TUCSON, Arizona – Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin on Wednesday lashed out at critics for manufacturing "blood libel" with claims she bore some responsibility for the attempted assassination of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
In a video posted on her Facebook page, Palin rejected charges she has stoked political anger to dangerous levels and urged Americans to reject calls from those "seeking to muzzle dissent with shrill cries of imagined insults."
Palin has become a focus of attention in the days since Giffords’ shooting, criticized for an Internet graphic she used last year to target the 40-year-old lawmaker and 19 other Democrats over their support for U.S. health-care reform legislation.
The graphic placed rifle crosshairs over Giffords’ congressional district, imagery critics said was violent and had the potential to influence mentally unbalanced people.
In the seven minute and 40 second video, Palin said she has been appalled by the suggestions the crosshairs graphic – or any other political imagery or language – inspires the actions of people like accused Tucson gunman Jared Lee Loughner.
"Especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence that they purport to condemn," Palin said.
"Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state – not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies, not with those who proudly voted in the last election."
The term "blood libel" is a historically charged one, typically used in reference to false claims that Jews murder children of other religions so their blood can be used in holiday rituals.
"While the term ‘blood libel’ has become part of the English parlance to refer to someone being falsely accused, we wish that Palin had used another phrase, instead of one fraught with pain in Jewish history," said Abraham Foxman, president of the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights anti-semitism.
Palin’s statement came as President Barack Obama led a memorial service Wednesday evening in Tucson to honour the victims of the shooting rampage, which left six people dead and 14 wounded, including Giffords.
The third-term Democrat is in critical condition at University Medical Centre, recovering from a single gunshot wound to the head.
Outside the hospital, Arizonans weighed in Wednesday with their own views on Palin and political rhetoric. Among the handwritten signs of support and encouragement laid out on the hospital’s front lawn, two stood out.
"Peace not Crosshairs" the sign’s anonymous authors wrote, using the symbols for each to illustrate the point.
Steve Prendergast, a Tucson resident who came to pay his respect to the shooting victims, said it was unseemly for politicians to battle over blame while the community is still mourning.
"I think there needs to be an improvement in the way we talk about politics, definitely, but at the moment I think we should right now be focused on other things," said Prendergast. He cited a need to address flaws in the country’s mental-health system that might have allowed Loughner to fall through the cracks.
"I’d rather stay focused on helping the mentally impaired people rather than go off on a dialogue about who was saying what," Prendergast said.
Palin said she has spent the days since the shooting "praying for guidance" and reflecting on the tragedy.
"I listened at first puzzled then with concern and now with sadness to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event," she said. "(Former) president (Ronald) Reagan said we must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker."
There has been no evidence Loughner was influenced by the highly charged political atmosphere that defined last year’s health-care reform debate in the U.S., or the Nov. 2 midterm elections. He had contact with Giffords as early as 2007, predating the health-care debate, and had posted antigovernment ramblings on the Internet.
Republicans have noted that Democrats, on at least two occasions in the past decade, have also used targets to identify GOP lawmakers vulnerable for defeat.
But several members of Congress say the shooting provides an opportunity to tone down the nation’s rhetoric. Many have expressed concerns for their own safety and noted that Giffords had been threatened over the past year. Her Arizona office was vandalized after the health-care vote last March and a man brought a pistol to one of her earlier town hall meetings.
Giffords herself had criticized Palin’s crosshairs graphic in an interview last year with MSNBC that has been replayed extensively since Saturday’s tragedy.
"We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list," Giffords said at the time. "But the thing is, the way she has it depicted, we’re in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize that there are consequences to that action."
Democrats in Congress on Wednesday said it was inappropriate for Palin to use the "blood libel" analogy – and to do it on the day of a memorial service for the shooting victims.
"Sarah Palin just can’t seem to get it, on any front," said Representative James Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. "I think intellectually, she seems not to be able to understand what’s going on here."
Palin, for her part, said she does not believe the political atmosphere in the U.S. is more toxic than during other periods in the nation’s history.
"There are those who claim political rhetoric is to blame for the despicable act of this deranged, apparently apolitical criminal," Palin said. "And they claim political debate has somehow gotten more heated just recently. But when was it less heated? Back in those calm days when political figures literally settled their differences with duelling pistols?"
Palin pointed out that she had explicitly denounced violence during a campaign stop last fall in Arizona with Senator John McCain, who was fighting for re-election.
She also alluded an effort by one Democratic, Pennsylvania Representative Robert Brady, who plans legislation to ban the use of crosshairs or targets against members of Congress.
Giffords "is in a coma because there was a bull’s-eye, a crosshair put on her," Brady said this week.
"No one should be deterred from speaking up and speaking out in peaceful dissent. And we certainly must not be deterred by those embrace evil and call it good," Palin said.
"We need strength to not let the random acts of a criminal turn us against ourselves or weaken our solid foundation or provide a pretext to stifle debate. America must be stronger than the evil we saw displayed last week.
"We are better than the mindless finger pointing in the wake of the tragedy."
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