Following her convincing win in the Democratic primary, New York State Senate candidate Julia Salazar is walking back claims that she both founded the Palestine Liberation Organization and helped launch the First Intifada.
Salazar, who first made headlines when her claims to be a Jewish immigrant from a working class family unraveled, looked to appeal voters on the far left by positioning herself as a leader in the Palestinian movement.
“I just got so fed up with the Israeli occupation that I decided to pick up a rock and hurl it at the first tank I saw,” Salazar said in an interview, recounting events that in fact took place years before her birth. “Next thing I knew, everyone was throwing stones, and we had started a revolution.”
But with the Democrat now having to appeal to general election voters, she has returned to touting her Zionist credentials.
“I am the one who came up with the idea of a Jewish state in the first place,” Salazar said at her acceptance speech, delivered at Ariel University in the West Bank. “I said, ‘If you will it, it is not a dream,’ and you know what? I willed it.”
