**Update** We now have the full text of Sarah Palin’s speech on the IJN site, along with news stories about the rally (9/25).
Whether good or bad, hateful or praisworthy, Sarah Palin provokes strong viewpoints. One IJN.com user accused her of “getting off to a narrow-minded and mean-spirited start” while another urged all Jews to vote for the Obama/Biden ticket. Some have praised her family values and her pro-Israel stance.
We’re not sure what to think about her ability to undertake executive duties, her foreign policy (in)experience, her somewhat alienating personality. But one thing Rocky Mountain Jew appreciates about Sarah Palin is that she is a woman who speaks her mind.
Yesterday an email landed in our inbox, linking to a New York Sun article which quotes in full the text of Palin’s speech at a rally protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appearance at the UN. One caveat: Palin never delivered her address; the organizers of the event decided she was too political a figure. Well, we could have told them that at the start!
Her speech is articulate, pointed – and scathing. This is a woman unafraid to speak her mind. And if this article is anything to go by, the potential VP is a strong supporter of Israel and tough on those whom oppose her existence.
She minces no words when stating the potential of dangerous Ahmadinejad: “The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. Ahmadinejad denies that the Holocaust ever took place. He dreams of being an agent in a ‘Final Solution’ — the elimination of the Jewish people. He has called Israel a ‘stinking corpse’ that is ‘on its way to annihilation’.”
And that’s just one quote. The article reads as a blow-by-blow of Ahmadinejad’s offenses: anti-Semitism, female subjugation, religious extremism, pursuit of nuclear weapons. At the very least, Palin’s concise summarization provides a useful reference tool.
Her proposed solutions are focused, and some might say, unsurprisingly hawkish: economic sanctions, stabilizing Iraq to ensure a safer Middle East, ending dependency on foreign oil, and, quite simply, stating aloud that “he must be stopped.”
We realize Palin may quickly fall into (or is she already there?) the trap of black and white, simplistic thinking, a mindset that Rocky Mountain Jew does not find particularly helpful in analyzing complex issues.
But, on the other hand, it’s refreshing to listen to a politician who isn’t scared of the big bad guys.
