Benyamin Korn: Jews have nothing to fear from Sarah Palin's religion

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Benyamin Korn, director of Jewish Americans for Sarah Palin, has an excellent op-ed in today's edition of the New York Sun. Mr. Korn exposes how the media's gross misquoting of Gov. Palin's "Christian Nation" remark. Some excerpts:

Governor Palin’s Kentucky speech, to a group known as the Women of Joy, is being claimed by her critics as proof that she is too Christian. But a careful look at the speech reveals, in fact, how close to Judaism and the Jewish people she is.

To judge by some accounts in the major news media, it sounds like she made a Bible-thumpin’, foot-stompin’ appeal to the unwashed fundamentalist masses.

[...]

Here’s the key sentence: “And then, you know, hearing any leader declare that America isn’t a Christian nation, and poking an ally like Israel in the eye, it’s mind-boggling to see some of our nation’s actions [in] recent days, but politics is truly a topic for another day.”

[...]

In her speech to the Women of Joy, Palin included a few quotes from the New Testament. But Jewish scripture figured much more prominently. She quoted twice from Psalms, as well from Proverbs and Malachi. She spoke to Piper about how Esther, an orphan, overcame steep odds and difficulties in order to save the Jewish people. And she took issue with President Obama’s policy of “poking our ally Israel in the eye.”

Fear-mongers with political agendas want to drive a wedge between Governor Palin and American Jewry. Sometimes they do it with quotations that leave out key sentences. Sometimes they do it with distorted depictions of her religious beliefs.

Jews have nothing to fear from Sarah’s Palin religion. But we have plenty to fear from those political leaders who not only have no interest in Esther or Proverbs, or Sarah, but who think that poking Israel in the eye makes for good foreign policy.

Read Benyamin Korn's unedited commentary at The Sun.

- JP