Sarah Palin's Jewish Problem
With today's memorial service in Arizona, Wednesday is a day for all Americans to mourn the victims of Saturday's deadly shooting spree in Tucson. Sadly, with her aggressive defense of her past incendiary rhetoric, Sarah Palin has made it all about herself. Worse still, Palin has marked the attempted assassination of the first Jewish Congresswoman from Arizona by reintroducing the historically anti-semitic "blood libel" slur back into the political lexicon. As it turns out, Palin's misstep is the just the latest for Jewish voters who continue to mistrust the half-term Governor.
Doubtless, Palin did not know the history and meaning of the term. Of course, that didn't stop her from lifting the term from conservative commentator Glenn Reynolds, who published "The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel" in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. In Palin's retelling:
If you don't like a person's vision for the country, you're free to debate that vision. If you don't like their ideas, you're free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.
Unfortunately for Palin, Jews and Jewish groups across the political spectrum found her statement reprehensible.
In an otherwise sympathetic response, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) lamented:
Still, we wish that Palin had not invoked the phrase "blood-libel" in reference to the actions of journalists and pundits in placing blame for the shooting in Tucson on others. While the term "blood-libel" has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one so fraught with pain in Jewish history.
For its part, the liberal J Street pleaded:
We hope that Governor Palin will recognize, when it is brought to her attention, that the term "blood libel" brings back painful echoes of a very dark time in our communal history when Jews were falsely accused of committing heinous deeds. When Governor Palin learns that many Jews are pained by and take offense at the use of the term, we are sure that she will choose to retract her comment, apologize and make a less inflammatory choice of words.
Even ardent Palin defender Jonah Goldberg expressed regret in the National Review:
I should have said this a few days ago, when my friend Glenn Reynolds introduced the term to this debate. But I think that the use of this particular term in this context isn't ideal. Historically, the term is almost invariably used to describe anti-Semitic myths about how Jews use blood -- usually from children -- in their rituals. I agree entirely with Glenn's, and now Palin's, larger point. But I'm not sure either of them intended to redefine the phrase, or that they should have.
Sadly for Sarah Palin, that less than "ideal" turn of phrase won't help her dismal standing among Jewish Americans.
In the run-up to the 2008 election, Newsweek reported that "Palin may hurt McCain among Jewish voters." The dynamics in Florida, later carried by Barack Obama, were particularly telling:
Many Florida Jews who had previously been open to McCain appear to share the couple's aversion to Palin, according to political scientists, polling data and anecdotal reporting. "She stands for all the wrong things in the eyes of the Jewish community," says Kenneth Wald, a professor at the University of Florida. Among the examples he cites: Palin seems to disdain intellectualism, she's a vociferous opponent of gun control and she attended a fundamentalist church that hosted Jews for Jesus, which seeks to convert Jews to Christianity. (Palin apparently sat through a speech by a leader of the group in which he said terrorist attacks on Israel were punishment for Israelis' failure to accept Jesus as the Messiah.)
Despite polling which suggested Obama lagging among Jewish voters traditionally loyal to Democrats, the Illinois Senator ultimately maintained his party's hold on its vital constituency. Despite the fear-mongering of the McCain campaign and state GOP operatives, Obama dominated among Jews by 78% to 21%. By way of comparison, John Kerry (74% to 25% for Bush) and Al Gore (80% to 17%) scored about the same as Barack Hussein Obama with American Jews. As Newsweek concluded:
"There's no question that Obama came into this election with probably less going for him than most Democratic nominees," says Wald. But the Palin pick "probably blunted any gains the Republicans had made."
In an article titled, "I Find Her Offensive," Salon echoed that finding. "John McCain was making a bid for South Florida's Jewish voters, a crucial demographic in a purple state," Tristram Korten wrote, "But then he chose Sarah Palin as a running mate."
Her standing among Jewish voters didn't improve after the 2008 election. Joining the long list of Republicans who see Israel as a biblically mandated stepping-stone to the End Times conversion (and much larger slaughter) of the Jews, Palin used the launch of her memoir Going Rogue to make the case.
Pushing her book in November 2009, Sarah Palin not only went rogue on 40 years of American foreign policy, but raised suspicions that she believes the Apocalypse is nigh.
"I disagree with the Obama administration on that. I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don't think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand."
As Jeffrey Goldberg reported in The Atlantic, while Palin "holds fairly typical Protestant Zionist beliefs, and one of those beliefs is the regathering of the Jews in Israel," the minister of the Assembly of God church she frequented believed that "based on some personal revelation he claims to have gotten from God, that the Jews would move to Alaska during the Tribulation."
And so it goes. Before Palin's slip-up Wednesday, many Jewish Americans doubtless worried that her praise for her "Prayer Warriors" and call to "to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country" wasn't kosher. Now that's she added "blood libel" to "reload" and "crosshairs" as political metaphors, they probably have a simple message for her:
Pls refudiate.
Just as McCain and Palin though, wrongly, that they would get the Hillary voters when McCain picked a woman, I wonder if Palin thought that using the term blood libel would get her Jewish support.
There was a Jewish person involved who might die and there was a child killed, the other than that the analogy just doesn't work. And Palin herself is in no danger of death, or torture.
In fact the death threats she claimed on Hannity haven't been reported to the police.
Which leaves the question of why use such a heavily loaded and uncommon phrase as she clearly doesn't know its usage or import instead of words she understood.