The County: December 2007 Archives

Several outrageous things happened and, worse, didn’t happen during the Democratic debate on NPR on Tuesday. I am truly upset and angry with all the Democratic candidates running for the presidential nomination. I am deeply offended mostly at what they did not say.

Loose cannon, former Senator from Alaska, Mike Gravel, usually portrayed as the weird eccentric who is even better for a laugh than Dennis Kucinich, defended Iran’s support of Hamas and Hezbollah. He wondered why we think, “there's something wrong with Iran supporting Hamas and Hezbollah? These are two elected organizations, and — and why can't they (Iran) give support to those organizations? Israel doesn't want it, so why do they (the Democratic candidates) buy hook, line and sinker that they can't give aid to Hamas and Hezbollah?” He continued that, “We give unlimited aid to Israel. These people (the Palestinians) are fighting for their rights.”

Okay, you can say that he is a nut or a radical. You can explain that he doesn’t really represent the mainstream of the Democratic Party. You can marginalize him and explain him away.

What you cannot explain away, forget, or in my view forgive, is the silence of the other Democrats. No one said, “Hey wait. I want to respond to that.” No one distanced themselves from him or followed up his endorsement of the aims and methods of Hamas and Hezbollah with an objection. No one questioned or denounced his creating a “moral equivalence” between Israel and Hamas/Hezbollah terrorists.

Notice that he was not simply advocating for a Palestinian state or remarking on the pain of the Palestinians. He was specifically equating Iran’s support of two terrorist organizations that reject a two-state solution and the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, with our aid to Israel. How could this go uncommented upon? If silence connotes assent, what did these candidates convey by their silence?

They all simply moved on to the next question. Maybe they were embarrassed. Possibly they didn’t want to give the issue further airing. They can spin it today as not wanting to “dignify” his rant. However, let’s try a little thought problem: Had he made analogous charges or observations as starkly offensive to Blacks, Hispanics, Asians or gays, can you imagine the other Democrats remaining silent? Don’t you think that someone would have challenged him?

As a life-long liberal, people often challenge me to explain why the Jewish Community is no longer as predictably and overwhelmingly liberal as we once were? Some theorize that once we got money and property, we abandoned our ideals and sense of social justice and compassion. I do not accept this at all. If you want to understand why the center of gravity of the local Jewish Community has moved to the right, listen to the heartbreaking and deafening silence of Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Kucinich and Obama. Remember the famous quotation attributed to Edmond Burke, “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men (and one woman) do nothing."

I am also unhappy that this story, Gravel’s words and the silence of the Democrats, has been met with like silence from the media. Where is the outrage? Where is the coverage?