Squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) gave a speech to the Democratic Socialists of America recently where she liberally used anti-Semitic tropes at the group’s national convention.
“We also need to recognize — and this is for me as a Palestinian American — we also need to recognize as I think about my family and Palestine that continue to live under military occupation and how that really interacts with this beautiful black city that I grew up in,” Tlaib began, referring to her hometown of Detroit. “You know, I always tell people cutting people off from water is violence from Gaza to Detroit. And it’s a way to control people, to oppress people. And it’s those structures that we continue to fight against.”
Who is “controlling” people in Gaza and Detroit?
“I know that you all understand the structure that we’ve been living under right now is designed by those that exploit the rest of us for their own profit,” Tlaib continued. “I don’t care if it’s the issue around global human rights and our fight to free Palestine or to pushing back against those that don’t believe in the minimum wage or those that believe that people have a right to health care and so much more. And I tell people, those same people, that if you open the curtain and look behind the curtain, it’s the same people that make money and, yes they do, off of racism, off of these broken policies. There is someone there making money and you saw it!”
It’s those people “behind the curtain” who are denying Detroit residents water and Palestinians human rights. Except “behind the curtain” was a very effective Nazi propaganda theme during the 1930s.
Stunning to hear @RashidaTlaib claim "behind the curtain,” those who prevent a “free Palestine” are the “same people” who exploit “regular Americans."
We've heard this kind of ugly #antisemitic dog whistling before, but it's appalling when it comes from a member of Congress. pic.twitter.com/lBc8hxKAlw
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) August 3, 2021
Jonathan Greenblatt is the ADL’s president and it’s nothing he hasn’t heard from Tlaib or her ilk before.
Jewish writer Hen Mazzig commented that Tlaib failed to stand up for Palestinians without the use of “antisemitic tropes,” pointing to her comparison of Palestinians living under Israeli authority to Americans who were being exploited throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
A caricature shared by author Ben Freeman titled “Behind the Enemy Powers: The Jew” was used as propaganda in Nazi Germany, according to the Holocaust Museum. The phrase “behind the curtain” is also a fairly well-known anti-Semitic trope, used often in Nazi Germany, that suggests Jews are global puppet-masters who control things from behind the scenes.
This is what @RashidaTlaib means when she says "behind the curtain”.
This is a piece of Nazi propaganda that presents Jews as behind the curtain controlling the Nazi’s enemies. pic.twitter.com/EV4p8samHg
— Ben M. Freeman (@BenMFreeman) August 4, 2021
In fact, most of her conspiracy-laden speech hinted at dark forces at work to stymie those on the left who, after all, only want to make things better for everyone — especially themselves.
Leave it to left-wing pundits like the despicable Jonathan Chait to distract from Tlaib’s fact-free rants by accusing the right of overreacting.
This denunciation from @davidharsanyi is a classic example of right-wingers using the ultra-sensitive standards, with the least generous interpretation, that they complain so loudly about on the left: https://t.co/x82S3B2FWu
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) August 4, 2021
What a tool.
Responding, David Harsanyi asks whether the reactions to a nauseating “behind the curtain” anti-Semitic reference are really “ultra-sensitive.”
Tlaib says the same people who are keeping down "Palestine" are “exploiting” “regular” citizens here in the US. Is it really "ultrasensitive" to think she's talking about Jews? Who is she talking about?
— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) August 4, 2021
Must be more of that “crude populism” Chait was talking about.
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