State Rep. Maria Perez has landed in herself in hot water for channeling her inner Marc Lamont Hill
State Rep. Maria Perez, D-Milford, said Monday she was “deeply sorry” for using a phrase on Twitter that some Jewish leaders said has been used by others to support the destruction of the state of Israel.
Perez issued a public apology three days after House Speaker Sherman Packard, R-Londonderry, had urged House Democratic Leader Renny Cushing of Hampton to join him in condemning her behavior.
“I deleted a recent tweet of mine after it came to my attention that a phrase, I used unwittingly carried an anti-Semitic connotation; that would never be my intention,” Perez said in a statement Monday.
“I am deeply sorry for any pain my words caused. Through numerous conversations with Jewish colleagues, I have come to learn the derogatory meaning that the phrase can hold for the Jewish community.”
On social media last Oct. 23, Perez had declared “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
The slogan has been used by some who advocate the end of Israel as a Jewish state and the establishment of an Arab state stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
After the tweet was criticized, Perez removed it, but last Friday on Twitter she defended her original post.
“I shared a slogan that Palestinian human rights activists use to convey that they desire freedom of movement and an end to settler colonization,” Perez said.
“I believe in a one state solution where Jews, Muslims, Christians and others can live together with equal rights, unlike the current state of Israeli occupation and apartheid.”
Perez has now protected her tweets, presumably to avoid a repeat performance.
But if you look at what she actually tweeted, seems to me to be a Freudian slip:
Sounds to me like Perez subconsciously understands that there never was a state of Palestine.
