Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on December 7, 2019

JILL RICHARDSON, Dana Point

The recent Letter to the Editor from Phil Hoskins was fullof false claims and ended with an outright anti-Semitic attack against a publicofficial.

You, as the editor of the Dana Point Times, printed his letter in its entirety, withoutapparent redaction, making you complicit in propagating these false claims andhate speech.

I was very surprised to see that you, Lillian Boyd, are nowasking me, a reader, to do the fact-checking for you. Nonetheless, I have donethat, using reputable national news sources.

Claim from Hoskins: Rep. Mike Levin misrepresented himselfas a moderate Democrat.

Fact: Levin ran as a progressive candidate and won the 49thCongressional District.

Claim from Hoskins: Levin was smiling away, as if tosay, Thanks, suckers . . . when he showed support for the Green New Dealproposal.

Fact: Levin, a former environmental attorney, has madeclimate change his signature issue. His support of the Green New Deal is inline with this well-known policy stance of his.

Claim from Hoskins: That there might be Soros money in[Rep. Levins] background . . .

Fact: According to KPBS, Democrat and environmentalattorney Mike Levin has raised $1.7 million and spent $1.5 million. Levinsmoney is mostly coming from small donors around the country through a companycalled ActBlue, which fundraises for Democratic candidates.

However, this last claim of Mr. Hoskins is the most heinousone, an outright dog whistle, born of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory thatbackground money is coming from Soros and the Jewish wealthy, in some nefariousattempt to overthrow the world order. This is such a well-known fact that Ishould not even have to provide a source for it, but the Anti-Defamation Leaguehas addressed it, at length. This statement of Mr. Hoskins should never hadbeen published at all; I hold you, Ms. Boyd, personally liable for perpetuatingthis egregious attack on Levin and subjecting us readers to hate speech in ourlocal free newspaper

I am hereby challenging you and the staff the Dana Point Times to do better. You maynot be responsible for the claims made by the writers in the Letters to theEditor column, but you are responsible to prevent anti-Semitic hate speech andfalse claims from becoming an accepted part of the dialogue there.

Editors note: DanaPoint Times does not publish Letter to the Editor submissions containingpersonal attacks. Per the newspapers policy, the opinions of all readers arerespected and factual assertions within letters are vetted. Phil Hoskinsletter did not contain verbiage to be defined as hate speech. However, he didpose the possibility that Rep. Mike Levin had financial ties to George Soros,an investor associated with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Go here to see the original:
Letter to the Editor: To All the Decision-makers at Dana Point Times - Dana Point Times

Category: Anti-Defamation League
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