Lenora Fulani believes that the Jews “had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism to function as mass murderers of people of color in order to keep it.” That quote is from a report, issued in 1995, by the Anti-Defamation League. It’s such a famous – or infamous – quote that people have remembered it for a decade now. And on Wednesday, when Ms. Fulani appeared on “The Road to City Hall” on New York One, she was gamely asked whether she still defended what she said.

Ms. Fulani, who is one of the leaders of the Independence Party, claimed she couldn’t remember making this most famous of all her utterances but went on to defend it anyhow. Quoth she: “What I’m saying is that as a leftist and as a progressive, many people have been concerned about the role of the state of Israel relative to the Palestinian people, the fight.” She added: “I’ve supported a two-state solution. I’m a leftist. I’m a progressive. I’m not an anti-Semite. And that quote, in my opinion, isn’t anti-Semitic; it’s raising issues that I think need to be explored.”

This raised enough eyebrows that when Mayor Bloomberg made an appearance at City Hall yesterday he was asked about Ms. Fulani’s remarks. Talk about your slow pitch. But instead of answering, the mayor dodged the question. “I didn’t hear her, so I have no comment on it,” he began. Pressed by reporters to say whether he thought that saying Jews sell their souls for Israel was anti-Semitic, the mayor said: “I don’t know what she is referring to. You’ll have to ask her.”

No doubt Mr. Bloomberg has a weather eye out for the fact that, if he is going to be re-elected in November, he may, as he did last time, need the Independence line on the ballot. Late in the day, the Bloomberg campaign was more specific. “The Mayor strongly disagrees with Dr. Fulani’s statements, as would the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who vote on the Independence Party line,” Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign manager, Kevin Sheekey, said, which was pretty good until he added: “The Independence Party is the voice of the growing centrist movement in New York politics, which is why centrist Democrats like Senator Schumer, Attorney General Spitzer, and Council Education Chair Eva Moskowitz have taken that line in recent years.”

We’ll see whether Mr. Schumer or Ms. Moskowitz or General Spitzer can think of a more forthright way to address Ms. Fulani’s sentiments in respect of how the Jews have sold their souls in support of the Jewish state. We could think of all sorts of ways; the mayor is a smart and decent man, no doubt he can think of better ways, too, to address what Ms. Fulani is putting out. Certainly the sentiments Ms. Fulani is pushing are not the sort of thing the mayor, or any mayoral candidate, can dodge without people starting to mutter about what price he has paid, beyond the millions he has already spent, to get the mayoralty he has wanted so much.