By David French
Friday, August 16, 2019
To the extent that I care at all about Israel blocking
entry to two U.S. congresswomen who partner with anti-Semites who seek its
destruction, I agree with critics who argue that Bibi Netanyahu should not
appear to bow to Donald Trump’s tweeted demands and that blocking Rashida Tlaib
and Ilhan Omar from visiting Israel handed them a short-term propaganda
victory. But that’s not the most important part of the story.
The most important element of the story is the fact that
two American congresswomen shunned a bipartisan congressional delegation to
Israel to go on an independent trip to Israel sponsored by vicious
anti-Semites. Another important element of the story is that, as of today, the
mainstream media have whitewashed Omar and Tlaib’s vile associations.
Writing yesterday, the Washington Post said that
“Omar and Tlaib’s trip to Jerusalem and the West Bank was planned by Miftah, a
nonprofit organization headed by Palestinian lawmaker and longtime peace
negotiator Hanan Ashrawi.” The New York Times described it as an
organization “headed by a longtime Palestinian lawmaker.” In its editorial, the
New York Times editorial board identified it as a group “that promotes
‘global awareness and knowledge of Palestinian realities.’”
This is a whitewash. Thanks to a Twitter
thread from the Washington Examiner’s Seth Mandel — who pointed to
multiple additional sources — I started looking at the articles and views
published on the Miftah website, and it was like peeling an onion of evil.
There was layer upon layer of vile anti-Semitism.
First, the group actually published blood libel, posting
an article that accused “the Jews [of using] the blood of Christians in the
Jewish Passover.” When pro-Israel bloggers condemned the article, Miftah first
claimed that the attacks against the piece were part of a “smear campaign” and
minimized the reference to blood libel as merely “briefly addressed.”
It was just a light sprinkling of blood libel. Move
along, nothing to see here.
The organization later issued a more complete apology,
but we’ve barely gotten started with this vile group. It’s also published an American
neo-Nazi treatise called “Who Rules America: The Alien Grip on Our News and
Entertainment Media Must Be Broken” (archived
here).
As Vox’s Jane Coaston explained, “the original source was
National Vanguard, a neo-Nazi group founded in 2005 in Charlottesville by
members of the National Alliance.” The National Alliance “was for a time the
best financed and best organized white nationalist group in America.” And to
give you a sense of its ideology, here are two paragraphs from the treatise:
The Jew-controlled entertainment
media have taken the lead in persuading a whole generation that homosexuality
is a normal and acceptable way of life; that there is nothing at all wrong with
White women dating or marrying Black men, or with White men marrying Asian
women; that all races are inherently equal in ability and character — except
that the character of the White race is suspect because of a history of
oppressing other races; and that any effort by Whites at racial
self-preservation is reprehensible.
We must oppose the further
spreading of this poison among our people, and we must break the power of those
who are spreading it. It would be intolerable for such power to be in the hands
of any alien minority, with values and interests different from our own. But to
permit the Jews, with their 3,000-year history of nation-wrecking, from ancient
Egypt to Russia, to hold such power over us is tantamount to race suicide.
Indeed, the fact that so many White Americans today are so filled with a sense
of racial guilt and self-hatred that they actively seek the death of their own
race is a deliberate consequence of Jewish media control.
I look forward to hearing apologists argue that these
statements are merely critiques of “Israeli policies.”
But that’s not all, not by a long shot. The group
celebrates terrorists, including an evil woman who helped murder 13 Israeli children.
In an article titled “Let
Us Honor Our Own,” a Miftah contributor describes Dalal Al Mughrabi as “a
Palestinian fighter who was killed during a military operation against Israel
in 1978” and as one of the Palestinian people’s “national heroes.”
The so-called “military operation” is more widely known
as the “Coastal Road Massacre,” a bus hijacking that resulted in the deaths of
38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children.
Al Mughrabi is hardly the only terrorist Miftah
celebrates. It described female suicide bomber Wafa Idrees as the “the
beginning of a string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives
for the cause.” It singles out for recognition Hanadi Jaradat, a woman who blew
herself up in a restaurant, killing 21 people (including four children).
The founder of Miftah herself, Ms. Ashrawi, excused
jihadist violence by telling an interviewer that “you cannot somehow adopt the
language of either the international community or the occupier by describing
anybody who resists as terrorist.”
And of course Miftah published an article asking whether
Israel was a proper homeland for the Jewish people:
Under the heading "Is Israel
the Only Possible Homeland for Jews?", this article questioning the
appropriateness of Israel as the location of a Jewish homeland was posted by
Miftah, one of the sponsors of the proposed Tlaib/Omar visit to Israel: http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=23071&CategoryId=5
@JerylBier
I can keep going, but the evidence above should be
sufficient to establish the truth. It would and should be a national scandal if
GOP congressmen intended to partner with white nationalists during a visit
overseas. It should be a national scandal that members of the American
government intended to partner with vicious anti-Semites on their own
propaganda tour.
After its thunderous denunciations of Bibi Netanyahu and
Donald Trump, will pundits, editorial boards, and reporters take a look at the
scandal hiding in plain sight? Will they hold Tlaib and Omar accountable for
their vile associations? Now is a good time to demonstrate their commitment to
reporting on the full context of international disputes and exposing one of the
world’s oldest hatreds. We shall see how they respond.
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