Tlaib: I Will Obey Israeli Law. Israel: Welcome! Tlaib: I’m Not Going But I Will Fundraise Off Your Oppression
[guest post by Dana]
I would be shocked if she didn’t tried to make a buck off her aborted trip. It was baked in:
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) is fundraising off her aborted trip to Israel, just days after she refused an Israeli invitation permitting her to visit her ailing grandmother and, instead, shared an anti-Semitic cartoon about the Jewish state.
A fundraising email sent by Democracy for America, a far left political action committee, implores readers to “chip in whatever you can to stand with her and [Rep.] Ilhan [Omar (D., Minn.)] now as they continue to fight for justice for all.”
The fundraising plea, which includes a direct pitch from Tlaib, falsely states that the lawmakers “were banned from traveling to Israel and Palestine.” Israel granted Tlaib special permission to enter the country to visit her grandmother. Moreover, Palestine does not, in fact, exist.
“I’ve dealt with sexism, racism, and Islamophobia my entire life—so I knew that would continue if I pursued a high-profile public office and won. What I didn’t anticipate was for that discrimination to come from the President of the United States,” Tlaib writes in the fundraising email.
Benjamin Netanyahu also came under fire in the email:
It’s very telling when a so-called democratic ally bans elected members of Congress from visiting because of our political views and values,” the lawmaker writes. “It’s even more disturbing and completely unprecedented that our own president encouraged this undemocratic action. What is Netanyahu afraid that we will witness, that we will bring to light?”
“Not only am I heartbroken that I cannot meet the people of Israel and Palestine to witness their struggles firsthand, but I am heartbroken I can no longer visit my Palestinian grandmother [Ed. Liar! You could have gone, you chose not to go!], who just days ago was excited to decide which fig tree we’d pick from together,” Tlaib continues.
Leaving no stone unturned, she also recapped the recent events leading up to her fundraising, while conveniently neglecting to mention a few key points:
“The Israeli government ultimately decided they would let me visit, but under one condition: that I sign a letter restricting my freedom of speech in order to stop me from speaking out against the inhumane conditions Palestinians like my grandmother are forced to face by the Israeli military occupation,” she writes in another statement riddled with factual inaccuracies.
“No matter how badly I wish to see my grandmother, I know she would not want me to do so under such degrading circumstances that go against everything I believe in: fighting racism, oppression, and injustice,” she writes.
Let’s be accurate here since Tlaib is apparently unwilling to be: The congresswoman voluntarily signed a letter in which she promised not to promote boycotting Israel and to be respectful of their laws. But of course, she’s not interested in accuracy, she’s interested only in advocacy.
Further demonstrating her problems with telling the truth as well as an unattractive unwillingness to assume responsibility, Tlaib claimed ignorance about Miftah, the non-profit Palestinian, anti-Semitic advocacy group that was sponsoring the trip, and instead threw her colleagues under the bus:
Tlaib and Omar distanced themselves from Miftah, emphasizing that they weren’t aware of the group’s background when they decided to attend the trip, and adding that they implicitly trusted the group because other Democratic members of Congress participated in similar trip sponsored by it in 2016.
“Our colleagues that are senior members, some of whom have served multiple terms, actually told us about the organization. We’re not the ones who chose the organization. A U.S.-based sponsor organization chose it. But I think there were five members of Congress that actually went on a trip sponsored by the same organization,” Tlaib said when asked about criticisms of Miftah.
The freshman Michigan lawmaker went on to argue that, while she was unaware of Miftah’s background, recent criticisms of the group represent a cynical attempt to distract from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.
“We’re just as taken aback and learned from everybody else that there are some issues around the organization. I think these are just distractions into the fact that this had nothing to do really with the agenda or these other issues,” she continued. “I think the focus is the hiding of the truth and hiding that the occupation is happening. I think they knew that us setting foot there would basically bring attention to something that many of us feel is very much against international human rights.”
I’m taken aback that she thinks we’re stupid enough to believe her nonsense. Of course she knew about Miftah. As for those senior members who went on a trip to Irsrael in 2016 that was sponsored by the organization, they were: Luis Gutierrez of Illinois, Dan Kildee of Michigan, Hank Johnson of Georgia, Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin. Note: The five Democrats reportedly met with an alleged member of a Palestinian terrorist group during that trip.
David French has a great report on Miftah that you should read. In it, he notes that the group had: re-published neo-Nazi content and “actually published blood libel, posting an article that accused ‘the Jews [of using] the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.’”
–Dana
Grifter.
Dana (fdf131) — 8/20/2019 @ 2:25 pmRancida!
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 8/20/2019 @ 2:30 pmTypical.
nk (dbc370) — 8/20/2019 @ 2:34 pmMy heart hurts with the true evil that becomes more evident by the day. These women are hateful.
Kathianne (b50bc6) — 8/20/2019 @ 2:37 pmRashida Tlaib is now blaming (probably correctly) political activists, and other, more senior Democrats for this fiasco, but she’s not naming them. (although the Daily Caller does name the 5 members of Congress who previously went on a Miftah sponsored trip)
https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/19/rashida-tlaib-blames-democrats-miftah-israel-trip
Sammy Finkelman (102c75) — 8/20/2019 @ 2:39 pmSammy Finkelman,
What do you mean, blaming (probably correctly) others for the fiasco?
Dana (fdf131) — 8/20/2019 @ 2:53 pmI would put your paragraph on French’s piece at the very beginning, not the very end. It’s that important. The Tlaib/Omar association with Miftah is a gen-u-ine scandal.
Paul Montagu (a2342d) — 8/20/2019 @ 4:26 pmNoah Rothman just made a fairly complete case on the anti-Semitism of both Democrat twats.
Israel is a complex problem that probably should not be in a partisan box in the US. They are an ally in the middle east and better (mostly) about human rights than most of the countries around them. They are also an apartheid society, which may very well be necessary for their continued survival at this time, but is also pretty ugly from a human rights viewpoint. Israel is also essentially in a tribal war with the Palestinians and there are times when they aren’t much better than the Palestinians they are fighting and times when the Palestinians are much worse. The Jews are in a minority in the world and in the middle east, but the power holding majority in Israel so they have the potential to be both the oppressed (especially given their history) and the oppressors. Arabs are in the majority in the Middle east but not in the world. Both Jewish people and Arabic people are in the minority in the US and in most countries around the world, so both parties might have a particular similar self interest inside the country the are living in, but a definite conflict in their viewpoint of the middle east. The middle east, including Israel, is in an unfortunate ugly morass of moral and actual conflict and there are no really clean hands.
Nic (896fdf) — 8/20/2019 @ 4:44 pmMeanwhile, Fearless Leader has with his typical deftness allowed people to change the conversation to his own tinge of antiSemitism.
Kishnevi (72bb0b) — 8/20/2019 @ 4:56 pmhttps://www-m.cnn.com/2019/08/20/politics/donald-trump-jewish-americans-democrat-disloyalty/index.html
9: So Trump was so clumsy he “allowed” the claim that he is anti-Semitic-or wasn’t that claim made repeatedly before? So he didn’t allow anything: the same crew, making the same charge, would make it no matter what he did.
Harcourt Fenton Mudd (0c349e) — 8/20/2019 @ 5:49 pmI saw that, kishnevi. It’s really a post by itself. Here’s my question to you: Disloyal to whom? I ask because I’m honestly unsure.
I liked how Phillip Klein approached Trump’s whatever-it-was:
Dana (fdf131) — 8/20/2019 @ 5:55 pmPoint taken, Paul Montague, however I think the French piece is excellent and worthy of its own post. Which I hope to get to eventually…
Dana (fdf131) — 8/20/2019 @ 5:56 pmI agree with what Klein wrote. Support for Israel is important to me–it is after all why I changed my registration from D to I a few months ago–but support for Bibi is not the same as support for Israel. And what the Torah tells me is that loyalty to the US is something God expects from me. But there are plenty of other issues in which Jewish teaching and history guide me, and they tell me Trump is drastically wrong on them. But my rabbi doesn’t tell me how to vote, and Trump sure can’t.
Kishnevi (72bb0b) — 8/20/2019 @ 6:07 pmMr. Trump the President understands loyalty the way a color blind person understands orange so we should not hold it against him if he sounds like an idiot when he talks about it. Would you make fun of a color blind person who picked green tomatoes instead of red tomatoes?
nk (dbc370) — 8/20/2019 @ 7:22 pmHeh. I think Trump sees things so black-and-white and completely void of any nuance or subtleties, that he likely sees this in the same way. It’s a very no-brainer to him because any wider discussion simply doesn’t exist in his realm of thinking.
Dana (fdf131) — 8/20/2019 @ 7:42 pmThat depends – does he also claim to be the most skilled and discerning tomato picker who ever lived?
Dave (1bb933) — 8/20/2019 @ 9:44 pm