Middle East Remarks Shadow Fulani’s Run Announcement

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The New York Sun

A longtime Independence Party activist is preparing a run for office by renouncing remarks she made that triggered accusations of racism and anti-Semitism.

Independence Party leader, Lenora Fulani, said yesterday that “certain remarks” she wrote in 1989, which have dogged her in recent years, were “excessive” and that she is “repudiating” them.

She sought to distance herself from the earlier statements while announcing that she is forming an exploratory committee to decide whether to run for a citywide office in 2009.

In 1989, Ms. Fulani wrote that Jews “function as mass murderers of people of color” and “Jews had to sell their souls to acquire Israel.”

Yesterday, Ms. Fulani, 57, said that her opinions have changed. “I am repudiating my remarks of 18 years ago. They do not express my feelings nor deep concerns about the situation in the Middle East,” she said, standing outside City Hall with other Independence Party activists and supporters.

Ms. Fulani said she does not view Israel as an aggressor and considers conflict in the Middle East as “tragedy for Jew and Arab alike.” When asked if she thinks her earlier statements were anti-Semitic, Ms. Fulani said she is not an anti-Semite.

The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, said he doesn’t consider Ms. Fulani’s statement to be a true renunciation.

“I think it’s a beginning,” he said. “This is not an apology. This is not her coming to grips” with anti-Semitism.

He said that although her statements yesterday were politically motivated, “there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I don’t care how people come to their epiphany as long as they come to their epiphany,” he said.

Mayor Bloomberg dodged questions about whether Ms. Fulani would make a good successor. He has in the past distanced himself from her remarks, but also refused to drop support from the Independence Party.

His relationship with the party has been long been tricky for him to explain, but has provided him with a third-party ballot line in both of his elections.

“I’m not taking any position on who should be mayor or supporting anybody at the moment,” he said.

A Democratic political consultant, Henry Sheinkopf, said Ms. Fulani’s effort to distance herself from her past remarks would not change the public’s perception of her.

“What you have is a politically discredited person,” he said. “It’s not going to work.”


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