Vicky Arias, FISM News
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday canceled an anti-semitic event featuring Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), which was scheduled to be held in the visitor center auditorium of the U.S. Capitol.
However, according to the Jerusalem Post, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) helped the event to proceed by allowing Tlaib to use the “Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Hearing Room, which he chairs and where McCarthy does not have the authority to block an event.”
In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, McCarthy asserted that it’s unethical for lawmakers to engage in anti-semitism.
“It’s wrong for members of Congress to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes about Israel,” McCarthy said. “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 event was part of Nakba, which is Arabic for catastrophe, wherein Palestinians and their supporters lament the founding of Israel each year on May 15.
According to the event’s invitation, the affair marked “75 years since the beginning of the Nakba.” Rep. Tlaib was set to be the featured speaker at the event.
One of the organizers of the event was Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, an organization whose mission statement claims that “Palestinian people are systematically oppressed by Israeli settler-colonialism, apartheid, and military occupation.”
McCarthy tweeted on Tuesday that, in lieu of the anti-Israel event, he would “host a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
This event in the US Capitol is canceled.
Instead, I will host a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the US-Israel relationship. https://t.co/s6YXltFOhu
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) May 10, 2023
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), sent McCarthy a letter prior to the Speaker’s intervention.
In his letter, Greenblatt stated that “in previous years, many Nakba Day events have devolved into hateful, anti-Israel [events] and even [used] antisemitic language.”
“Just last year,” Greenblatt continued, “in May 2022, speakers at Nakba Day events across the country variously referred to Israelis as the ‘stench of white European invaders,’ called for ‘death to Israel’ and stated that ‘everyone should fight within his means … with stones … with guns … with rockets.’”
Tlaib, the first Muslim woman to serve on Michigan’s legislative body, has been known to make what many believe are anti-semitic remarks. At a Nakba rally last year in Detroit, Mich., Tlaib likened Israel to an apartheid state.
“The racism is real,” Tlaib told a crowd at the rally. “[Israel] is a country that believes that apartheid status quo … is okay.”
Just recently, on March 25 of this year, Tlaib misinformed her followers when she tweeted that a fight between Palestinian teenagers was actually the work of “the violent apartheid government of Israel.” Although Twitter slapped her tweet with a ‘context warning label,’ she did not delete the slanderous tweet.
Senator Rick Scott (R-Fl.) tweeted his support of McCarthy’s decision to block the event.
“Every member of Congress should immediately condemn this disgusting antisemitism,” Scott stated. “We need to send a message [that] the United States will always stand with Israel.”
Scott today expressed his disappointment with Sanders and Sen. Chuck Shumer for helping Tlaib’s event to proceed.
“[Sen. Shumer’s’] decision to allow [Sen. Sanders] to host [Rep. Tlaib’s] hateful, anti-Semitic event in the [Pensions Committee] room is disgusting,” Scott tweeted. “The Left is showing Americans very clearly that they do not care about Israel.”
“It’s a sad day for the U.S. when Democrats so blatantly turn their backs on Jewish Americans by uniting around an anti-Semite who not only spreads hate, but actively uses her position to advance an ugly agenda with the purpose of degrading our relationship with Israel,” Scott continued, adding that the nation “will not forget this or forgive this disgraceful bigotry.”