by Gabe Kaminsky in the Washington Examiner
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is blocking Israel critic and “Squad” Democrat Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) from hosting a congressional event to lament the “catastrophe” of “Zionist militias” that paved the way for Israel’s founding.
Tlaib was set to appear on Wednesday at the Capitol Visitor Center alongside several anti-Israel advocacy groups for an event dubbed “Nakba,” a Palestinian phrase purportedly related to the “catastrophe” of Israel’s 1948 establishment, according to an event invitation. However, McCarthy is now taking over the space for a pro-Israel event and called out Tlaib for attempting to use federal grounds for her event, which has come under fire this week.
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“It’s wrong for members of Congress to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes about Israel,” McCarthy said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Not only do I condemn Rep. Tlaib’s anti-Israel event on May 10, I am hosting in its place a bipartisan discussion in the U.S. Capitol on the importance of the special relationship between Israel and America.”
“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 House speaker added.
The Nakba event has earned the ire of pro-Jewish groups, including TruthTells, whose CEO Jeffrey Berk said on Tuesday that it promotes bad “optics.” Tlaib has been scrutinized since entering Congress in 2019 for her ties to organizations aiming to delegitimize the Jewish state, and in April joined 18 Democrats plus Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to vote against a since-passed bipartisan resolution that expressed support for the relationship between the United States and Israel.
One organization that helped organize the Nakba event is Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which has reportedly celebrated Palestinian terrorism and is a “radical anti-Israel activist group that advocates for a complete economic, cultural and academic boycott of the state of Israel,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
“Ultimately it didn’t make sense for me to vote for a bill that praises the foreign aid that I’ve voted against for the past ten years,” Massie told the Washington Examiner.
It’s unclear whether Tlaib will help reschedule the Nakba event, and her office did not reply to a request for comment. The Coalition for Jewish Values, a pro-Israel advocacy group with over 2,000 rabbis, sent a letter on Tuesday evening to congressional leaders urging condemnation of the anti-Israel outing.
“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 wrote in the letter, according to the Washington Free Beacon. “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.”
Another group that had helped organize the Nakba event is Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, which has blamed “right-wing Zionist” entities for using their “money” to influence American elections, the Washington Examiner reported. The organizer Emgage Action has alleged that Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, a far-left movement seeking to economically punish Israel that has ties to antisemitism, is a “constitutionally protected nonviolent response that seeks to end the occupation,” records show.
Middle East Understanding, another Nakba event organizer, has likened Israel to an “apartheid state,” while the organizer Democracy for the Arab World Now is headed by longtime anti-Israel activist Sarah Leah Whitson, ex-executive director of Human Rights Watch, a left-leaning nonprofit group.
Whitson, who was also managing director for research and policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a George Soros-funded foreign policy non-interventionist think tank, seemingly lamented in 2020 the absence of violence in Israel upon a journalist tweeting about how Israel’s government instituted lockdowns amid the spread of COVID-19.
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the office of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) for comment.
Originally published in the Washington Examiner