By Bruce S. Ticker
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — The Democratic party’s response to President Trump’s disgusting taunts makes Democrats in the House of Representatives vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy.
Trump was called out by House Democrats for denouncing perceived immigrants in Congress, yet the Democrats danced around atrocious claims against American Jews uttered by one member of the quartet known as “The Squad” — Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaid, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Ayanna Pressley.
According to The Jewish Insider website, CNN’s Jake Tapper quoted a Democrat saying, “Everybody was completely outraged by what the president said, and everybody thought it was appropriate to criticize him. But this was the first time the House has taken action to criticize him in any way. We couldn’t even bring ourselves to have a resolution exclusively condemning anti-Semitism uttered by one of those members (llhan Omar), but we leapt to their defense here.”
Trump suggested the members known as The Squad, who are all women of color, return to their home countries, solve the problems there and come back here. Maybe Trump mistaked Pressley’s Boston for Nova Scotia; Tlaib’s Detroit for Windsor, across the Detroit River in Canada; and Ocasio-Cortez’s New York city for, well, NYC. Omar emigrated from Somalia as a child to Minneapolis and became a citizen – of the United States of America – while still a teen-ager.
The House resolution, passed by a 240-187 party-line vote on Tuesday, rebuked Trump with this wording in Congress-speak: “…strongly condemns President Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color by saying that our fellow Americans who are immigrants, and those who may look to the President like immigrants, should ‘go back’ to other countries, by referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as ‘invaders,’ and by saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants (or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants) do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.”
Four Republicans and an independent joined Democrats in voting for the resolution. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Bucks County, Pa., who narrowly survived the 2018 election, is among those four Republicans. Like other counties around Philadelphia, Bucks is trending Democratic and comprises a burgeoning Jewish population.
In early March, Democrats in the House turned back a measure that would have “strongly condemn (ed)” Ilhan Omar for saying, “I want to talk about the political influence that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
That time, Democrats did not name a name – namely, Omar – and expanded the list of prejudices from anti-Semitism to just about all possible prejudices, though they did neglect to mention one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eaters.
While singling out anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bias at the start of the resolution, the measure ends with: “The House of Representatives…encourages all public officials to confront the reality of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry, as well as historical struggles against them, to ensure that the United States will live up to the transcendent principles of tolerance, religious freedom, and equal protection as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the First and 14th Amendments.”
House Democrats were certainly right to rebuke Trump, and their political reasons for whitewashing the March resolution are understandable. Democratic leaders can see that a rising number of Democratic voters are harshly critical of Israel. That does not free them of moral obligations to call out their own bigots, and this double-standard could well come around and bite them in the rear. Republicans may well remind voters of this in the future.
Compounding Tuesday’s resolution were some of the disingenuous responses of Trump’s targets: “This is the agenda of white nationalists,” said Omar, a black Muslim, as quoted by The Washington Post. “This is his plan to pit us against one another.”
Does Omar need Trump’s help “to pit us against one another?”
Or Ocasio-Cortez, whose family is from Puerto Rico: “…no matter what the president says, this country belongs to you, and it belongs to everyone.”
Considering some of Ocasio-Cortez’s negative comments about Israel, one must wonder how American Jews figure into her equation. Omar and Tlaib have issued far stronger statements, and both are co-sponsoring a resolution for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that “opposes unconstitutional legislative efforts to limit the use of boycotts to further civil rights at home and abroad.”
Palestinians do not consistently respect “civil rights” for their own people.
Israel should certainly be subject to criticism, but Omar and Tlaib behave like they are programmed to blame Israel for everything. They represent a very small minority in the House now, but in Britain the anti-Israel crowd dominates the Labour Party. I doubt if that will ever be replicated here, but it is a possibility and the Omar/Tlaib rhetoric could push undecided pro-Israel voters to back Trump in 2020.
It was never their religion, Islam, provoking push back from Jews and other supporters of Israel but their attitudes. If we should be concerned about their religion at all, it is how their actions reflect on more evenhanded Muslims who understandably fear retaliation.
At the same time, Trump’s disgraceful swipes at The Squad were unexpected even for the most cynical of Trump observers. However, the public reaction from shocked citizens – Republican leaders among them – has been overwhelming and is bound to cost Trump politically among other factions of on-the-fence voters.
Trump took in cries of “Send her back” from a crowd in North Carolina Wednesday night, and then Omar returned to a hero’s welcome in Minneapolis the following evening. Meanwhile, her BDS bill sits in the hopper awaiting consideration from the House.
I wonder how her colleagues will react if they catch a clause comparing the BDS movement to “boycotting Nazi Germany from March 1933 to October 1941 in response to the dehumanization of the Jewish people in the lead-up to the Holocaust.”
The activist group STOP ANTI-SEMITISM on Friday designated Omar with the title “Anti-Semite of the Week.” At least they had the sense to name a name – Omar’s name.
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Ticker is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.