Sarah Palin and Israel

By Thomas Lifson

Supporters of Israel, already smarting from Barack Obama's associations with Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi, and Zbigniew Brzezinski (among others), are beginning to breathe sighs of relief about Sarah Palin's joining John McCain on the GOP ticket. She has been smeared as a Pat Buchannanite, to which the McCain campaign has responded:

Of the many smears against Governor Palin now being circulated by left-wing bloggers and amplified by the national media, only one seems to have been directly picked up by the Obama campaign and its surrogates--that Governor Palin was once a supporter of Pat Buchanan, and that she is therefore a Nazi sympathizer.

The first attack came from Obama surrogate Rep. Robert Wexler, the co-chair of Obama's campaign in Florida. Wexler, badly mangling his facts, accused Governor Palin of supporting Pat Buchanan in the 2000 Alaska primary. Based on this he asserted that Governor Palin had "aligned herself with a leading anti-Israel voice in American politics," while finding space to invoke the name of Adolph Hitler and the phrase "Nazi sympathizer." Only it wasn't true--Palin was an official on the Forbes campaign in 2000. Wexler never apologized or retracted his statement.

Then an official Obama spokesman picked up the charge in a statement to the Miami Herald:

"Palin was a supporter of [MSNBC analyst] Pat Buchanan, a right-winger or as many Jews call him: a Nazi sympathizer,'' Obama spokesman Mark Bubriski wrote in an email.

Governor Palin has never supported Pat Buchanan and every responsible magazine or blog that made the charge has since corrected the record, leaving only the Obama campaign peddling this smear. How is it that the media, so committed to fighting the smears against the Obama campaign, is more than happy to allow this one to fester?

Would a Pat Buchannan supporter have a tiny Israeli flag in her office?

Eagle-eyed Doug Ross spotted an Israeli flag in her office, in a photo published last February by an Alaska blog titled, Hike of the Week Urban Hike with Sarah Palin

Gov. Palin's office

It is on the right hand side, next to the window:

Israpundit spotted the same Israeli flag in a video shot in her office, and what looks like a little lapel pin, too. There is actually a video available in Israpundit, but here is a still photo with helpful arrows added:

Palin4Israel

Note to moonbats: Governor Palin has full-size American and Alaskan flags in floor stands. Don't start with the Israel-first nonsense. She is a woman who appears to understand the stakes and supports Israel because it is good for America and good for the world.

Well what about Joe Biden? Although formerly identified as a friend of Israel, Biden has recently given some disturbing signs, the Begin Center reports.

Hat tip: Mark Roth, Ed Lasky