Former staffer: Ron Paul 'wishes the Israeli state did not exist'

Former Ron Paul campaign and Congressional staffer Eric Dondero issued a statement to Right Wing News today denying that his former boss is racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic as part of a larger attack on what Dondero terms Paul's "isolationism" and his position on the war in Afghanistan and the state of Israel.

Though Dondero stresses that Paul isn't an anti-Semite, referring to everything from his own Jewish ancestry to Paul's political courtship of "a few Jews" in Paul's Congressional district as evidence, Dondero does state unequivocally that Paul is opposed to the existence of the state of Israel.

He is however, most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general. He wishes the Israeli state did not exist at all. He expressed this to me numerous times in our private conversations. His view is that Israel is more trouble than it is worth, specifically to the America taxpayer. He sides with the Palestinians, and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs.

But despite Dondero's insistence that Paul is not anti-Semitic, he confirms a local paper's account of a opponent's press conference to discuss Paul's supposed anti-Semitism, in which Dondero was pressed to attend "dressed in a Jewish yarlmuke [sic], and other Jewish adornments." And, perhaps most problematically, Dondero recounts conversations in which Paul asserted that "the United States had [no] business getting involved in fighting Hitler in WWI"' because "'saving the Jews' was absolutely none of our business."

Though Dondero's missive is intended to push back against charges of racism and homophobia, it underscores the extent to which Paul and those around him define those beliefs as a product of his age and "being out of touch." Dondero states that Paul "is most certainly intolerant of Spanish and those who speak strictly Spanish in his presence, (as are a number of Americans, nothing out of the ordinary here.)" but has "frequently hired blacks for his office staff." He also recounts incidents in which Paul refused to shake hands with a major gay supporter and went so far as to refuse to use the bathroom at a gay donor's house.

Dondero, however, believes that the "big scandal" is Paul's "near No vote on Afghanistan," not his positions against Israel or the racist statements his published under his own name during Dondero's tenure.

Dondero, who launched an unsuccessful primary challenge against Paul in 2007, reportedly broke with Paul over his "isolationist" foreign policy positions after 9/11 and left Paul's employ in 2003. In 2007, Paul referred to Dondero in an interview with Reason as "a disgruntled former employee who was fired."

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