Israel Matzav: Farrakhan's Candidate

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Farrakhan's Candidate

I feel like I've been duped. Last week, I read an article in the Washington Post about a Democratic candidate for Congress in Minnesota named Keith Ellison, who is attempting to become the first Muslim elected to Congress. The article admitted that Ellison had been a member of Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitic Nation of Islam, but said, that Ellison

apologized for failing to "adequately scrutinize the positions" of Farrakhan and other Nation of Islam leaders. "They were and are anti-Semitic, and I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did."

The article also noted that

Based on such assurances, Jewish Democratic activists have rallied around Ellison. Samuel and Sylvia Kaplan, a Minneapolis couple who are influential fundraisers, said he reminds them of the late senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.). Phyllis Kahn, a fellow Democrat in the state legislature, said it is "inconceivable that he could have ever been an anti-Semite."

Mordecai Specktor, editor and publisher of the American Jewish World, Minnesota's Jewish weekly, strongly endorsed Ellison in a Sept. 1 editorial. "His association with the Million Man March -- there are some people in the Jewish community who cannot forgive him for that," Specktor said. "I decided that he had a sincere change of heart and mind."

Living in Israel and having little or not familiarity with Minneapolis or its Jewish community (I knew a young woman there from youth group growing up, but have never set foot in the State of Minnesota), I took its assertions at face value and did not mention the WaPo article on this blog.

This evening, I saw this article at FrontPage, which gives a far different perspective on Ellison-Hakim (his Muslim name - he dropped the Hakim part for the election). Here are some excerpts (Hat Tip: The American Thinker - make sure to read their article on him too):

Voters in the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party (DFL), the Minnesota state affiliate of the national Democratic Party, elected Keith Ellison Hakim as their candidate to replace Minneapolis’s outgoing 14-term DFL Congressman Martin Sabo in the 5th Congressional District. “Encompassing Minneapolis and its near suburbs, the Fifth is the state's most liberal urban district and the DFL's greatest stronghold,” writes the Minneapolis St. Paul City Pages. Rejecting three other well-funded and highly qualified DFL candidates, the DFL endorsed Ellison, who has dropped his Islamic name, Hakim, for the race.

The DFL is now handing its “greatest stronghold” over to a candidate with long ties to Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic Nation of Islam and who has already accrued at least an estimated $20,000-$35,000 in funding from the terrorist-connected Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), including the maximum personal donation from CAIR chief Nihad Awad.

Ellison calls for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and the impeachment of President Bush. He constantly compares himself to the late ultra-leftist Senator Paul Wellstone who was Jewish. If elected, he would be the first Muslim member of Congress – and the first Muslim radical.

In response to Ellison’s September 12 primary victory, his Republican opponent, Business professor Alan Fine has called Ellison, “an embarrassment to our district [and] our state.”

Information about Ellison’s relationship with Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam is being mostly kept out of Democrat-leaning Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Ellison’s campaign biography says obliquely, “I am inspired by the Qur'an's message of an encompassing divine love, and a deep faith guides my life every day…I was raised Catholic and later became a Muslim while attending Wayne State University.”

Without the work of bloggers from Minnesota Democrats Exposed and PowerLine Ellison might still be under the radar. A June 3, 2006, article in the Star Tribune claims merely, “Ellison said that when he had ties to the Nation of Islam for about 18 months in the mid-1990s.” Minnesota Public Radio tells listeners: “he hasn't had any involvement with the group since that time and has never been a member of the organization.”

A CBS report states: “A Detroit native, Ellison grew up in a Catholic household before converting to Islam as a 19-year-old student at Wayne State University, long a hotbed of black activism…he was inspired by reading ‘The Autobiography of Malcolm X,’ and by friendships with fellow students who were practicing the faith.”

Even the useful idiots of American Jewish World, a local Jewish community newspaper gave a key endorsement to Ellison claiming, “In Ellison, we have a moderate Muslim who extends his hand in friendship to the Jewish community and supports the security of the State of Israel. He is a person with a vision of a more humane and equitable society.”

The record shows this to be an outrageous lie.

If you read the whole thing, you will walk away, as I did, with the impression that this guy is the second coming of Cynthia McKinney. Read the whole thing - especially if you vote in Minnesota. This is the bottom line:

On November 7, Minnesota’s most left-wing congressional district will choose between an anti-Semitic Democrat and a Jewish Republican. Will Minnesota Democrats let their hunger to impeach Bush and surrender in Iraq lead them to vote for a racist fascist?

I hope that at least the Jewish Democrats will vote for the Jewish Republican lawyer.