NOVANEWS
It’s better not to ask questionsHere’s a lesson in democracy. In preparation for the upcoming November electiona group of local activists sent a questionnaire to the 85 candidates from their countyrunning for seats in the state legislature. They hoped the information they’d receivewould encourage debate and allow voters to make better decisions at the ballot box.What did they get instead? They got slammed. Their survey was called “abhorrentand repulsive,” and the newspaper that brought the charges against them ignoredtheir calls for a reasonable policy debate and did not allow them to respond with aslittle as a letter to the editor.The candidate survey from Peace Action Montgomery came under attack for a singlequestion in it, that – you guessed it – addressed the Israeli occupation.Del. BenjaminKramer (D-Montgomery), one of the candidates receiving the survey, issued a public lettercalling the questionnaire “anti-Semitic” and promising to encourage fellow candidates to ignore it.Anti-Semitic? You be the judge.Question 5 is composed of only three sentences. The first two are statements of facts:
Ask Ron Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council ofGreater Washington, who described the questionnaire by Peace Action Montgomeryas “abhorrent and repulsive.” The JCRC holds its own set of candidate forums and dis-tributes questionnaires to inform its members. But apparently others cannot do asmuch.This whole controversy erupted on the front page of the local Washington JewishWeek (“Parsing the D-word”). Peace Action Montgomery was quoted in the D-article,but its letter to the editor following the publication of the slander was never printed.In that letter, Peace Action Montgomery called for an open, reasonable debate on themerits of BDS, pro and con. The group even invited the paper that slandered it toco-moderate the debate. But the Washington Jewish Week has chosen to ignore theinvitation altogether. What are they so afraid of?We print here what the Washington Jewish week would not publish:
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