Florida Official Quits Over Christian ‘Slaughter’ Quip
The chairman of the Palm Beach County Democratic Party resigned after saying that pro-Israel Christians want to see Jews “slaughtered and converted.”
Mark Alan Siegel resigned on Friday, a day after he apologized for the remarks he had made two days earlier during an interview on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention.
“My comments merely served as a distraction to the good work of Democrats in Palm Beach,” Siegel said in a statement released Friday by the state party, according to the Palm Beach Post. “Again, I express my deepest apologies to anyone I may have offended.”
Siegel, an attorney, had apologized the day after making the comments but reportedly refused to resign, instead offering to take an extended leave of absence.
Siegel had told the conservative Patriot Update website that as a Jew, he was “not a fan of any religion other than Judaism.” Asked if he is a fan of Christianity, Siegel responded, according to the Palm Beach Post, “No, I’m not. The Christians just want us to be there so we can be slaughtered and converted and bring on the second coming of Jesus Christ.”
He continued, “They’re not our friends. They want Israel to pursue policies which are antithetical with its security and existence. The worst possible allies for the Jewish state are the fundamentalist Christians, who want Jews to die and convert so they can bring on the second coming of their Lord. It is a false friendship. They are seeking their own ends and not ours.”
Siegel moved to Boca Raton in the 1990s after serving in the New York state Assembly from 1975 to 1990 as a representative of a Manhattan district.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
