Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice
Dear Editor:
I was interested in seeing how the Heritage would cover the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Would the stories on the week of the Senate hearings address all the incriminating evidence being presented? Would articles highlight the memorable job Rep. Jaimie Raskin, a Jew who had just lost his son to suicide, did in overseeing the trial? Would articles cover how the events on January 6, 2021, were repugnant without justifying them as the paper had in the previous issue? Would the Heritage opine that what happened on that horrible day were at least admittedly in part a result of Trump’s claims of a rigged election, in part a result of his speech before rioters marched on the Capitol? Would the paper at least hint that the riots that followed Trump’s rant may have ended in the assassination of the vice president and other members of the Congress and the death of staff? Would the Heritage view with horror the death of seven people that day?
Instead, when I opened up my mailbox on February 12, your headline article was “Trump tapped for Nobel Peace Prize” by an Jaak Madison, an Estonian member of the European Parliament. The idea that Trump should be nominated following the riots is abhorrent. And if Heritage had researched the person who nominated the 45th president, they would have found that Madison had promoted “positive aspects” of Nazi Germany - his explanation being that pushing people to camps was wrong,” but the unemployment rate “was low.” He also stated there were positive aspects of the Holocaust. In addition, Madison is a member of the EKRE Party, which Fox News stated has been considered by some to have Fascist-Neo-Nazi sympathies similar to many other flourishing nationalist parties in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.” The Simon Wiesenthal described a 2014 “Blue Awaking” youth march organized by EKRE as “Nuremberg-esque” and likened the ideology of the participants to that of the Estonian Nazi collaborators.
I was also ashamed and embarrassed that a paper that is called Florida JEWISH News refused to cover honestly what will be one of the most important stories of this year, if not in American history. Over the past year, I have seen more clearly that the Heritage does not represent all the Jews of Central Florida but the small percentage of Republicans who voted for Trump and the even smaller percent who still support him. Considering that 76 percent of American Jews voted for Biden, your focus is embarrassingly narrow. Yes, there are the occasional letters to the editor that reflect another view, but article after article overwhelmingly supports a president and administration who will go down in history as the worst in our history.
The combination of the lack of coverage of the trials and the coverage of the Nobel Peace Prize nomination is a “shanda,” a shame and embarrassment for your paper.
Marilyn Shapiro
Kissimmee, Fla.
Editors note: Heritage couldn’t run any articles about Jamie Raskin because there were no articles about Raskin and the impeachment hearings in our news feeds when we came to deadline. In fact, there were no articles about the impeachment, with the exception of the article we ran on Schoen’s hand on head.
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