(Jewish Group) Leaders of New Hampshire legislature condemn antisemitism among state representatives

Leaders of the New Hampshire House of Representatives released a statement last week condemning antisemitism after a state lawmaker tweeted in support of Palestinians using a slogan many deem to be antisemitic.

Speaker of the House Sherman Packard, a Republican, and House Democratic leader Renny Cushing wrote in a joint statement Thursday that “any form of bigotry — anti-Semitism, racism, bigotry — has no place in our society” and “it is unacceptable that any member of this historic legislative body is involved in perpetuating hate in any form.”

The statement came after the third incident in the past year in which a member of the state’s House of Representatives was accused of sharing an antisemitic post to social media. Less than 1 percent of New Hampshire’s residents are Jewish, according to a study conducted in 2019, and officials estimate that there are around 10,000 Jews in the state.

In December of last year, local leaders called for Republican Rep. Dawn Johnson of Laconia to resign after she shared a link to a Daily Stormer article on Twitter. The article included an antisemitic cartoon that Rabbi Dan Danson, a Reform rabbi in Laconia, New Hampshire, described as “literally a copy of the kind of art that was used in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.” Johnson later apologized and removed the post.

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