“Imagine if an unrepentant Nazi Party sympathizer would be running for
mayor of New York. A product of the ideology that destroyed 25 million
people within reach of City Hall would be unthinkable.…Yet Bill de Blasio, a
Marxist who has never repudiated those beliefs, will very likely be this
city’s next mayor."
Bill de Blasio
Yeshiva World reports that the Brooklyn hasidic daily newspaper Hamodia – owned by a family of slumlords – published an op-ed yesterday morning written by Chabad hasid Dovid Margolin. Margolin flagrantly violates Godwin’s Law by attacking Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio’s support for the Sandinistas, who ruled Nicaragua, in the late 80′s.
Margolin reportedly compares de Blasio’s support for the Sandinistas to supporting Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany during the Holocaust:
“New revelations about de Blasio’s political past should prompt more New Yorkers to scrutinize his record before going to the polls this November. A communist revolution had taken place in the heart of the Americas, and Bill de Blasio was there to help. Yet even today Bill de Blasio describes his experience with the Sandinistas as nothing short of inspiring.
“Imagine if an unrepentant Nazi Party sympathizer would be running for mayor of New York. A product of the ideology that destroyed 25 million people within reach of City Hall would be unthinkable. [Margolin describes de Blasio’s ties with the Sandinistas.] Yet Bill de Blasio, a Marxist who has never repudiated those beliefs, will very likely be this city’s next mayor.
“So the question to ask yourself as you enter the ballot box this November is this: Is Bill de Blasio the type of man who has the judgment and character necessary to be the mayor of New York? Does a city full of refugees of communism from all over the world really need a mayor who not only sympathized with but actively promoted the totalitarian regimes under which they suffered? The answer is obviously no.”
The Sandinistas were awful people, but so was the dictatorship they overthrew, and Margolin mangles the history to make his point.
Here's how the JTA in 2004 described the Sandinistas and their bad relationship with Nicaragua's tiny Jewish community:
…The Sandinista era took more than the community's synagogue; it also stole the community's identity. Since most of the community was linked, either politically or through business ties, to the Somoza dictatorship that ran the country like a family farm for some 50 years, Jews were among the first targets of property confiscation under the Sandinistas.
That practice sent many Nicaraguan Jews into exile. Most went to Miami, though some wound up in Honduras and Costa Rica. Only when the Sandinistas were ousted in 1990 elections did Nicaraguan Jews began to return, but the community's Torah remains in Costa Rica.
Israel had supported and armed the Somoza dictatorship until its final days, so one of the Sandinistas' first diplomatic moves was to sever ties with Israel and recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Today, Managua still hosts Libyan and Palestinian embassies, though Israel and Nicaragua have resumed diplomatic relations.
Former Interior Minister Tomas Borge, the lone surviving founder of the Sandinistas and still one of the opposition party's most influential leaders, keeps a snapshot on his office wall of himself with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat.
But he says the Sandinistas now "recognize the State of Israel's right to exist," even if they "deplore" its policies toward the Palestinians.
During his tenure, Borge's ministry issued Nicaraguan passports to an unknown number of PLO members.…
Israel saw the Sandinistas as allies of Cuba, and it saw Cuba as its enemy because Cuba was an ally of many of Israel's worst enemies and a supporter of terrorism.
But the Sandinistas had leading members who were descended from Jewish families (although no longer halakhicly Jewish) and the Somoza regime was truly awful yet Jews were closely linked to it.
So for all these reasons, Margolin's comparison doesn't make sense.
Margolin frequently writes features and op-eds for Hamodia, and writes features for Chabad.org.