Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan’s statements about Judaism and Israel were denounced here yesterday by former Vice President Walter Mondale, the likely Democratic Presidential candidate.
At a news conference with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Mondale said he considered Farrakhan’s remarks “poison and I repudiate not only the statements but Mr. Farrakhon.”
Jackson repeated his characterization of Farrakhon’s comments as “indefensible and morally reprehensible.” He declined however to repudiate the Black Muslim leader, although Jackson has clearly distanced himself politically from Farrakhan in the past months.
The two Democratic Presidential aspirants held the news conference following a two hour meeting, the first since the primaries ended, in an effort to reconcile their differences and set the groundwork for a show of unity at the Democratic Party convention in Son Francisco later this month.
Later in the day, Mondale addressed some 3,000 persons attending the 75th annual convention of the NAACP here. He told those assembled that “our coalition of consciousness… must stand united and condemn the voices of hatred whether they speak from the hood of the Klan robe or the airwaves of Farrakhans radio show.”
In a radio broadcast June 24 in Chicago, Farrakhan called Judaism a “gutter religion” and decribed Israel as on “outlaw nation.”
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