The Washington secretary of state’s office ran a congressional candidate’s statement containing the phrase “globalize the intifada” on its official voter guide even though the elections department of King County, Wash., removed those words from its printed pamphlet and flagged the violent language for the state, the county told JNS.
“At King County Elections, we did review Mr. Blomstrom’s statement and found that it violated King County’s rules for statements,” Halei Watkins, communications manager for the county department, told JNS of David Blomstrom’s statement.
“Because of this, our team asked Mr. Blomstrom to revise, and in the printed Local Voters’ Pamphlet provided by King County Elections, the reference to the opponent and the line referencing ‘intifada’ have been removed,” she said.
The language remains in the state’s official guide.
Blomstrom, who is running to unseat Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), referenced the “Jewarchy” and ended his statement with, “From the river to the sea, let’s globalize the intifada.”
Watkins told JNS that the county department “voiced our concern to the secretary of state’s office over the line referencing ‘intifada’ during our review process back in May, as well.”
“We do not have the authority to determine what the state provides in their voter guide,” she said. “As with all state and congressional candidates, statements are linked to via the King County website but live and are managed on the state’s site.”
Helen Smith, a spokeswomans for the Washington secretary of state, told JNS that “candidate statements are printed as submitted.”
“Under state law, our office does not have the legal authority to alter candidate statements without a court order,” she told JNS. “Under Washington law, candidates are responsible for the content of their candidate statements, which appear in the voters’ pamphlet. The secretary of state has no authority to unilaterally reject a candidate statement.”
The secretary can petition a court “to edit or delete a candidate statement if the content is ‘obscene’ or ‘otherwise prohibited by law from distribution through the mail,’” Smith told JNS.
Robert Spitzer, international president of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS that “as a Jewish leader and longtime resident of the state of Washington, it’s appalling that the state would permit that sort of incitement to violence against American Jews masquerading as political speech in a state publication.”
“Looking at the horrible increase in antisemitic acts in the United States, including violent attacks against Jews unrelated to Israel, this is unacceptable,” he said. “The intifadas in Israel have been violent. Calling for its globalization has resulted in violence against Jews around the world.”
“I call on the Washington secretary of state to issue a retraction of that dangerous incitement in the voter guide,” Spitzer told JNS.
Regina Sassoon Friedland, director of the American Jewish Committee in Seattle, told JNS that “regardless of where it’s published, antisemitic language that celebrates globalizing the intifada should concern everyone.”
“We can defend free expression while also recognizing that words have consequences and can fuel real-world hostility, violence and worse,” she said. “Voters deserve to know what candidates believe, including when those beliefs include antisemitic rhetoric or calls that many understand as endorsing violence. Transparency is important in a democracy. At the same time, we should never become desensitized to language that dehumanizes Jews or appears to glorify and justify political violence.”
Gwen Kirkland, who is running as a Democrat in the same race, told JNS that Blomstrom, whom she called “the Nazi Blumpkin,” used “horrendous language.”
Kirkland, whose candidate statement refers to “genocidal corporations,” said that Blomstrom was taking advantage of what she described as an “opening left by the Democratic Party and its performative ‘opposition’ to this very real genocide and increasing antisemitism.”
She said that the solution to preventing people like Blomstrom from taking these positions is to “punish Israel and its leaders for the genocide being carried out.”
Kirkland also described Israel as an “ethno-supremacist project” and told JNS that Jayapal is “closer on policy in relation to this Nazi than to me, an anti-Zionist and democratic socialist.”
