A member of a Jewish temple in New Mexico says Valerie Plame, a former CIA officer and a Democratic candidate for a New Mexico congressional seat, lied about her membership.
According to the Albuquerque Journal, a senior member of Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe accused Plame, 56, of falsely claiming membership to the temple after she told the newspaper she had recently found out her great-grandfather was a rabbi in Ukraine and she had “always been drawn to that aspect of my Jewish heritage.”
Daniel Yohalem, a Santa Fe lawyer and a member of Temple Beth Shalom who is on the temple’s board told the Albuquerque Journal that, after going through the membership lists, Plame was never a member. “I am deeply concerned about Ms. Plame’s repeated apparent lack of candor on these issues,” he said.
Plame’s campaign said she was a member “at Temple Beth Shalom for years.”
The former CIA officer first became a national figure during the George W. Bush administration after her name was leaked to Washington Post columnist Bob Novak in 2003.
In 2017, Plame was forced to apologize after sharing on Twitter an anti-Semitic article from the UNZ Review entitled, “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars.” The article stated that Jews “own the media,” that they should wear labels while on national television, and that their beliefs were as dangerous as “a bottle of rat poison.”
Her initial response was: “First of all, calm down. Re-tweets don’t imply endorsement. Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish.” She later added: “OK folks, look, I messed up. I skimmed this piece, zeroed in on the neocon criticism, and shared it without seeing and considering the rest.”
She apologized and quit the board of the Ploughshares Fund, which provides grants for projects aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. But, in the space of three years, she had posted nine UNZ articles, including one titled, “Why I Still Dislike Israel,” and another about “Dancing Israelis” on 9/11.
