Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Palin sat and listened to an anti-semitic sermon two weeks ago. Did she condemn it?

Politico's Ben Smith suggests that Sarah Palin's nomination may have helped Barack Obama with Jewish voters, and then raises a very troubling comment made just two weeks ago, on August 17 in a sermon at Sarah Palin's church.

The transcript of the sermon is here.

Pastor Larry Kroon, who has been Palin's pastor since she and her family joined the Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, introduced David Brickner, the national director of a group called Jews for Jesus. Brickner then gave a sermon, which included an assertion that terrorist attacks in Israel are God's judgement against Jews for not accepting Jesus Christ as their God. Brickner said at one point,

"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When Isaac [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it."

Also in the Politico article, we see this snippet:

Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against attributing Brickner’s views to her.

Now I agree that what someone else says in church are their words and don't necessarily reflect the views of people sitting in the pews (though that hardly dissuaded the right from trying to suggest that Jeremiah Wright's sermons reflect Barack Obama's views.)

But it is fair to ask, since we have the word of her own pastor that she was present in church two weeks ago, whether this reflects her own view of the reason why there is terrorism in Israel. Barack Obama has been very clear in laying out which statements by Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger he disagrees with, so it is time to ask Sarah Palin to do likewise.

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