Stop taking money from the Israel Lobby

Representative Antonio Delgado certainly has Israel as his friend. The Israel Lobby gave him a free trip to Israel at the start of this first term, and has been very kind to him ever since. The website Open Secrets has Rep. Delgado receiving $29,698 from the Lobby for 2020. 

Rep. Delgado's constituents haven't been so lucky. Four local groups (Jewish Voice for Peace - HV, Middle East Crisis, Veterans For Peace, and Women in Black - New Paltz) have been asking for a meeting with him for the last two years. According to his Junior Legislative Assistant, Matthew Gerson, Rep. Delgado has just been too busy to talk about Palestinian rights. Matthew didn't seem particularly interested either, but that might have been because he interned at the Jewish People Policy Institute, a private, non-profit in Israel that promotes the apartheid state. 

Rep. Delgado has been similarly effective in avoiding questions about Palestine in town hall Zoom meetings. He has refused to cosponsor HR 2407, the bill that protects the rights of Palestinian children held in Israeli jails. He never responded to a petition with 2,300 signatures urging him to meet with the four groups. There were numerous letters to the editor and two full page newspaper ads, and still our representative has never let the word "Palestine" slip from between his lips. 

Isn't it time for all his constituents to simply ask him to stop taking money from the Israel Lobby? We voted for Rep. Delgado to represent us, not Israel.

Fred Nagel

NPR "progressive except for Palestine"

On NPR's Morning Edition (2/3/21), a guest from the Anti Defamation League was introduced to comment on racism in America. The ADF is probably the very last organization that should be given airtime to discuss racial or religious hatreds. 

From its beginning tracking neo-Nazis and other right wing groups, the ADF has devolved into attacking what it calls "Arab propaganda" on university campuses, and branding any criticism of Israel as antisemitic.

And then there is the spying the ADF has done on the ACLU, Greenpeace, NAACP, and United Farm Workers. In addition, the ADL was instrumental in opposing the building of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center and the proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan. 

The ADF used its links to the NYPD to insert its racist views into police training by the showing of "The Third Jihad," a virulently Islamophobic film, to 1,500 of its officers. 

NPR decision to use the ADL to comment on racial extremism in American is typical of what is now referred to as PEP, or "progressive except for Palestine." 

Fred Nagel