It might well be the first time that legislators on Capitol Hill have sided with a group launching terrorist attacks upon a U.S. ally. Last weekend, Hamas – which calls in its covenant for the destruction of Israel and the global murder of Jews – launched 700 rockets against civilians in Israel, and two freshmen members of Congress, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, quickly emerged as Hamas’ outspoken apologists.
Omar blamed the hostilities on Israel’s non-existent occupation of Gaza and obscured Hamas’s aggression behind routine boilerplates about a “cycle of violence.” She tweeted:
“How many more protesters must be shot, rockets must be fired, and little kids must be killed until the endless cycle of violence ends? The status quo of occupation and humanitarian crisis in Gaza is unsustainable. Only real justice can bring about security and lasting peace.”
Omar tactfully omitted to mention that Hamas rules out a priori the idea of peace with Israel. In the absence of peace with Israel, Omar clearly seeks “real justice” – peace without Israel, peace upon Israel’s grave.
Responding to a New York Times headline that has simply stated “Gaza Militants Fire 250 Rockets, and Israel Responds With Airstrikes,” Tlaib tweeted:
“When will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free? Headlines like this & framing it in this way just feeds into the continued lack of responsibility on Israel who unjustly oppress & target Palestinian children and families. #FreePalestine.”
In Tlaib’s view, apparently, stating that Palestinian Arabs have attacked Israel, or that Israel has struck back, constitutes dehumanization of Palestinian Arabs.
In the tweets of Omar and Tlaib, a Hamas spokesman could scarcely have hoped for a more faithful reflection of his own talking points. But then these tweets are but the latest links in a chain of anti-Semitic discourse in which these legislators have trafficked even before arriving on Capitol Hill.
Prior to her election in the 2018 midterms, Omar misled voters by falsely purporting to oppose Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) against Israel which, since being elected, she now admits to supporting.
In a 2012 tweet that followed Israel operations in Gaza following a similar episode of terrorists firing rockets into Israel, Omar conjured up age-old anti-Semitic tropes of vast and sinister Jewish power and manipulation: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
She continued to defend her tweet for years until continuing controversy impelled her to back away somewhat last year, claiming not to understand in what way Jews found it offensive. (Omar eventually admitted her tweet was offensive and belatedly deleted it.)
Since arriving in Congress, Omar has made further anti-Semitic statements, like baselessly asserting that supporters of Israel are attempting to get American lawmakers to have “allegiance to a foreign country” or that AIPAC bribes legislators to support Israel.
In a May 2018 tweet, Omar maligned the Jewish state as the “apartheid Israeli regime,” a statement that, on a purely intellectual level, is either knowingly false or astoundingly ignorant.
Tlaib, for her part, calls Israel a “racist country” on the basis of the lie that Israel discriminates against those who are “darker skinned.” She supports the destruction of Israel in favor of an Arab-dominated state (“It has to be one state”), absurdly claiming Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, an outspoken supporter of Israel, as inspiration for her views. Tlaib also “absolutely” backs withholding US aid from Israel, and openly supports BDS.
On her first day in office, Tlaib placed a so-called correction to the world map in her Congressional office, placing a sticky note with the word “Palestine” with an arrow pointing at Israel, thereby indicating her support for the Palestinian Arab objective of eliminating the country.
Little wonder that Noel Pollak, a Washington Free Beacon contributor, has noted that the logic of Tlaib’s Gaza outburst amounts to this: “Palestinians have an inherent right to kill Jews.” He writes, “She’s saying that terrorism is justified until ‘real justice’ is achieved. What is real justice? The destruction of Israel.”
It can no longer be said that we don’t know. The evidence is overwhelming, and the sooner we acknowledge reality, the sooner preventative action can be taken: stripping both legislators of their committee appointments, running opposing candidates in their respective districts, passing a House resolution condemning their anti-Semitism, and so on.
Until these things are done, remedial efforts will necessarily prove inadequate.