Infamously, Councilman Paul Koretz trivialized the historical horrors of the Holocaust by analogizing Arizona’s anti-illegal alien law, SB 1070, to the “beginning of what went on in Nazi Germany.”
At last week’s Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association meeting a seemingly humbled Koretz told blogger Jay Beeber, “I learned something. But that was my gut, from-the-heart response. I probably wouldn’t say it again.”
This wave of introspection came after a very public rebuke from Rabbis Abraham Cooper and Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In a phone interview, Rabbi Hier told me Koretz’s analogy was “nonsense” and diminished the true horror of history’s darkest chapter while vilifying American citizens seeking relief from a legitimate problem. And Hier doesn’t even support SB 1070.
But Koretz’s humility seemed disingenuous to Beeber and that’s when he started digging. As reported on FreedomMinute.com:
On July 21, 2008, Paul Koretz, as head of the Western Region of the Jewish Labor Committee (created in 1934 in response to the rise of Nazism), appeared before the Pomona City Council to condemn Councilwoman Cristina Carrizosa for using the term “Gestapo” to describe a Pomona PD Cinco De Mayo DUI checkpoint.
Koretz was so offended he drove to Pomona to lecture Carrizosa. “This is a blood-curling analogy,” said the author of his own blood-curling analogy. “I would ask you to consider even some sensitivity training.”
In July 2008 Paul Koretz objected to a city council member accusing the local police of Gestapo tactics in a perceived targeting of Hispanics, but in May 2010 he made the same accusation against Arizona. Did Koretz forget his previous righteous indignation or was he just rolling the dice that nobody would remember his hypocrisy?
When I asked Koretz to square the obvious contradiction I received this email:
“I understand that a supporter of the Arizona anti-immigrant laws has complained that my comments in connection with a Pomona incident were somehow inconsistent with my comments in City Council opposing the Arizona anti-immigrant laws. I think the two situations are different. Still, many people took my comments the wrong way and not as intended. Even some of my friends have disagreed with me. In 20-20 hindsight, I wouldn’t have said what I said.”
How are these situations different? Which statement “in 20-20 hindsight” does he wish he had not said? Was it his outrage at the Nazi analogy by the Pomona councilwoman? Or his own Nazi analogy made as a councilman in Los Angeles? For the record, “People” didn’t take Koretz’s slander “the wrong way,” they called him on it.
Koretz’s humility act was just that, an act. Beeber uncovered the truth: Koretz will say anything to anybody. By employing situational ethics to the Holocaust, Councilman Koretz has forfeited any claim on the public trust.
Doug McIntyre’s column appears in the Los Angeles Daily New on Wednesdays and Sundays. You can reach him at dncolumnist@dailynews.com.
