The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has called upon Republican presidential contender Ron Paul to publicly repudiate the vicious anti-Israel and racist statements attributed to him over past decades, not merely to deny that he made them or that they were published without his knowledge or consent. Ron Paul has stated that he either didn’t utter or authorize many statements appearing in his name. The ZOA maintains that Mr. Paul is not thereby denying that these are his beliefs merely by disclaiming authorship and that, if he genuinely disagrees with them, he can make this clear easily by publicly repudiating and condemning these statements issued in his name.
According to a former Paul aide, Eric Dondero, Paul is “most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.”
Paul’s hostility to Israel has also been on display during the current presidential campaign, when, on November 21 in the CNN sponsored Republican debate, he stated, “Why do we have this automatic commitment that we’re going to send our kids and send our money endlessly to Israel?” Paul has also claimed U.S. policy was responsible for 9/11 and anti-American hostility in the world, saying, “You talk to the people who committed it and those individuals who would like to do us harm, and they say we don’t like American bombs to be falling on our country, we don’t like the intervention we do in their nation … the average American didn’t cause it. But if you have a flawed policy, it may influence it.”
James Kirchick, writing in the New Republic, after closely researching the newsletters issued in Ron Paul’s name over the decades, particularly those not available on the internet from years preceding 1999, concluded the following:
“whoever actually wrote them, the newsletters I saw all had one thing in common: They were published under a banner containing Paul’s name, and the articles (except for one special edition of a newsletter that contained the byline of another writer) seem designed to create the impression that they were written by him–and reflected his views. What they reveal are decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain-speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing–but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics …
“The rhetoric when it came to Jews was little better. The newsletters display an obsession with Israel; no other country is mentioned more often in the editions I saw, or with more vitriol. A 1987 issue of Paul’s Investment Letter called Israel “an aggressive, national socialist state,” and a 1990 newsletter discussed the “tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise. [Of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a newsletter said] ‘Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little …
“Paul’s campaign wants to depict its candidate as a naïve, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically–or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views’” (James Kirchick, ‘Angry White Man: The Bigoted Past of Ron Paul,’ New Republic, January 8, 2008).
Among other despicable statements contained in these newsletters are the following:
- Ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that ‘Welfaria,’ ‘Zooville,’ ‘Rapetown,’ ‘Dirtburg,’ and ‘Lazyopolis’ were better alternatives.
- In a passage titled ‘The Duke’s Victory,’ a newsletter celebrated Duke’s 44% showing in the 1990 Louisiana open primary. ‘Duke lost the election … but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment.’
- In 1991, a newsletter asked, ‘Is David Duke’s new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?’ ‘The conclusion was that “our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom.’”
- A special issue of the Ron Paul Political Report, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year. “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began.”
- In 1994, South Africa’s transition to multiracial democracy was portrayed as a “destruction of civilization” that was “the most tragic [to] ever occur on that continent, at least below the Sahara.”
- Regarding the debate on whether gays should be allowed to serve in the military, Ron Paul’s newsletter stated, “Homosexuals, if admitted, should be put in a special category and not allowed in close physical contact with heterosexuals.”
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “We call upon Ron Paul to publicly repudiate and condemn the vicious anti-Israel and racist statements that have been either stated by him or else attributed to him in newsletters published under his name over many years.
“It is an insult to the public’s intelligence for Ron Paul and his spokesmen to pretend that these vicious statements can be shrugged off by claiming that he neither made nor authorized them. These statements are numerous and have been around for years. They appeared in publications bearing his name. Had Ron Paul genuinely disagreed with them and found them shocking, he had ample time and opportunity to say so publicly. He has never done so. In fact, his current ploy of avoiding condemnation of these statements by instead claiming he didn’t say or authorize them strongly suggests that he fully agrees with them and does not reject these hateful, vicious views.
“Ron Paul and his supporters’ latest insistence that he is actually pro-Israel and would not interfere in the way Israel seeks fit to defend itself doesn’t tally with Paul’s post-9/11 statements to the effect that the U.S. is being attacked by Islamists for, among other reasons, its support for Israel. Can one really believe that a president who believes these things would not seek to pressure Israel from doing anything that might upset its Arab neighbors? That he would not blame Israel for Arab hostility? That he would not deny it intelligence assistance? That he would not side with Arab diplomatic initiatives condemning Israel in the misguided hope that Arab dictators and radicalized masses might like the U.S. a little more? This sort of dangerous, flawed thinking has been a staple of Ron Paul’s foreign policy pronouncements.
“Mr. Paul is not denying that these are his beliefs merely by disclaiming authorship. If he genuinely disagrees with them, he can make this clear very easily – by publicly repudiating and condemning these statements issued in his name. Until and unless he does so, Ron Paul himself should be condemned, delegitimized and shunned as a vicious, Israel-hating, racist.”