When was the last time you heard anything from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Aryanna Pressley, Ilham Omar, or Rashida Tlaib?
A huge national news story, the stabbings of five people at a Hanakkuh celebration late Saturday night, is now nearly 36 hours old and we haven’t heard anything from “The Squad” about the evils of anti-Semitism. Why is that?
Usually, when it’s white supremacists, kluxers, or other moronic, brainless right-wingers who are to blame for some outrage, you can’t shut them up. But when a black man, raised in Harlem, attacks a peaceful gathering of Jews on the seventh night of Hanukkah, suddenly, they’re all on vacation.
Could it be that their own hands might be red with the blood of innocents? Do they feel guilty about promoting anti-Semitic tropes, sharing anti-Semitic cartoons, bashing American Jews for supporting Israel, or praising the Palestinians who have sworn to destroy the Jewish state?
The first openly, and proudly, anti-Semitic members of Congress in 70 years apparently can’t bring themselves to point out that their very public rhetoric about Jews and Israel may have given some people the wrong idea.
And the rhetoric and the actions of The Squad since they arrived in Washington earlier this year have been nauseating. They have emboldened others in the Democratic Party to share their own warped, bigoted views of Jews and Israel.
Joel Chernoff, Executive Director of AIA said, “For the first time in US history, there is danger that anti-Semitism will become normalized and legitimized in US politics via the Democratic Party and a DNC controlled Congress. Anti-Semitism has existed since the founding of the country but has never been institutionally embraced by either of its two main political parties.”
Chernoff added, “Despite a stinging bipartisan Congressional rejection of Democratic Party Representative, Ilhan Omar’s pro-BDS and anti-Israel resolution, the Squad of Four, Alyssa Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, continue to press forward with an unrelenting stream of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric and resolutions. In addition to Omar justifying her proposed anti-Israel resolution by outrageously comparing a boycott of Israel to past boycotts of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Ocasio-Cortez, in a recent radio interview, brazenly called the nation of Israel a “criminal” enterprise. Their apparent long-term objective is to make anti-Israel discourse a regular and normal part of US politics.”
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has, of course, condemned the attack as have other Democrats. But their statements of outrage and sympathy ring hollow when they allow the virulent anti-Semitism of Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Tlaib to infect the Democratic Party. There are many good Democrats who are strong supporters of Israel and who oppose the BDS movement. But frankly, their numbers are shrinking and their influence in party circles is diminishing.
Condemning only certain kinds of hate while tolerating others is pure hypocrisy. It’s long past time for The Squad to not only speak out about the Brooklyn stabbings, but apologize for their past rhetoric that has normalized anti-Semitism in the Democratic Party.
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