You would not know it from reading the local New Jersey papers, nor the New York Times, nor the Washington Post, none of which picked up on the beneath the mainline media-radar Zionist right wing attacks on Parscrell.
Reporting on Parscrell's victory, the mainline media preferred the story line that former President Clinton endorsed and supported Parscrell while President Obama's chief strategist David Alexrod made a last-minute appearance with Rothman to lend White House cache to Rothman, who had been an early supporter of candidate Barack Obama against Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential primaries.
The right-wing attacks inspired by the Israel Lobby were led by Steve Emerson, a former AIPAC staffer.
Phillip Weiss wrote on his Mondoweiss site:
"Steve Emerson, the rightist Islamophobe who formerly worked at AIPAC, put out a long vicious hit piece on Pascrell depicting the Roman Catholic Pascrell as an 'Islamist Fellow Traveler.' . . . Rothman embraced the lobby onslaught, doing everything he could to make the primary a referendum on Israel, Islam, Muslims, etc."
Then, well below the media radar, something surprising took place. Pascrell received strong support from an unexpected source.
"James Zogby of the Arab American Institute, a Christian Lebanese-American and a strong supporter (like Pascrell) of Israeli-Palestinian peace, came in to work with the district's Arab-American population and help the local people organize for Pascrell."
Weiss emphasizes that "the issue wasn't Israel; it was Rothman's Arab and Muslim-baiting which offended Arab-Americans as much as Jews would be offended by an openly anti-Semitic candidate."
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