She won't retract anti-Semitic line

NY Daily News/September 8, 2005
By David Saltonstall

Independence Party leader Lenora Fulani refused yesterday to renounce her comments that Jews are "mass murderers of people of color" - insisting that New York lacks the right "environment" to discuss issues related to Israel.

Fulani, whose party received $250,000 from Mayor Bloomberg last year, said in 1995 that Jews "do the dirtiest work of capitalism, to function as mass murderers of people of color," a reference to Israeli-Palestinian relations.

Asked again yesterday about the comments at a City Hall news conference about the party's support of Bloomberg - who was absent from the event - Fulani dodged the question.

"My political friends and advisers have told me that it is impossible to have a serious dialogue and discourse in this city at this time about those issues," she said. "So I am following their advice and not having it."

A supporter, the Rev. Charles Norris Sr., stepped up to blame "some of the media...that continues to harp on things that are in the past."

"Right, that environment," interjected Fulani.

The event touted the party's campaign to get voters to vote for the mayor on its ballot line. In 2001, Bloomberg got 59,000 votes on the party's line, more than his margin of victory.