“Second Holocaust” mailing to 75,000 Pennsylvania Jews
A letter recently emailed to 75,000 Pennsylvania Jews compared stopping Obama to stopping Hitler:
“In the 5,769 years of our people, there has never been a more important time for us to take proactive measures in order to stop a second Holocaust.”
It then regurgitates the various McCain campaign smears about Ayers, Wright, Farrakhan, and Ahmadinejad, and concludes:
“Jewish Americans cannot afford to make the wrong decision on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008. Many of our ancestors ignored the warning signs in the 1930s and 1940s and made a tragic mistake. Let’s not make a similar one this year.”
It was signed by a respected former state Supreme Court judge, Hon. Sandra Schwartz Newman, as well as the incoming chair of the Philadelphia Jewish Federation, Mike Coslov. According to the JTA, “both Coslov and Newman are distancing themselves from the letter, saying they hadn’t actually read its contents before signing on.”
The letter was written by a McCain “political operative” named Bryan Rudnick, specifically brought to Pennsylvania from Florida for this purpose. The New York Times reported that “leaders of the state party repudiated it on Friday. They said it had been released without their authorization and that they had fired the strategist who helped draft it, Bryan Rudnick.” Of course, for his part, Rudnick “disputed the party’s version of events and said he had approval for the letter from officials at several levels.”
The meme associating the election of Obama with another Holocaust is running rampant in Republican Jewish circles. Rabbi Brad Hershfield calls it “a political sickness taking root in the Jewish community, one which threatens the memory of the Holocaust, the integrity of the Jewish people, and the future of this country.”
Even Abe Foxman of the ADL has come out against the GOP’s scare tactic: “We hope that the signatories of this letter and those responsible for its dissemination will repudiate its message and apologize to both the candidate and the Jewish community.”
So far, no apology to the candidate has been forthcoming.