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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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The post Rashida Tlaib: The idea of uprooting Israeli settlements is ‘something I struggle with’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song appeared first on The Forward.
