Hans Rustad Gabrielle «Gabby» Giffords var en moderat demokrat, med en tydelig jødisk profil. Hun stemte for helsereformen til Obama, og fikk høre det av motstandere.
Sarah Palin fjernet søndag bildet av et geværsikte over en liste navn, med beskjed om å sikte og «reload». Giffords var en av de som motstandere herset med, og hennes kontor ble vandalisert like etter at helsereformen gikk gjennom.
Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a prominent conservative, for months used a graphic of a gun cross-hairs to urge followers to «reload» and «aim» for Giffords and other Democrats.
«When people do that, they’ve got to realize that there’s consequences to that action,» Giffords told MSNBC.
On Saturday, Palin had removed the graphic from her website and offered her condolences on a posting on Facebook.
Giffords var blant dem som tok opp og beklaget et mer opphetet politisk klima. Hun førte selv en meget åpen stil.
Alt tyder på at Jared Lee Loughner, 22, var ute etter henne da han troppet opp på et møte mellom kongressrepresentanten og velgerne med et halvautomatisk våpen. Var det hennes jødiskhet som var utslagsgivende.
Hun var den første kvinnelige jødiske kongressrepresentanten fra Arizona.
Giffords was the president of the tire company founded by her father when she was propelled into state politics in part because of her concerns about the availability of health care. She switched her registration from Republican to Democrat and in 2001, at 30, she was elected to the Arizona Legislature.
She gained prominence quickly in that body and in 2006, at 36, she became the first Jewish woman elected to Congress from her state.
At the same time, her Judaism was becoming more central to her identity. The turning point came in 2001 following a tour of Israel with the American Jewish Committee, she told The Arizona Star in 2007.
«It just cemented the fact that I wanted to spend more time with my own personal, spiritual growth. I felt very committed to Judaism,» she said. «Religion means different things to different people. It provides me with grounding, a better understanding of who I came from.»
Her wedding to Cmdr. Mark Kelly, an astronaut, was written up in The New York Times. The item noted that a mariachi band played Jewish music and two canopies — a chupah and one of swords held up by Kelly’s Navy buddies.
“That was Gabby,” Jonathan Rothschild, a longtime friend who served on her campaign’s executive committee, recalled to JTA. “The real irony of this thing is her Judaism is central to her, but she is the kind of person who reaches out to everybody.”
Giffords’ father is Jewish and her mother is a Christian Scientist, and she was raised in both faiths. Her grandfather, Akiba Hornstein, changed his name to Gifford Giffords after moving from New York to Arizona, in part because he did not want his Jewishness to be an issue in unfamiliar territory.
The women on her father’s side of the family seemed to guide her toward identifying with Judaism.
“In my family, if you want to get something done you take it to the Jewish women relatives,” she told JTA in 2006. “Jewish women, by and large, know how to get things done.”
Giffords, who last week took the oath of office for her third term in Congress, has pushed Jewish and pro-Israel issues to the forefront at the state and federal levels. She initiated an Arizona law facilitating Holocaust-era insurance claims for survivors, and in Congress she led an effort to keep Iran from obtaining parts for combat aircraft.
