden tells the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent, while also blasting President George W. Bush's Middle East policy.
- More e-mails designed to scare the Jewish community? Choire Sicha breaks down one on Sarah Palin – and points out that it misspells "anti-Semitism."
- Jim Besser at The Jewish Week quotes a number of Jewish historians saying Palin's nomination will cripple John McCain's efforts to attract Jewish votes – with one calling the Alaskan "chilling" to Jewish voters and another comparing her style to Joe McCarthy.
- Jewish Republicans from the Washington, D.C. area talk about how much they loved Sarah Palin's debut last week in St. Paul
- Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Beliefnet's Steven Waldman compares the reaction to Palin's religion to the outcry over the film "Passion of the Christ," and advises what is and isn't problematic about the intersection of her religious and political views. Back on his own Web site, Waldman says he is concerned about Palin's backing of Christian Heritage Week in Alaska – because the proclamation "plucks Founding Father quotes out of context to give misleading impressions about their views on the role of religion in society."
- In the Huffington Post, Menachem Rosensaft calls a McCain-Palin-appointed Supreme Court "disastrous."
- Jerusalemite Daniel Seidemann, writing in the Washington Post's On Faith blog, wants presidential candidates to stop using his city to score political points.
- Writing in The Jerusalem Post, McGill University professor Gil Troy asks why Democrats call Barack Obama's nomination an "historic breakthrough" but say the GOP is guilty of tokenism in giving Sarah Palin the VP nod. He adds that Jews are just as inconsistent – celebrating Jewish political appointees while wanting to be treated as "normal" Americans.
- Daniel Levy argues on his blog that with their actions of the last two weeks, Republicans are driving Jews back to the Democratic Party.
- New Jersey Jews launched their Obama outreach effort on Monday.
- Arutz Sheva interviews Jackie Mason about the presidential race. He says Jews only support Democrats because they feel guilty and want to help the underdog, and is not a fan of Obama – riffing about the Democrat and his relationship with Jeremiah Wright.
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Palin’s inspiration on small town values
Sarah Palin's love song to small town values at the Republican convention may have nauseated some urban liberals, but the delegates in St. Paul ate it up. Little noticed, however, was the inspiration for this line, quoted from an anonymous "writer": "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity."
As Thomas Frank reported Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, the source for that line was the sharp-mouthed, anti-Semitic, John Birch Society member Westbrook Pegler, who died in 1969. Frank's point was that Republicans might preach the virtues of rural America, but their policies are directly responsible for the heartland's decline (as evidence, he notes that the Farmer's Union gave the urbane Obama a 100 percent rating for his congressional votes; McCain scored a 0).
But we're a little more interested in another angle on Pegler, reported by Politico's Ben Smith:
He was also known for what Philip Roth described as his "casual distaste for Jews," which had become so evident by the end that he was bounced from the journal of the John Birch Society in 1964 for alleged anti-Semitism. According to his obituary, he'd advanced the theory that American Jews of Eastern European descent were "instinctively sympathetic to Communism, however outwardly respectable they appeared."
Palin's speech was written by Matt Scully, a former speechwriter for George W. and other top Republicans and – ironically for a guy who pens the speeches of an advocate of shooting wolves from airplanes – the author of "Dominion," a book which defends animals from "the depredations of profit driven corporations, swaggering, gun-loving hunters, proponents of renewed 'harvesting' of whales and elephants and others who insist that all of nature is humanity's romper room, to play with, rearrange, and plunder at will."
We've asked to talk to Scully about why he chose to include the Pegler quote, if only anonymously attributed. In the meantime, the McCain camp says it's "unbelievably ridiculous" to think the quote suggests Palin has any sympathy for Pegler's views, racist or otherwise. (We don't disagree, but we still think it would be interesting to understand the thinking behind quoting a person with that kind of baggage).
"Frankly, I would not be surprised to learn that a lot of people involved in American politics 50 years ago were anti-Semitic," a spokesman told JTA. "Her quoting him is no more an endorsement of his anti-Semitism than Joe Biden quoting Thomas Jefferson would be an endorsement of slavery. She quoted one line. It's unbelievably ridiculous."
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NJDC has their own ads
Not long after the Republican Jewish Coalition unveiled the first two advertisements from its fall campaign, the National Jewish Democratic Council has released its first newspaper ad of the general election season. Running this week in the Cleveland Jewish News, the ad's tagline is "CHANGE with Barack Obama, More of the SAME with John McCain," and highlights four issues: Israel, Iran, energy independence and reproductive freedom using quotes from Obama himself, journalists and others.
NJDC executive director Ira Forman said this is the first of a number of ads the organization is preparing to run over the next eight weeks in Jewish newspapers around the country. He added, though, that that the group has a number of other plans – which he would not yet reveal – to highlight important issues in the election. Ads, according to Forman, "are not our top priority."
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