Prepare for a bumpy ride. Tlaib and Omar are in the Democratic Party driver’s seat.
Opinion: Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar Do ‘Thelma and Louise’
In the real-life Beltway version, the Michigander (Ms. Tlaib) and the Minnesotan (Ms. Omar) constitute half of “The Squad”—the four female House progressives who are defying the convention that freshman members of Congress are to be seen and not heard. Ms. Tlaib is the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress and speaks often of her grandmother in the West Bank. She has endorsed a “one state” solution under which Israel would cease to exist.
Ms. Omar came to America after fleeing Somalia. Her election marked several congressional firsts: the first Somali-American, the first naturalized citizen from Africa, the first nonwhite woman from Minnesota, and one of the first two Muslim women (along with Ms. Tlaib).
Part of their notoriety comes from their willingness to match President Trump’s outrages and raise them. More comes from their willingness to clap back at their own leaders, even if that means accusing Speaker Nancy Pelosi of racism. They remain largely unrepentant—and energized.
It’s giving their party leaders fits, especially on Israel. Months ago Ms. Omar played to an ugly trope when she tweeted that American politicians’ support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins, baby.” When Mrs. Pelosi responded with a resolution flatly condemning anti-Semitism, she discovered it would split her party. So it was watered down to the point where Ms. Omar and Ms. Tlaib themselves voted aye.
Democrats had hoped a mutual condemnation of Mr. Trump would restore party harmony. But no sooner had the House formally condemned the president for racism than Ms. Omar reached into her inner Louise and introduced a resolution supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement aimed at harming the Israeli economy and making the Jewish state an international pariah.
The bill, co-sponsored by Ms. Tlaib and Georgia’s Rep. John Lewis, is clever. It doesn’t specifically mention Israel, the Palestinians or even BDS. It just affirms the right to boycott, and invokes boycotts against Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and apartheid South Africa as moral inspiration.
But the parallel is obvious: Boycotting Israel is like boycotting Nazis. The BDS movement tweeted that it “warmly welcomes” the bill. Ms. Omar herself says her bill is an opportunity to talk about the BDS movement.
The bill isn’t going anywhere in Mrs. Pelosi’s House, but it puts the speaker in a pickle. In a May speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Mrs. Pelosi cited BDS as an example of “bigoted or dangerous ideologies masquerading as policy.” But other Democrats are increasingly timid about saying the same.
In February, the Senate passed an anti-BDS measure. Of the seven Senators running for the Democratic nomination for president, only Michael Bennet and Amy Klobuchar voted for it. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren each voted against it.
At their 2012 convention, after Democrats removed platform language recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Barack Obama personally intervened to have it restored. When convention manager Antonio Villaraigosa put it to a vote on the convention floor, it was booed—but he ruled it carried anyway. Today there is no one with the stature of Mr. Obama to hush Reps. Omar and Tlaib. Their trip to Israel will give them a global stage that practically guarantees incendiary language on the “occupation,” questions at the presidential debates Democratic candidates would rather duck, maybe even a divisive convention fight.
How far all this is from March 2018, when Conor Lamb, a former Marine, won a special election for a Republican House district in Pennsylvania by eschewing attacks on President Trump and presenting a moderate Democratic face. When Democrats took the House majority by flipping more than two dozen seats in districts Mr. Trump had carried, the received wisdom was that Democrats had learned their lesson and Mrs. Pelosi was firmly in charge. This seemed confirmed in January when Mrs. Pelosi was elected speaker even as many expected her to step down.
The Squad is now in the driver’s seat of the Democratic debate. They are not letting go of the wheel even it means, à la Thelma and Louise, taking the whole car over a cliff.
@ Felix Quigley:
Edgar this material on el Husseini has long been in my head. It was done about 15 years ago by Jared Israel and Francisco Gil White whom Ted knows well.
Since then new material has emerged on how the Nazis were stopped from the massacre, very like Lithuania, just by the defeat of Rommel in the Desert War.
Such fun and I am elated to find a McGurn at the wheel but there is a way to deal with this visit and it is absolutely serious.
Everywhere they go, and they should be allowed to go only into places where it is safe to do political work in opposition tothese two, they should be met with a disciplined group of activists all with very large portraits of Hajj Amin el Husseini in conversation with Adolf Hitler, and the whole of the political conversation should centre on Hajj Amin el Husseini. That el Husseini founded the Muslim Brotherhood along with el Banna, that he was the Nazi Antisemite from the very beginning in 1920, that the British cultivated this person, that he founded the Palestinians and was a mentor to Arafat. Everywhere these two go, every public space, then it should be made impossible for them to be photographed or videoed without being framed by Hajj Amin el Husseini and Hitler. There must be good printers in Israel that can prepare about 3 foot by 2 foot stiff canvas type effigies.
@ Felix Quigley:
I just recalled about Haji Amin, there are pictures of him in Berlin with Hitler, where he spent the War years… They may have been saluting one another. The Germans and
their acolytes were great at clicking the boots and saluting. I suppose that a year’s daily practice in front of a mirror can accomplish anything…..
What a Chutzpah….. the computer had the nerve to reject my answer that 9+7= 16, and I had to back arrow and answer another complicated math mystery……..
@ Edgar G.:
I think the book about the Greek is “The Truth About Jesus, Was He A Myth”.
I recall that it started something like this…”Today I am 2000 years old”.. ( maybe it was a bit more than 2000)
@ Felix Quigley:
Felix- nice to hear from you…You can find on the internet some very interesting stuff by a man, originally a Presbyterian Minister but after a short while, a Rationalist. He is M.M. Mangasarian, His full name is so unusual that I always remember it. His tale about a Greek Pagan falling asleep for 2000 years and awakening at the sound of church bells etc is so hilarious and true to logic that I’m surprised that everybody hasn’t read it.
You can find him on Project Gutenberg
I discovered him about 50 years ago, having read one of his books, the which, I cant recall. I recommend him.
Edgar there is wisdom in that. Tlaib and Omar can be answered and destroyed just use the image of Hajj Amin el Husseini. To answer the missionaries you have to expose the hoax of Jesus which is that there were thousands of Jesus Jews crucified by the Romans.
@ Philippe:
It’s very bad I agree, But a hell of a lot worse, by many fold, is that they allow Missionaries in, to go round with their sneaking tactics, so that there have to be special organisations formed to try to monitor and combat them…… Free speech, and freedom of movement and expression, are totally misused in that most horrendous curse on Judaism…Conversion……!!
Maybe they’ll both accidentally fall from a 39 floor in Tel Aviv?
Judicial Watch Files House Ethics Complaint against Rep. Ilhan Omar Over Potential Immigration, Marriage, Tax, and Student Loan Fraud
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it hand-delivered ethics complaint to Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Office of Congressional Ethics David Skaggs calling for a full investigation into potential crimes tied to allegations that Rep. Ilhan Omar may have married her biological brother.
“The evidence is overwhelming Rep. Omar may have violated the law and House rules. The House of Representatives must urgently investigate and resolve the serious allegations of wrongdoing by Rep. Omar,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “We encourage Americans to share their views on Rep. Omar’s apparent misconduct with their congressmen.”
The Judicial Watch complaint is reprinted below:
• 2019-07-22 • Judicial Watch
Show the shrews the truth. Let them see sodomite women working in honest jobs, earning wage as required by Israel’s laws. Let them see sodomite women as equals in Israel, with the right to vote, drive, use public beaches etc.
Then see the sodomite mothers who’ve committed family honor crimes, been beaten by both husband and sons, made to work in the fields in the midday sun while the family donkey stays in the shade. Let them go into a sodomite cafe and get a cold drink order taken by a man.
It’s most unfortunate that we have agreed to have Omar and Tlaib come to Israel. I can’t think of anyone less worthy of such an honour! That these two highly disturbed women will be here to spew their hatred of Jews and others is — to say the least — disconcerting. I can only hope that their visit is cut short for one reason or another!
It would be a huge error from Bibi to open Israel’s borders to such provocative agents . Their agenda is lies, defamations, gross deformations, slanders .The ” progressive ” medias will made a huge broth to show Bibi kneeling to such witches . They are radical ENNEMIES . There are no misunderstandings with such poisonous characters .Just slam our door in their face .
Is there any difference between u s dems. u k labour and Israeli sodomite parties?