Six council members have just issued a statement denouncing Brooklyn Councilman Charles Barron for likening Gaza to a ''concentration death camp.''
"Councilmember Barron ought to take a tour of Auschwitz before he has the audacity to invoke the term 'concentration death camps,''' the statement reads. "The slaughter of innocents, including women and children, in a systemized and barbaric way cannot be compared to a people defending themselves from terrorism.''
The scathing reaction to Barron's comments, as reported in the Daily Politics, was put together by Brooklyn Councilman Lewis Fidler and endorsed by Mike Nelson and David Greenfield, both also of Brooklyn, Jessica Lappin of Manhattan, Mark Weprin of Queens and G. Oliver Koppell of the Bronx. Fidler noted that with more time, more Council members would have joined in repudiating Barron's words.
''As a general policy at the Council, most of us agree not to respond to Council Member Barron's often outrageous remarks so as not to provide him with the attention he seeks. We reserve those replied when the comments are so ugly that failing to respond becomes a matter of conscience. This is one of those moments.''
The statement goes on to say that Israel has shipped more food and medicine into Gaza this past year than any country in the world, and had offered safe passage to the ships in the flotilla upon inspection. Those on board turned it down and ''one must ask the question why?'' the statement poses.
Here's more:
''I wonder whether Councilmember Barron would support the US Coast Guard if they stopped a ship with Al Qaeda's flag from floating up Spring Creek into his East New York district. What's the difference?
''Finally, Councilmember Barron owes every Holocaust survivor an apology for his utterly insensitive remark. Clearly, the city's Holocaust education curriculum was put into place too late to educate Councilmember Barron. Nonetheless, ignorance is no excuse for gross insensitivity. I am sure the Holocaust survivors who live in Councilmember Barron's Starrett City community, and the death camp liberators who live throughout his district, are appropriately horrified by his remarks. And well they should be. He should be ashamed of himself.''
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2010/06/six-councilmembers-condemn-bar.html