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Rashida Tlaib: The idea of uprooting Israeli settlements is ‘something I struggle with’
WASHINGTON (JTA) — In a recent speech, Rep. Rashida Tlaib said she struggles with the idea of uprooting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, comparing the evacuation of settlements to the displacement of Palestinians during and after Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.
The Democratic congresswoman, who is Palestinian-American, made the remarks on Monday via Zoom to a group of Jewish high school students who gather virtually to hear from Palestinians. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency obtained a recording of the Zoom call.
During her appearance, one of the students asked her about Israeli West Bank settlements, which much of the international community considers illegal. In response, the Michigan representative invoked the “Nakba,” the term meaning “catastrophe” that Palestinians use to describe their displacement during and after the 1948 war.
“Some settlements have been there for so long, right?” she said. “And just the idea around taking families that — that’s been their home — it’s just completely uprooting, forcibly displacing. It’s something I struggle with because, like, we’re doing it all over again, right? This happened during the Nakba.”
Tlaib immediately qualified that “you can’t compare” the Nakba to the removal of settlements, saying that Palestinians endured more violence than uprooted settlers when they were dispersed or expelled. Palestinians, she said, also deserved “restorative justice.” But she appeared to have difficulty accommodating the idea of removing families who had lived in their homes for generations.
“Some generations now don’t know anything but that community, that is in the eyes of the United Nations and many others and agreements, it’s illegal,” she said. “So I don’t know how we do it.”
The remarks signal that Tlaib, perhaps the most outspoken critic of Israel in Congress, has something in common with many right-wing Zionists whom she otherwise opposes: an aversion to evacuating settlements. Tlaib supports the one-state solution — in which Israelis and Palestinians would live together in a single country with equal rights — and proponents of similar visions have said that, in such a scenario, Israeli settlers could remain where they are.
But pro-Palestinian politicians rarely evince sympathy for settlers, and in the past, Tlaib has been a vehement critic of Israeli settlements. Her statement Monday appears to be the first time she has expressed these sentiments publicly.
“I’m idealistic as well, and people think I’m a little corny, but I know I just think we can all live together equally,” she said later in the 35-minute talk. “I really believe we can have a state where all of our Jewish neighbors across the country can feel safe.”
Tlaib’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment or clarification. Multiple organizations that have allied with her — including Jewish Voice for Peace, the anti-Zionist Jewish group that recently cosponsored an event with Tlaib commemorating the Nakba at the U.S. Capitol — likewise did not respond to requests to comment on her remarks.
The meetings of high school students are organized by Ezra Beinart, son of Peter Beinart, the Jewish writer who, in recent decades, has transitioned from being a fierce defender of Israel to advocating for a one-state outcome. Ezra Beinart is a high school student in New York City.
Two days after Tlaib spoke to the group, she hosted the Nakba commemoration at the Capitol and introduced a congressional resolution that would recognize the Nakba, spurred in part by her frustration with weeks of Congress members celebrating Israel’s birthday.
The text of Tlaib’s Nakba resolution decries settlements. It states that “the Nakba is not only a historical event, but also an ongoing process characterized by Israel’s separate-and-unequal laws and policies toward Palestinians, including the destruction of Palestinian homes, the construction and expansion of illegal settlements, and Israel’s confinement of Palestinians to ever-shrinking areas of land.”
Tlaib’s efforts this week to mark the Nakba in Congress drew sharp criticism from mainstream Jewish groups, many of which also oppose a one-state outcome, which they fear would lead to a Palestinian-majority state hostile to Jews.
Tlaib has a long history of positions that incense the pro-Israel community. She routinely opposes defense assistance to Israel and backs the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement targeting Israel, known as BDS.
She outraged Jewish Democratic lawmakers last year when she said progressives could not support Israel’s government, which was then centrist. In 2020, she tweeted, then deleted, the phrase “From the river to the sea,” which is viewed as a call for Israel’s removal. In 2019, under pressure from then-President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu banned her and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) from entering Israel, a decision that prompted rare criticism from pro-Israel advocates who argued that her status of a congresswoman merited more respectful treatment.
In her chat with the students, Tlaib returned to the themes that make her a target of mainstream pro-Israel opprobrium, including her advocacy for a binational state. She rejected the view, held by many large Jewish organizations, that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and likened Israel’s current practices to apartheid and to the Jim Crow South — analogies also rejected by most pro-Israel organizations.
“Separate but equal didn’t work in our country,” she said, referring to the various proposals that would establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. “We tried and it didn’t work. Segregation made it more violent for Black neighbors.”
But she also described a vision of Israeli settlers and Palestinians living in harmony. She noted that her grandmother, whose hardships she frequently cites in criticizing Israel, lives “feet” away from a settlement. She recalled playing basketball in the neighboring settlement as a child when she visited her.
“I remember the head of the village who knew some of the folks there,” she said. “And it was beautiful, in that sense of, like, being like neighbors.”
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Talarico blames Netanyahu, not the Israeli people, for devastation in Gaza
(JTA) — James Talarico, Texas’ Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, said he holds Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, rather than the Israeli people, responsible for civilian devastation in Gaza.
Talarico, a Texas state representative, is running neck and neck against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, in a race whose results could affect which party controls the Senate this November. Israel has been one of many sources of disagreement among the candidates, who have sparred on issues ranging from affordability to immigration to reproductive rights.
“I believe that Israel, like any nation, has a right to defend its people,” the candidate said while fielding questions on Wednesday at a CNN town hall. “But I don’t believe that Benjamin Netanyahu has a right to wage war against civilians or use collective punishment or restrict aid to civilians.”
A Texas Politics Project poll, issued by the University of Texas this week, showed Paxton trailing Talarico by 3 percentage points, with 47% to the Democrat’s 50% and a margin of error of 3.34 percentage points.
Talarico said in August that he supported stopping arms sales to the Netanyahu government and conditioning military aid “on ending the death and the destruction in Gaza and the West Bank.” He declined to call the crisis “genocide,” noting that the term is being litigated in the International Court of Justice. But he said he’d “use every bit of our nation’s diplomatic and financial leverage to protect the lives of Palestinians.”
When he was pressed further by Rabbi Holly Levin Cohn of Congregation Beth El Binah in Dallas during the town hall, Talarico stressed the importance of directing his criticisms “toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not the Israeli people.”
Addressing Israelis’ trauma, Talarico acknowledged that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel “was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Cohn pushed back on his comments regarding aid restrictions, noting Israeli support of humanitarian efforts and arguing that there’s much more going on in the country than the media may be projecting.
Talarico told the rabbi he recognized that his “words carry weight” and gave her his word that he’s “going to continue to listen to all sides of this conflict.” He also expressed hope that “we can all come together to fight for a two-state solution where we have security for Israel and we have freedom and self-determination for Palestinians.”
Talarico also gave a “shoutout” to a local rabbi, Neil Blumofe at Congregation Agudas Achim in Austin. “I spent my first year of my seminary studies learning the Hebrew scriptures from a local rabbi,” he said. “Shout out Rabbi Neil Blumofe!” Cohn grinned.
The post Talarico blames Netanyahu, not the Israeli people, for devastation in Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
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Irish Jewish leader ‘shocked’ after hotel cancels over 70 rooms for antisemitism conference
(JTA) — DUBLIN — An Irish Jewish leader said a Dublin hotel canceled rooms reserved for European delegates after learning that they were visiting for an antisemitism conference.
Maurice Cohen, the president of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, said he booked over 70 rooms at the Herbert Park Hotel for people attending a meeting of the Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism (SECCA).
The envoys, who included Jewish community leaders, diplomats and government ministers from across Europe, were invited to the conference this week organized by the World Jewish Congress and the European Commission. The event was tied to Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which rotates between EU member states, and included delegates meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. Most of the government-appointed special envoys are not themselves Jewish.
Cohen said he met with Herbert Park Hotel’s general manager in May to inspect its conference rooms and explained the purpose of the event. According to Cohen, the manager responded by asking, “Will the IDF be involved?”
That question “shocked” Cohen, he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“I said, this is about antisemitism. It’s not about Israelis, it’s not about Israel, it’s not about the IDF,” he said.
Cohen said the manager told him she had to consult with the hotel owners to determine if his booking could be accepted. The next day, he learned that the rooms were canceled without explanation. The Herbert Park Hotel did not respond to JTA requests for comment.
Cohen booked rooms for the delegates and the conference at different hotels. He described the cancellation in a speech at the SECCA meeting on Tuesday, calling it an example of “contemporary antisemitism.”
“How quickly does the word ‘Jewish’ change a conversation?” he said to the attendees. “How easily does a gathering about antisemitism become associated with the Israeli army? And how quickly can people who were welcome when they were simply 70 hotel guests become something rather different once they are known to be attending a Jewish conference?”
Yoni Wieder, Ireland’s chief rabbi, suggested that the hotel could have based its decision on fears of controversy.
“It’s possible that whoever took the decision had no objection to the conference itself,” Wieder told JTA. “They may simply have wanted to avoid the possibility of protests outside the hotel or some other backlash.”
Ireland’s government has been sharply critical of Israel. The country has recognized Palestinian statehood, barred Israeli far-right ministers from entering its borders and in July passed a law that banned imports from Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. Martin has said that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, a charge Israel vigorously rejects. He has also condemned rising antisemitism in Ireland, which is home to about 2,200 Jews.
Herbert Park Hotel is “actually quite familiar with Jewish guests,” according to Wieder, who said that he has overseen kosher catering at the hotel.
Cohen, who has lived in Dublin all his life, said he had fond memories of the hotel. For years it was his favored site for meetings, New Year’s Eve celebrations and his mother’s birthdays through her 93rd.
“Over time the hotel became associated in my mind with friendship, celebration and my mother,” he said in his speech. “So it was strange that, many years later, the same hotel would acquire a very different place in my memory.”
The post Irish Jewish leader ‘shocked’ after hotel cancels over 70 rooms for antisemitism conference appeared first on The Forward.
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Whatever you think of Ilhan Omar, these threats are unconscionable
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to build a case to strip Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) of her citizenship and eventually deport her.
It is my hope that American Jews — even those who do not like Omar and can recite every questionable comment she has made over the past 15 years to illustrate why — will understand this as offensive and outrageous not only because they are Americans, but because they are Jews.
The Trump administration may claim that it is building a case against Omar due to paperwork (reports suggest that they are interested in whether her father listed her age as 17 on her citizenship application when she was really 18). It is similarly filing dozens of lawsuits attempting to denaturalize citizens by trying to prove they lied in the process of gaining citizenship. However, that this is happening now, ahead of the midterm elections against a sitting member of Congress, a high-profile progressive whom the president has said should “go back” to her country of origin, suggests that it is, to put it mildly, politically motivated.
Evidently, the Trump administration sees citizenship not as a right or a responsibility but as a reward, one that can be taken away if that is seen as useful to the president and his adherents. That use could be silencing political opposition or something as simple (and callous) as an opportunity to brag about the sheer number of attempted denaturalizations.
Jews, too, have found themselves on the wrong end of political denaturalization. I do not mean to compare the Trump administration to the Nazis, but the stubborn fact is that Jews were indeed stripped of their citizenship as part of a political project in Germany and elsewhere in Europe in the 1930s and 40s. And in the early 20th century in the United States, it was Jews who politicians claimed were incapable of assimilating, of ever really being a part of the United States. These arguments culminated in legislation that kept out Jews who could have found refuge here. The threat of denaturalization and the experience of perpetual otherness is a grievous part of modern Jewish history; we should be offended by its presence in our political present.
Jewish tradition as well as history encourages us to stand up to authority when that authority is wrong. Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman; Nathan yells at King David for sleeping with Bathsheba and having her husband killed; Moses famously urges Pharoah to change his oppressive ways. Even God is on the receiving end of pushback when Abraham pleads and negotiates to spare Sodom.
I do not think one needs to be Jewish to be outraged by the attempt to denaturalize Ilhan Omar. I think it is also bone-chilling as an American who believes we, including our elected officials, have the right to openly oppose our president, and I am worried as a person who thinks it would be good to continue to live in a democratic republic. And I am sure that there are Jews who will say that Omar deserves to lose her citizenship because she has said things about Israel they do not like.
But the Jewish lens through which I see this is that it is right to challenge power when it is abused, and it is wrong for the powerful to make a show of trying to cast their opponents out of the country.
The point is not whether Trump can make good on the threat to strip Omar of her citizenship and deport her, but that it is obscene to use denaturalization as punishment for being a high-profile political opponent in the first place. If he is trying to make it more dangerous to speak out while being from the “wrong” country, then the rest of us need to say that this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be an American citizen.
We should do this because we are Americans and we should do this because we are Jews. We should do this because of the ways in which our American and Jewish identities bleed into one another. And, we should do this because we may not know exactly whether it is as Americans or as Jews that we know we have to protect the right to speak truth to power, but we know we need to do it all the same.
The post Whatever you think of Ilhan Omar, these threats are unconscionable appeared first on The Forward.
