Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s
decision Friday to refuse to visit her grandmother on the West Bank
unless she could use the trip to campaign for the anti-Israel Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement proves that the goal of her trip
was to generate anti-Israel propaganda.
Israeli Interior Minister Aryeh Deri tweeted that he granted the Michigan Democratic congresswoman permission to visit “her 90 year old grandmother” as a “gesture of goodwill on a humanitarian basis.”
But
when Tlaib retracted her pledge to refrain from promoting the BDS
movement while visiting her grandmother, Deri said on Twitter:
“Apparently her hate for Israel overcomes her love for her grandmother.”
President
Trump – who had urged Israel not to permit Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar,
D-Minn., to visit the Jewish state this weekend – agreed with Deri.
The
president tweeted: “Rep. Tlaib wrote a letter to Israeli officials
desperately wanting to visit her grandmother. Permission was quickly
granted, whereupon Tlaib obnoxiously turned the approval down, a
complete setup. The only real winner here is Tlaib’s grandmother. She
doesn’t have to see her now!”
It’s important to understand that
BDS is not just anti-Israel – it is anti-Semitic. It seeks to cut off
the only Jewish state in the world from all international trade,
diplomatic and military relations, cultural and academic programs,
tourism and all other ties with every nation on Earth. If fully
implemented, BDS would destroy Israel’s economy and lead to the collapse
of the Jewish state – a goal the founders of BDS proudly embrace.
Israel
has been getting plenty of criticism for barring the entry of Tlaib and
Omar, including from many individuals and groups who are normally
strong supporters. Few of these people are defending Tlaib and Omar for
their repeated anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments, but instead have
expressed concern that Israel looks bad for refusing entry to members of
the U.S. Congress.
After all, a democratic nation should never
bar elected representatives of a close ally from visiting, critics of
the Israeli decision argue. What kind of nation would take such an
action?
Well, one nation that
did the exact same thing
in 2012 was the United States of America, in an action by the
administration of Democratic President Barack Obama. The U.S. government
refused to give a visa to a member of the Israeli Knesset (the nation’s
parliament), because it said the political party he belonged to was a
“terrorist organization.”
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin protested the exclusion of Knesset Member Michael Ben Ari, a member of the National Union Party.
"National
Union," Rivlin wrote in his letter of protest to the U.S.,"is a
completely legitimate faction of the Israeli parliament, and Ben Ari an
elected representative of the State of Israel, a close American ally. To
impugn him as belonging to a terrorist organization and bar him from
visiting the country is unacceptable.”
So much for the
“unprecedented” action Israel is being criticized for in barring Tlaib
and Omar from entering. Every nation on Earth has the sovereign right to
determine who can and cannot enter – including Israel.
Barring Tlaib and Omar from entering Israel was a tough call, but I believe Israel made the right decision.
Importantly,
Tlaib and Omar turned down an invitation to be part of a bipartisan
group of 72 U.S. House members who visited Israel last week. There is no
indication that Israel would have barred the pair from being part of
that large group of U.S. lawmakers.
The Democratic House members
on the trip met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas – who has strongly denounced President Trump for moving the U.S.
Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and for other actions – refused to meet
with the Republican House members, just as he refuses to negotiate peace
with the Israelis.
Instead of joining their colleagues, Tlaib
and Omar chose to work with a blatantly anti-Semitic group called Miftah
to set up a trip that would have avoided any meetings with Israeli
government officials and turned into a hate-filled media circus
attacking Israel and the Jewish people.
Miftah, which would have been the tour guide for Tlaib and Omar, has published
an article
that said Jews celebrate Passover by killing Christian children and
using their blood to bake matzoh (unleavened bread). This is an ancient
anti-Semitic lie that has been used for 2,000 years to justify the
murder of Jews, and was heavily promoted by the Nazis, who slaughtered 6
million Jews in the Holocaust.
In 2006, Miftah
published
an article that praised female suicide bombers. The group has also
expressed support for naming public squares after Palestinian terrorists
who murder innocent Jewish civilians in Israel.
Instead
of joining their colleagues, Tlaib and Omar chose to work with a
blatantly anti-Semitic group called Miftah to set up a trip that would
have avoided any meetings with Israeli government officials and turned
into a hate-filled media circus attacking Israel and the Jewish people.
Miftah
refuses to recognize the existence of Israel and opposes joint
Arab-Israeli peace programs. The group also denies the existence of the
ancient Jewish temples in Jerusalem, an absurd claim that rejects
historical reality and undermines a central pillar of Islam as much as
it undercuts Judaism and Christianity.
If that weren’t enough, Miftah also posted a neo-Nazi article that
compares Jews to poison
and derides “Jewish media control” as an evil that must be combated. To
be clear, this isn’t just anti-Israel; it is basic anti-Semitism.
Likewise,
the BDS movement, which Tlaib and Omar actively support, isn’t about
registering dissatisfaction with Israeli policies. It is about applying a
double-standard to Israel.
BDS is designed to demonize and
delegitimize the Jewish state and replace it with a Palestinian state –
something the BDS movement’s co-founder proudly
proclaimed in 2013.
BDS
does not simply object to Israel’s administration of land it captured
after Arab armies invaded the Jewish state in 1967 in an effort to
destroy it. BDS opposes Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state within
its pre-1967 borders, according to the movement’s official documents.
Instead, the BDS lobby calls for a series of steps that would dismantle
the Jewish state.
It
is no wonder, then, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
decided not to allow Tlaib and Omar into Israel on a Miftah-orchestrated
anti-Israel trip.
Netanyahu explained that while Israel is open
to critics and criticism, “Israeli law prohibits the entry into Israel
of those who call for and work to impose boycotts on Israel, as do other
democracies that prohibit the entry of people who seek to harm the
country.”
Given the long track record of anti-Israel comments by
Tlaib and Omar, there was plenty of reason for Israel to be skeptical
about the purpose of their trip. The red flags dramatically increased as
their supposed arrival date approached.
Because the Israelis were
kept in the dark about the plans by the two congresswomen, Israel was
compelled to prepare for the uncomfortable possibility that the two
would try to visit the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City – the
complex where the two Jewish temples once stood and where the Islamic
holy sites of the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque are located.
Such
a visit would stir controversy after weekend riots erupted on the
Temple Mount and could have sparked a new outbreak of potentially deadly
violence by Palestinians.
President Trump and Prime Minister
Netanyahu appear to realize that the bipartisan pro-Israel congressional
consensus that existed in the past is vanishing. That is a sad reality
for Israel and American Jews.
While House Democratic leaders may
believe the trend in their own chamber is reversible, they nevertheless
rushed to defend Tlaib and Omar when the two were barred from entering
Israel, instead demonizing Netanyahu. This is unfortunate.
The
fact is that anti-Semitism (cloaked as opposition to Israel since the
creation of the modern Jewish state) in one of the oldest and vilest
forms of prejudice around, and has been used to justify mass murder on a
nightmarish scale.
Just as all men and women of good conscience
must denounce racism and other forms of prejudice against particular
groups, we must denounce the evil of anti-Semitism. Reps. Tlaib and Omar
do not deserve our sympathy or support after being barred from entering
Israel. They only deserve our condemnation for their actions promoting
hatred of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
