Israel Matzav

Florida DNC member resigns over anti-Israel emails

Evelyn Garcia, a member of the Democratic National Committee from Florida (left in the picture), has resigned after a collection of anti-Israel emails that she wrote were leaked to the media.

Garcia, a Haitian-American elected to the DNC in 2008, sent the emails in 2011, but they were first released by BizPacReview.com after being passed on to South Florida Democrats last week. The emails evince a vicious contempt for Israel and echo the propaganda and trite canards that usually mark those on the radical anti-Israel left.

In an email dated May 24, 2011 Garcia wrote: “Slavery was ended, apartheid was ended and so this occupation must end.”

Two months later, on July 26, Garcia wrote that “by supporting Israeli occupation with US foreign aid, we are all complicit and guilty of their crimes against humanity.

“Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust,” she continued, “and it’s about time this guilt trip was taken off their backs.”

It gets worse too. But what's really curious here is that whether or not Garcia is sorry for what she did seems to depend upon who is listening.

In her resignation letter to the DNC she wrote: “In passionately advocating my position supporting the rights of people I felt were being harmed, I used language that I now regret. The gist of the conversation had to do with my concern for innocent people being oppressed, but such support for the oppressed does not diminish my support for the good people of Israel.” Amazingly, she seemed to shift the blame for her comments, saying that her “private emails” had been released “by someone I believed was my friend.”

Garcia also emailed a statement to the Palm Beach Post on Friday, writing that her comments were “inappropriate and hurtful” and “ exactly the kind of ugly rhetoric that is not conducive to the overall atmosphere needed to create a prosperous peace.” She also apologized to “members of the Jewish faith whom I have worked with for years.”

Still, the controversy is showing no signs of abating, as some Florida democrats are being accused of knowing about the emails but sitting on them.

...

Despite sounding contrite in her resignation letter and statement to the Post, Garcia seemed less than repentant in an a statement on Mondoweiss.com, a website that claims to cover Israel from a “progressive Jewish perspective.”

Casting herself as the victim of an unjustified witch hunt, Garcia said she has received a “barrage of hate mail and threats…from places as far away from Palm Beach County as Oklahoma.” Garcia returned to a tone more reminiscent of the emails that got her into trouble in the first place: “Don’t our loyalty and patriotism belong first to our country–the United States of America? Or, did they [the Palm Beach County political action group that released the emails] really intend a conversation among the wider electorate of the extent to which U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing an illegal occupation by Israel? And, who says it’s an occupation and illegal? Well, let me count the ways: numerous United Nations resolutions, J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Presbyterian Church, CodePink, religious and political leaders and public opinion worldwide.”

Garcia is just another symbol of today's Democratic party. It's why I could never be a Democrat again.

Labels: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Leftist anti-Semitism, National Democratic Party, progressives

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:56 PM