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August 25, 2008

Madonna is no stranger to provocation – it’s kinda what she does best.

In her latest stunt, Queen Esther included a video montage in her world tour concert juxtaposing various political dictators: Adolf Hitler, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe…and John McCain?

That last image ruffled a few feathers in the Jewish community. Well, just two – the usual reactionaries, Abe Foxman and Marvin Hier, who both issued statements condemning Madonna’s choice.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman, himself a Holocaust survivor, asserted that “Comparisons to Hitler have no place in a music concert, or in the presidential campaign.”

In the Monday statement, Foxman called the use of Nazi imagery to describe the Republican candidate “outrageous,” and added that “doing so trivializes the history of the Holocaust and is an insult to the memories of the victims and their families.”

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The dean and founder of the Jewish human rights organization, Rabbi Marvin Hier, said that, “There ought to be no place in the political and social discourse of American culture for such deliberate distortions and lies sure to be viewed by hundreds of thousands of young people around the world.”

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