Former Presidential Candidate Ron Paul’s Disdain for Jews and Israel

This column outlines how Ron Paul is anti-Semitic. The term "anti-Semitism" was coined by non-Jews in the late 19th century as a more scientific-sounding term for Judenhass ("Jew-hatred").

When Nazi anti-Semitism began to achieve mainstream legitimacy in Germany and Austria in the 1930s, it was not because Hitler, Goebbels and Goering were espousing it. Their repulsive views had been known for years. It was because non-Nazis -- especially prominent academics, politicians and artists -- were refusing to condemn anti-Semitism and those who espoused it.

As Henry David Thoreau said, "After the first blush of sin comes its indifference." It's important for all of us to not only take a stand for truth in policy, but also for truth in character.

Ron Paul's Hatred of Jews

Ron Paul claims that racism is group-think, which he says he rejects. His supporters point to videos of Paul claiming that liberty requires him to look at everyone as an individual rather than collective groups of people.

It's true that libertarianism is supposed to be anti-racist. In fact, a segment of the libertarian movement never rallied around Mr. Paul's numerous failed presidential campaigns. Shikha Dalmia of Reason, a prominent libertarian publication, recently pleaded with Paul to stop associating his paleo-conservative brand of libertarianism with racism. Edward H. Crane, founder of the Cato Institute, called Paul's associations "abhorrent" and noted "the huge divide" in the libertarian movement.

Writes libertarian academic Steven Horwitz, "[T]hose of us who have been around the [libertarian] movement since the 1980s knew all about this stuff and knew that those newsletters would never go away ... The paleo strategy [of Paul] was a horrific mistake, both strategically and theoretically, though it apparently made some folks (such as Rockwell and Paul) pretty rich selling newsletters predicting the collapse of Western civilization at the hands of the blacks, gays, and multiculturalists."

However, the truth is that the modern libertarian movement has been hijacked by anti-Semites and other bigots with an anti-libertarian agenda. The "paleo" strategy discussed above originates from paleo-conservatism, a distinct philosophy far different than libertarianism. Paleo-conservatives believe in tradition, limited government, civil society, anti-colonialism and strongly favor religious and "Western" identity. Paleo-conservative intellectual leaders including Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis, and Joseph Sobran are known anti-Semites.

Thus, it's more appropriate to call Ron Paul a paleo-conservative than a libertarian, since many libertarian intellectual leaders wish to disassociate with him and since Paul's views are more closely represented by paleo-conservatism, which has an intellectual tradition of being "anti-Jewish conservatism".

Putting all labels aside, it is clear Mr. Paul actively dislikes Jews. Ignore the fact that the Republican Jewish Coalition has twice excluded Ron Paul from their Republican Party presidential debates. And ignore the fact that the leader of "Jews for Ron Paul" in his 2008 campaign, Jim Christian Perry, falsely claimed to be Jewish and the Paul campaign accepted him as an official representative of the Jewish community.

Congressman Ron Paul has been the only politician praised by the Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying American Free Press publication for more than a decade. This publication was preceded by The Spotlight, which lent Congressman Paul its mailing list for decades. More on that below. The American Free Press is a "populist, nationalist" publication which routinely lies about Jews, Israel, the Holocaust, and black Americans. In 2007, radio personality Michael Medved wrote to the Ron Paul campaign and asked why Ron Paul's column was being featured in this disgusting publication. Unfortunately Mr. Medved never received a response from the Paul campaign. The same publication which denies the Holocaust and campaigns against blacks and Jews also features Congressman Paul. Here is a sample of the typical filth in the AFP publication:

In 2011, The New York Times reported on how the publication, which markets books like "The Invention of the Jewish People" and "March of the Titans: A History of the White Race," was urging its subscribers to help send hundreds of copies of Ron Paul's collected speeches to voters in New Hampshire. The book, it promised, will 'Help Dr. Ron Paul Win the G.O.P. Nomination in 2012!'"

Ron Paul has been endorsed by every notable Jew-hater across the globe, ranging from David Duke to Mel Gibson's late anti-Semitic father Hutten Gibson. Other Ron Paul friends include known anti-Semites Willis Carto and Bill White. It's no surprise, then, that the Ron Paul racist newsletters praise many of these "white power" bigots.

Continues the New York Times, "Mr. Paul formed an alliance with Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard and together they published the Rothbard-Rockwell Report beginning in 1990. Mr. Rothbard called for a 'Right Wing Populism', suggesting that the campaign for governor of Louisiana by David Duke, the founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, was a model for 'paleo-libertarianism'. He noted, 'It is fascinating that there was nothing in Duke's current program or campaign that could not also be embraced by paleo-conservatives or paleo-libertarians'. Arguing that too many libertarians were embracing a misplaced egalitarianism, Mr. Rockwell wrote in Liberty Magazine, 'There is nothing wrong with blacks preferring the 'black thing'. But paleolibertarians would say the same about whites preferring the 'white thing' or Asians the 'Asian thing'."

Lew Rockwell was listed in business filings as a director of Ron Paul & Associates from its founding in 1984 through its dissolution in 2001, and was a paid Paul campaign consultant through at least 2002, according to federal campaign records.

Paul personally benefited not only from his own racist newsletters, but also from the mailing lists of white supremacist publications such as The Spotlight, the anti-Jewish tabloid run by Holocaust denier Willis Carto that was the predecessor of the publication described above, The American Free Press. Ed Crane, the founder of the Cato Institute, told news publications that Ron Paul told him (Crane) that he (Paul) profited the most from this anti-Semitic mailing list. Additionally, Reason Magazine points out that Paul made $940,000 annually in the period before June of 1993 on his newsletter "The Ron Paul Political Report".

Paul's main employees at the time (1993) were his wife Carol, his daughter (Mrs. Pyeatt), and Lew Rockwell. The $940,000 is only a total for the previous period. It does not cover the rest of the money raised from Ron Paul newsletters, which began in the late 1970s and continued up to the mid-1990s. Clearly millions of dollars were made by the Paul family through these racist and anti-Jewish publications.

Sadly, several official representatives from Ron Paul's 2008 campaign have since been exposed as KKK supporters. A 2008 Tennessee delegate for Mr. Paul was Will Williams, southern contact for the National Alliance Party, the largest neo-Nazi organization in the United States. Midland County, Michigan coordinator for the Ron Paul 2008 campaign, Randy Gray, was also a longstanding vocal organizer for the Knight's Party faction of the KKK. The anti-Semite who opened fire on the Holocaust Museum several years ago was a Paul supporter, as was the man who recently vowed to kill President Obama.

More recently, in December, 2011 and January, 2012, two New Jersey college students who were campaigning for Ron Paul's 2012 campaign were implicated in a string of attacks on Jewish synagogues. Anthony Graziano and Aakash Dalal are charged with throwing firebombs at the rabbis residence at Congregation Beth El in Rutherford, New Jersey. Graziano is charged with nine counts of attempted murder for the Rutherford attack, which Dalal is accused of orchestrating. The incidents include anti-Semitic graffiti spray-painted on synagogues in Maywood and Hackensack, and concluded with a planned attack on the Jewish Community Center of Paramus (New Jersey).

On the day of Graziano's arrest, a letter to the editor signed by Aakash Dalal was published on the website of the Rutgers student newspaper, The Daily Targum, defending Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and attacking the Federal Reserve. It identified Dalal as a sophomore majoring in chemistry and biological sciences. Dalal was not actually at the attack Graziano carried out because he was in New Hampshire campaigning for Ron Paul.

Ron Paul has never once apologized to the Jewish community for the actions of his supporters. He has also never acknowledged that the above events occurred.

Perhaps the criminals listed above found Mr. Paul during a one of his appearances on white supremacist radio or at the white supremacist meetings he would attend or send his staff to attend in Arlington, Virginia.

Mr. Paul has also met -- on a regular basis -- with leaders of the American Third Position Party (A3P), engaged in conference calls with their board of directors and attempted to connect A3P members to the Paul campaign. The A3P is a political party dedicated to white supremacy. The A3P webmaster, Jamie Kelso, is a white supremacist who hosts The Jamie Kelso Show on the Voice of Reason Broadcast Network. Kelso joined the neo-Nazi group National Alliance in 2003. He then spent two years living in former Klan leader David Duke's house while working as his personal assistant, all the while serving as a moderator for hate web guru Don Black's forum, Stormfront. In 2007 and 2008, Kelso became an active devotee of Ron Paul. He traveled to eleven different cities during this time to see Paul speak. Kelso described Ron Paul rallies as "implicitly white" -- almost entirely white in composition, but not explicitly committed to any racial ideology or involved in discussions of race. "Let's appreciate this big audience that's overwhelmingly white. This is our audience, this is our public. These are the people. If we can't persuade these people of the rightness of our cause, then we're finished!" Kelso said.

In late 2007, the Paul presidential campaign accepted $500 from White Supremacist Don Black, a former Grand Wizard of the KKK who still operates the Stormfront.org website. Ron Paul absolutely refused to return the $500 donation.

Years earlier, in 1981, a lawyer tried to subpoena Ron Paul to testify in the trial of Don Black. Black was charged along with two other Klansmen with planning to violently overthrow the small Caribbean country of Dominica in what they called "Operation Red Dog." The group planned to create an Aryan paradise in Dominica and make money through casinos, cocaine and brothels. On the day the group of white supremacists were supposed to travel to Dominica, they were arrested by ATF agents and were found with over thirty automatic weapons, shotguns, rifles, handguns, dynamite, ammunition, a confederate flag and a Nazi flag.

The leader of the group, Michael Perdue, would plead guilty to planning the coup and turned state's evidence. Perdue would testify that several other people helped organize and fund the coup and that two Texas politicians were aware of the plan. Among those Perdue implicated were infamous white supremacist, David Duke, former Texas Governor, John Connally and Congressman Ron Paul, each of whom he claimed knew about the plot. A judge refused to subpoena Paul despite the fact that Perdue had claimed the Congressman was aware of the plot. Ron Paul has never made a statement denying knowledge of the plot despite the fact that he was implicated by Perdue and almost subpoenaed. Two of the people involved in the plot, Don Black and David Duke, have gone on to become two of the most prominent white supremacists of the modern era, and also two of Paul's most controversial supporters.

KKKers Don Black and Derek Black with Ron Paul. Smile!
In 2008, KKK Grand Wizard Don Black's then-19-year-old son Derek was elected to one of 11 seats on the Palm Beach County, Florida GOP Committee with 167 of 287 votes. Fortunately, the local Republican Party refused to seat him. The Blacks received their own photo with Mr. Paul.

In early 2012, Ron Paul's organization the Campaign for Liberty got into a pickle when it was discovered that they were promoting the fraudulent book "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" at their website. The book, which is entirely fabricated, outlines a "Jewish plan for achieving global domination". It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. Ron Paul's organization allowed one of its members, Clayton Douglas, who is on the Southern Poverty Law Center's "40 to Watch" list of radical right-wingers, to promote the book from 2008 to 2012. It was finally taken down earlier this year when it began to interfere with the Paul presidential campaign. Still, no apology was ever sent by Congressman Paul to the Jewish community.

On the subject of the Holocaust, Ron Paul admitted that he would not have deployed troops during World War II. In other words, he would have let Hitler rise without any action from the U.S. government.

Paul's statements made on Iranian television in January of 2009 were alarming, but telling: "To me, I look at it (Gaza) like a concentration camp and people are making homemade bombs and, uh, like they're the aggressors?" Could Paul have possibly found a more offensive and less accurate description to use? And to think that he made this statement on the state-run television network of Iran, whose leader denies the Holocaust and call for the annihilation of Israel.

The blame must be placed squarely on the person ultimately responsible: Ron Paul himself.

Like you, I thought Ron Paul was a champion of liberty. And he has done well spreading the message of constitutionally limited government and in the founding of the Tea Party. But his continued presence as the national spokesman for libertarian principles can't end soon enough.

Ron Paul's Disdain for Israel

Mr. Paul's characterization of himself as the most pro-Israel candidate for President of the United States in 2012 is absolutely false.

There are two elements to being pro-Israel. Paul supports one of the two elements, self-determination for Israel. He supports self-determination because he supports an "America first" foreign policy which advocates removing all U.S. involvement in world affairs. This is the same foreign policy that allowed the Holocaust to begin and thrive -- without the U.S. doing a thing to stop Hitler's rise to power in Europe. We know how that turned out: the murders of 6 million European Jews by the Nazis.

A second key element of being pro-Israel is wanting Israel to continue to exist and to succeed. Mr. Paul has never once expressed his desire for the success of the state of Israel or for the Jewish people living there. In fact, the opposite is true. In his speech on the floor of the House of Representatives from 2009, Mr. Paul says,

.... "The weapons being used to kill so many Palestinians are American weapons,
.... and American funds are being used for this (to kill Palestinians)."

And:

.... "Hamas was encouraged and started by Israel."

After blaming Israel for the creation of the terrorist group Hamas, he then goes on to say -- amazingly -- that the reason the Palestinians picked Hamas in an election is because of ... Israel and the United States.

Never once did he mention innocent Jews in Israel being killed by Palestinians.

Ron Paul claims to oppose all foreign aid, but he voted (House Roll Call) to continue U.S. payments of billions of dollars to the Palestinian Authority and refused to condemn a Hamas-led Palestinian state. Read the text of House Resolution 268, which he (along with 5 other members of Congress) opposed. This resolution reaffirmed Israel's right to exist and also affirmed support for the creation of a Palestinian state -- a two-state solution. It discusses how the U.S. provides $550 million annually in foreign aid to the Palestinians, which is predicated on them working for peace with Israel. But, but ... I thought Congressman Paul was an opponent of all foreign aid.

Ron Paul was also the only member of the U.S. House to vote against a 2005 resolution condemning Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call to "wipe Israel off the map" and a 2009 resolution expressing support for Iranian pro-democracy demonstrators. His apologists say Mr. Paul supports Israel based on his 2012 campaign statements supporting Israel. We all know how often candidates have trouble telling the truth to voters. Paul's actions are far different than his 2012 campaign rhetoric.

Finally, what did those pesky Ron Paul newsletters have to say about Israel? Rest assured, no nation outside of the U.S. was mentioned more in the newsletters than was Israel. Are Mr. Paul's own words enough to convince his dogmatic supporters that their leader is ardently opposed to Israel, Jews, and Israelis?

A statement from the Ron Paul newsletters prematurely blaming Israel for the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center is not enough to convince them. Ron Paul's newsletters back up his statement on the House floor in which he blames Israel for all of the problems in the Middle East: A 1987 newsletter termed Israel "an aggressive, national socialist state" and a 1990 newsletter cast aspersions on 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".

In his book "Liberty Defined" Paul made clear that he was sympathetic to sentiments expressed by President Jimmy Carter in his infamous 2007 volume "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." Specifically, on pages 317-319, Ron Paul made reference to "the apartheid conditions that Palestinians are subjected to." Apartheid refers to government-enforced segregation, yet minority groups have representation in the Israeli government and are allowed to participate in civilized society. Israel is the only place in the Middle East where women can live freely, where homosexuals have equal protection, and where religious freedom is permitted.

In 30 years, Congressman Paul did defend Israel one time -- in 1981, when he voted against condemning Israel when it attacked an Iraqi nuclear plant. He defended Israel's sovereignty, just as he defends sovereignty for Iran to develop nuclear weapons and for the Hamas-led Gaza that oppresses citizens on the regular.

A 2011 article from FrontPage Magazine sums it up nicely: "Ron Paul can say that he's a friend to Israel all he wants, but the published record stands. He views Israel as the catalyst for 9/11, defends Iran's innocence, parrots the anti-Israeli propaganda of Hamas, and upholds an anti-Zionist organization that views Israel as an oppressive, illegitimate state. That is not a friend."

Paul is mostly consistent on foreign policy, but a friend of Israel he is not. There is no statement that can be produced by Paul supporters in which Ron Paul proclaims that he wants Israel to continue to exist. This is because Paul supports Israeli sovereignty, but does not want Israel to succeed. If Israel succeeded, then Paul's enemies, the Jewish people, would also succeed. Therefore he is not only an opponent of Israel, but of all Jews worldwide.

Those of us who are pro-Israel want Israel to be sovereign and to thrive.

Common Paul Supporter Objections to the Above

Dr. Ron Paul is truly the defender of individual rights. He doesn't believe in the collective. Reply: If he doesn't believe in group-think, why is he labeling people in groups repeatedly? Several direct mail letters signed by Mr. Paul himself -- separate from the newsletters -- mention conspiracies about homosexuals and the coming "race war". Mr. Paul has also voted to curb illegal immigration repeatedly -- a vote against a collective group of people. His other least favored collective groups -- each targeted throughout his Congressional career -- are Jews, blacks, and homosexuals.

Just because you don't support foreign aid to Israel doesn't mean you don't like Jews. Reply: I think foreign aid should be eliminated, based on studies like this one -- which show that foreign aid actually hurts Israel long-term. Israel can defend itself and thrive without U.S. foreign aid. My arguments regarding Ron Paul's opposition to Israel have nothing to do with foreign aid, other than this tidbit: Paul claims to be an opponent of foreign aid, but he recently voted against a resolution to end foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. Why?

You are part of the establishment media trying to discredit Dr. Paul. You are a neo-con. Reply: I am a former Ron Paul supporter. I reject him because he has rejected me as an American Jewish voter. He also has rejected my family members, victims and survivors of the Holocaust, by refusing to return money from KKK members and Holocaust deniers.

But Dr. Paul was friends with Murray Rothbard and he was Jewish. Reply: We all have friends who think like we do. It helps us prop up our egos. Mr. Rothbard thought exactly like Mr. Paul and his views were just as controversial. Mr. Rothbard was not a religious Jew; he was a non-practicing atheist. Is it possible for someone who doesn't like Jews as a group to be friends with an individual born to Jewish parents? Yes, it is.

Spread the Truth to Republican Primary Voters

All of the above -- the nastiness, the fictional accounts, the hateful words -- is very hurtful. Something stronger than "I disavow" has been needed for many years. The Jewish community has waited. There has been nothing from Ron Paul to indicate he has a single regret about anything above.

This is a man who profited for many years from hurtful commentaries and hateful remarks. The money he received was tainted and should have been returned long ago. Now his message is tainted as well.

As a former Jewish supporter of Ron Paul, I know how few Jews support Mr. Paul. A study from Dr. Steven Windmeuller shows that just 26 out of 2,300 Jews would consider voting for Ron Paul.

Fortunately, Republican primary voters have twice rejected Paul for the Republican nomination.

Long after Ron Paul retires from Congress, let's remember that his contributions to American politics consisted of bitter anti-semitism, racism, bigotry, and a foreign policy dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.

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