I have the impression today that there is now widespread knowledge of and discomfort with the special relationship inside the U.S. but an inability to express these views. Some evidence: The Palm Beach Post reports on a Democratic Party official in Florida who doesn’t like the occupation but sure learned to keep her mouth shut about it. Note that a Jewish party chair interpreted these criticisms as anti-Semitic, and the offending official then accepted that charge.

Ask yourself what would have happened to her if emails came out in which she had criticized the American presence in Afghanistan– would she have lost her post?

Evelyn Garcia, a member of the Democratic National Committee from Palm Beach County, resigned the post Monday after emails surfaced in which she sharply criticized Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Garcia, a candidate for the State House of Representatives from District 88, which includes parts of West Palm Beach and Riviera Beach, said she would continue to campaign for that seat. She apologized for her remarks and called them “ugly” and “hurtful.” … Some of the [emails] appear to have been written to a South Florida Congressional aide. “The continued Israeli occupation of Palestine is ugly on moral, ethical, religious and legal grounds,” Garcia said in an email dated July 26, 2011. “Palestinians had nothing to do with the holocaust and it is time that this guilt trip was taken off their backs…. And I deeply resent U.S. taxpayer funds being used to continue Israeli aggression.” In that same email, Garcia accused Israel of confiscating land and building illegal settlements in occupied territories, as well as “incursions that kill people, destroy civilian homes and infrastructure all over; mass concentration prison camps, etc.” …County Democratic Party Chairman Mark Alan Siegel accepted Garcia’s resignation Monday afternoon. He called the emails “grossly inappropriate.”… In a separate statement emailed later Friday to The Palm Beach Post, Garcia said: “My comments were not only inappropriate and hurtful, they are exactly the kind of ugly rhetoric that is not conducive to the overall atmosphere needed to create a prosperous peace and security for both parties. I apologize to anyone I offended and to my friends in the Democratic Party, in particular, members of the Jewish faith whom I have worked with for years.”



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