Rashida Tlaib’s ‘Nakba’ Event: A ‘Catastrophe’ in the Senate

By Noah Rothman

Thursday, May 11, 2023

 

Democratic representative Rashida Tlaib thought it would be a brilliant idea to use the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding — an occasion accented simultaneously by an ongoing rocket barrage directed from Hamas-led Gaza toward Israeli civilian population centers — to host an event in the Capitol Building mourning the existence of the Jewish State. When Speaker Kevin McCarthy got wind of the plan to reserve a space in the Capitol the House controls to lament the “Nakba” (a Palestinian term meaning “catastrophe,” which refers to the displacements that followed 1948), he put a swift end to her scheme.

 

“It’s wrong for members of Congress to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes about Israel,” McCarthy told the Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo, who deserves credit for publicizing Tlaib’s proposal in the first place. “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.” But the speaker’s steadfastness was not in evidence in the Democrat-led U.S. Senate.

 

Soon after McCarthy put the kibosh on Tlaib’s anti-Israel party, Senator Bernie Sanders rode to her rescue. The self-identified socialist from Vermont offered to chair a meeting in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Hearing Room, which would serve as the backup venue for Tlaib’s anti-Israel agitation:

 

An overflowing room joined @RepRashida in commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Nakba in a historic event on Capitol Hill. #Nakba75 pic.twitter.com/Y6G02kZ6qz

 

— IMEU (@theIMEU) May 11, 2023

 

Sanders can host whatever meetings he likes as chair of the Senate Labor Committee, and even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer couldn’t stop him. But he could have objected to the display if the avowed defender of Zionism found it objectionable. Schumer’s office has yet to issue any statement about this display, though a source close to the senator told the New York Post that he was caught off guard by the event. Indeed, among Senate Democrats, so far only Nevada senator Jacky Rosen condemned the event, calling it “deeply offensive,” a distortion of the history around Israel’s founding, and a rejection of America’s support for Israel’s right to exist.

 

Rosen’s statement wisely excluded her from any association with what occurred in that Senate meeting room. A cursory survey of the proceedings via the Jerusalem Post’s Lahav Harkov suggests her Democratic colleagues should have followed Rosen’s lead:

 

Tlaib argued, “we have a right to tell our stories of the Nakba of 1948 . . . because the Nakba never ended.” Tlaib acknowledged Sanders’ help, calling him her “aamu,” Arabic for uncle, in the Senate. The senator from Vermont did not attend the event.

 

“No child should ever have to worry what will fall from the sky,” Tlaib said, as children across Israel’s south slept in safe rooms to protect themselves from rockets shot by Palestinian terrorists.

 

Tlaib accused Israeli police of a “sustained campaign of terror,” and that Israel is an apartheid state and that US aid supports ethnic cleansing, Jewish Insider reported.

 

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) attended the event, as well. Bush tweeted earlier this week that “not a single dollar of US aid should go to funding Israeli apartheid.”

 

Even Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO who is congenitally loath to associate himself with a cause or position that might be confused with a conservative point of view, savaged Tlaib and her abettors. It is “disgraceful that Sen. Sanders allowed this event by @RepRashida to be held in our nation’s Capitol,” Greenblatt tweeted. He added that a conversation around “a path to peace” in the Middle East could not be had with people who “espouse anti-Semitism,” and he called on the U.S. Senate to condemn the event.

 

Greenblatt shouldn’t hold his breath. But the press should pull on the thread he has exposed. Will Democrats in Congress and the White House continue to have it both ways — professing their unwavering support for Israel’s right to self-defense while shrugging their shoulders over the commandeering of their property to broadcast missives against Israel’s very existence? They will so long as political media is inclined to look the other way. Sadly, it’s likely that reporters will continue to avert their eyes rather than confront Senate Democrats with yet another grotesque embarrassment that Bernie Sanders and Rashida Tlaib have engineered for their party.