And he's a well-known
cracker hater, too - the heart and soul of the Democratic party.
(Weekly Standard) New York City councilman Charles Barron may be on his way to winning the Democratic nomination for Congress in New York's Eighth District, despite a history of racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-Israel rhetoric. Barron, who has earned the support of retiring congressman Edolphus Towns, would be representing a district with a sizable Jewish population.
In 2010, he told a reporter that in New York's Crown Heights neighborhood, Jews "only make up 20 percent of the population, but they've always walked these streets as if they owned them, and acted as if they are the only ones in the community that matter."
Barron once referred to a fellow city councilman, who is Jewish, as a "coward" whose actions on the council were to "satisfy the Jewish lobby."
Barron has also called into question the legitimate existence of Israel. "Where should we start [the discussion]?" he said at a Brooklyn church in 2010. "Should we start with the 1906 Zionist Convention, or in 1914, with the Balfour Declaration? With Menachem Begin, the terrorists, all the wars, you want to discuss Israel becoming a state in 1948 when it should not have? Who are the terrorists? You want to talk about the definition of terrorism? How do you define acts of piracy?"
And in 2009, Barron joined former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney on a Viva Palestine convoy to undermine the Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza, which he has compared to a "concentration death camp." Here's what Barron had to say in 2010 about the blockade:
Israel is out of control. They’re off the hook, they’re out of line; and Barack Obama has to stand strong and so do does Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, to say that this kind of aggressive, terroristic behavior and act of piracy will not be tolerated and the blockade should be lifted immediately, immediately. There’s too many children and women and innocent men of Gaza dying because you’re isolating them and not allowing anything in. It’s like having a concentration death camp. It’s horrible, and the whole world is and should be outraged.
The New York Daily News ran an editorial this weekend warning voters about Barron's views:
A relic of a bitter bygone era, Barron is a former Black Panther who plays a one-note trumpet of racial grievance.
He has called for training teachers in Ebonics. He has labeled housing development “a new wave of Jim Crowism.”
At a 2002 rally in support of reparations for slavery, he said: “I want to go up to the closest white person and say, ‘You can’t understand this, it’s a black thing’ and then slap him, just for my mental health.”
The Daily News instead endorsed Hakeem Jeffries in the June 26 primary. The seat is highly Democratic, and a win in the primary will be tantamount to a general election victory. The Daily News touts Jeffries "in the strongest terms," citing his legal work and his ability to bridge racial and cultural differences across the new diverse district.
