Jews in the D
Anti-Semitism
in Ann Arbor Campaign? In her post, city council candidate Mozhgan Savabieasfahani depicts pigs with cash and targets Jewish donors. MAYA GOLDMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
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JULY 9 • 2020
Michigan Jewish Democratic Caucus issued a statement later that week, condemning Savabieasfahani’s campaign tactics and anti-Israel views. In addition to the post, Savabieasfahani has been known to protest outside of Ann Arbor’s Beth Israel Congregation, where a group has staged anti-Israel and anti-Semitic pickets every week for over 16 years. She and her husband, Blaine Coleman, have also earned local notoriety for frequently attending city council meetings, imploring Ann Arbor to divest from Israel and carrying signs with swastikas equating Israel with Nazi Germany. “The Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus urges Ann Arbor Democrats to reject the hateful and extremist candidacy of Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, who is far more interested in elevating her own pet prejudices than representing the values and interests of Ann Arborites,” the MJDC’s statement reads. Eyer also denounced Savabieasfahani’s post as anti-Semitic in her own note on Facebook June 23. Joan Lowenstein, MJDC’s Washtenaw County chairwoman and the treasurer of Eyer’s campaign, said she thinks the imagery
COURTESY OF VOTEFORTHEDOCTOR.COM
CARTOON COURTESTY OF MOZHGAN SAVABIEASFAHANI
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nn Arbor city council candidate Dr. Mozhgan Savabieasfahani has come under fire for posting cartoons on local political Facebook pages that carried anti-Semitic connotations. Savabieasfahani, a longtime local protester who frequently targets Israel, is running in the Aug. 4 Democratic primary to represent the city’s fourth ward. In a now-edited post in the “Ann Arbor Politics” Facebook page, a public group with more than 800 members, she posted a caricature of one of her opponents, Jen Eyer, popping out of a wallet. Next to Eyer in the image is a pig in a suit, smoking a cigar and holding a wad of cash. The original post, published June 22, mentioned that Eyer has received donations from “old party hacks.” When asked by a group moderator to clarify the post, Savabieasfahani changed the word “hacks” to “honchos.” She also added that Ron Weiner and Lon Johnson, both former chairs of the Michigan Democratic Party, and retired school administrator Neal Elyakin, whom she noted in her edits is a former board member of the Friends of the IDF, have given money to Eyer. Eyer is not Jewish. Weiner and Elyakin are both Jewish; neither are top donors to Eyer, according to the most recent campaign finance documents available from the campaign. When Elyakin, who is not a member of the Facebook page, saw the post, he was upset. Though he has given $100 to Eyer’s campaign, he said he does not consider himself a party “honcho.” To him, the post felt like an anti-Semitic attack. He contacted the Facebook group’s moderator and posted a note on his own Facebook page to call awareness to the situation. “I generally don’t get upset about politics like that, but I felt I needed to say something,” Elyakin, who lives in Ann Arbor’s fifth ward, told the Jewish News.
in Savabieafahani’s post was a clear hallmark of anti-Semitism. “For anybody that’s Jewish, it’s like an alarm going off or something, to see the pig with the cigar,” Lowenstein, who previously served on Ann Arbor city council, said. “This is directly from Nazi propaganda. And so that alone was more than a dog whistle … I think non-Jews might not recognize it unless they’re real students of history, but certainly Jews do.” But Savabieasfahani, a native of Iran who works as an environmental toxicologist, insists otherwise. She said she chose to use pigs in both the caricature of Eyer and another in another cartoon she posted of her other opponent, incumbent Jack Eaton, because of their history as a symbol of capitalism. “I hope you know that pig images are an old American labor tradition. That couldn’t be more obvious,” Savabieasfahani wrote in an email to JN. “Pig is shorthand for the capitalist side in labor disputes.” Not everyone in the Ann Arbor Jewish community agrees that the post was anti-Semitic, either. Ann Arbor resident Marjorie Winkelman Lesko said she has concerns
