House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday night took a wrecking ball to notoriously anti-Israel Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s plan to hold a “Nakba” event at the Capitol at which anti-Israel figures would decry the founding of the Jewish State.
The Speaker’s office confirmed that McCarthy stepped in to secure the Capitol Visitor Center space where Tlaib intended to hold a gathering mourning Israel’s establishment as a “catastrophe.” Instead, he will lead a bipartisan briefing celebrating the 75th anniversary of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
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“It’s wrong for members of Congress to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes about Israel,” McCarthy told the Free Beacon. “As long as I’m Speaker, we are going to support Israel’s right to self-determination and self-defense, unequivocally and in a bipartisan fashion.”
The virulently anti-Semitic congresswoman had invited abhorrent personalities to her planned event, including people who supported and hailed terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Several organizations that endorse the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, including Jewish Voice for Peace, a “radical anti-Israel activist group” that has been criticized for glorifying Palestinian terrorism, were planning to join Rashida Tlaib at the anti-Israel event. Tlaib was set to headline the gathering, which also included Emgage Action, another BDS supporter that accuses Israel of being an “apartheid state,” and Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, an advocacy group that claims Jewish money of negatively influencing politics.
“It is unsurprising but appalling that the featured speaker at this event will be a Member of Congress who describes the only Middle Eastern country to give equality and voting rights to both Jews and Arabs as ‘apartheid,’” the Coalition for Jewish Values said in a statement. “We hope that our request will meet with your favorable response, and that you will condemn this event in the strongest terms as soon as possible.”
Originally published in The Yeshiva World