Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Letters

Libeling Begin

In trying to compare Sarah Palin to Menachem Begin, Benyamin Korn can’t be serious (“Breaking Begin, but Not Palin,” January 28).

Did Governor Palin ever serve in a Siberian prison? Did she ever fight for her country’s freedom from foreign rule? Did she ever serve in the opposition for several decades? Did she ever do anything remotely comparable to Begin’s taking out Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant in 1981?

Alas, Korn does appear to be serious in his ludicrous comparison. And he seems to believe that Palin, who has her own reality show and appears as a regular commentator on Fox, is “mocked and pilloried by a shameless and unscrupulous horde of media predators.”

“Shameless” and “unscrupulous” are strong words but, of course, Korn provides no examples. Korn also fails to mention that Palin has been criticized even by some noted conservatives. And most important of all, he omits the inconvenient fact that poll after poll reveals that a significant majority of Americans do not believe that Palin is qualified to be president.

Korn would do well to pay a little less attention to that common right-wing scapegoat, the media, and a little more attention to Palin’s own razor-thin record and questionable utterances — and to have a little more regard for appropriate historical and political analogies.

David Szonyi
Bloomington, Ind.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.