Jill Stein's remark about a homeland for Jewish people did not refer to Poland | Fact check
The claim: Jill Stein said Jewish people have a homeland in Poland and only 0.1% of Jews are Zionists
An April 26 post on Threads (direct link, archive link) shares a video of Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaking outside an entrance to Columbia University during protests in support of Palestinians.
“Jill Stein says that the Jewish people have a homeland in Poland and that .1 percent of Jews are Zionists,” the post reads in part.
The post was liked more than 200 times in a week.
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Our rating: False
Stein did not say either of those things in the clip. An automatic captioning program erroneously quoted her as saying Jewish people “have Poland” when she said they “have homeland.” She also did not say 0.1% of Jews are Zionists.
Campaign posted video with inaccurate caption
The post shares a clip of Stein speaking April 25 just outside Columbia, where students and others have been protesting in support of Palestinians. Stein was discussing Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip when a man interrupted her. The man, who identified himself as Jewish, tells Stein she is among “the 1%" of Jews who oppose Israel’s actions. During the exchange, he says Jewish people only have Israel as a homeland and Stein counters the claim.
The social media post misrepresents what Stein says – due in part to erroneous captioning of a video posted to Stein’s X account. Her remarks were transcribed as “Jewish people have Poland,” but it is clear she says “homeland” and never names a country.
Jason Call, Stein’s campaign manager and a Green Party congressional candidate in Washington, told USA TODAY that the posts saying she called Poland a Jewish homeland are absolutely wrong.
“It was just an auto caption that recognized ‘Poland' instead of 'homeland' and our video editor simply did not catch the error,” he wrote in an email. “It was recaptioned and reposted very shortly after.”
A post to X on April 26 had corrected captioning, and Call pointed to his own post on April 27 of Stein discussing her thoughts about a Jewish homeland in further detail during a campaign event in Missouri.
Jewish settlement on the land that today makes up Poland dates back more than 1,000 years, largely from people fleeing oppression of Jews in central and western Europe, according to the World Jewish Congress. More than 3 million Jews living in Poland at the start of World War II were killed by the Germans during the war, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
Fact check: Image of paraglider installation at Columbia encampment is altered
Stein also did not say that 0.1% of Jewish people were Zionists. The term at its core refers to people who believe in establishing and maintaining a Jewish homeland in Israel, although there are different definitions of what that entails.
In the video clip, after the exchange about “homeland,” she says to the camera, “Ignore that 0.1% who is mandating genocide right now."
She goes on to speak about a “misguided Zionist movement,” but that is not the same as saying that 0.1% of Jews are Zionists.
USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the claim for comment but did not immediately receive a response. In the post, the user pointed to the faulty caption as the basis for the claim and said Stein had an “odd pronunciation of ‘Poland.’”
The Associated Press also debunked the claim.
Our fact-check sources:
Jason Call, May 3, Email exchange with USA TODAY
Jason Call, April 27, Post on X
Jill Stein, April 25, Post on X
Jill Stein, April 26, Post on X
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: No, Jill Stein did not call Poland 'homeland' for Jews | Fact check
