|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Editorial – The Jewish Voice Applauds All Member of Congress Who Denounced the Naqba Day Event in Our Nation’s Capitol
On May 15th, Palestinians and their supporters around the world will mark Nakba Day, commemorating 75 years since the “catastrophe” of Israel’s establishment. Over the years, Nakba Day events have devolved into hate-fests against Israel and against Jews and have offered platforms for broadsides against Israel’s very right to exist, as was reported recently in the Jerusalem Post.
Last week, the egregiously anti-Israel member of Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) who has been also accused of exhibiting patently anti-Semitic behavior, sought to organize a Naqba Day event in the auditorium of the Capitol Visitor Center as she sought to “uplift the experiences of Palestinians who underwent the Nakba and educate members of Congress and their staff about this history and the ongoing Nakba to which Israel continues to subject Palestinians.”
The event, titled “Nakba 75 & The Palestinian People,” was organized in collaboration with several organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, including Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), as well as NGOs that have expressed support for terrorism, according to a report on the World Israel News web site. The ADL has condemned JVP as a “radical anti-Israel activist group” that honors terrorists.
’Nakba Day’ events across the country are platforms that propagate revisionist histories, tolerating – and at times – even encouraging hateful, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic rhetoric. Last May, during similar events, speakers referred to Israelis as the ‘stench of white European invaders’ and chanted for ‘death to Israel.’
Tlaib, the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, routinely refers to Israel as an apartheid state and has made statements that perpetuate the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews controlling the world.
WIN reported that last week, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan said Tlaib’s “ignorance and hate toward Jews and Israel know no bounds” after she posted a tweet about the Nakba, calling Israel an “apartheid state” that “was born out of violence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians”.
“Tlaib’s ignorance and hate toward Jews and Israel know no bounds. The facts are clear: the Arabs rejected the U.N.’s resolution to establish a Jewish state and started a war to annihilate it,” wrote Erdan, referencing the fact that in 1948, five Arab armies attacked the nascent state, with full support from the Palestinian leadership, WIN reported.
“Palestinian leadership is leading its people to catastrophe by inciting hate/terror and rejecting peace,” Erdan wrote.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt had written to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) expressing concern about Tlaib’s event and calling for scrutiny to ensure that no events taking place under congressional auspices are used to promote hate. Greenblatt drew McCarthy’s attention to some of the event’s cosponsors, who have trafficked in anti-Semitism, expressed support for terrorists and called for boycotts of Zionist Jews – which is to say, the overwhelming majority of Jews everywhere.
Speaker McCarthy was originally successful in having the event cancelled. On Tuesday, McCarthy tweeted, “This event in the US Capitol is canceled. Instead, I will host a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the US-Israel relationship.”
Greenblatt said he was “grateful Speaker McCarthy took rapid action. There’s room to talk about the issues – but not at an event co-sponsored by people who traffic in anti-Semitism and hate.”
But then things took a turn for the worse. Upon learning that McCarthy had succeeded in having the Naqba Day event cancelled, in walks Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who offered Tlaib the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s hearing room. As the chairman of this committee, he controls this room. The room is located in a Senate office building, which puts it outside McCarthy’s purview, as was reported by the Jerusalem Post. Greenblatt called Sanders’s move “disgraceful.” He’s right.
Sanders’ history is replete with his embrace of virulent anti-Israel forces and personalities. As the doyen of progressive politics, he remains adamant in refusing to admit that despicable anti-Semitism lies in the bedrock of the beliefs of the woke progressives that he champions.
While embracing the enemies of democracy and the loathsome purveyors of anti-Israel propaganda, Sanders not only severely damages US-Israel relations but he will soon come to learn that the haters that he proudly stands up for will come for him at the end because after all, Sanders is a Jew. While playing the part of the “useful idiot” and working with those who would decimate Israel and Jews around the world, Sanders is digging himself into a hole that he will never get out of.
We wholeheartedly support and enthusiastically applaud all members of Congress, be they Democrats or Republicans, who had the courage to vocally denounce Rep. Tlaib and this abhorrent Naqba Day event in our nation’s capitol.
