There are many aspects of Rashida Tlaib’s on/off/on again/off again visit to Israel/Palestine that are worth examining. Let’s take them in turn.
First, there is the propaganda value of the whole absurd affair – what some are calling, the matter of optics. How do things look? No one quite knows who has come out ahead. Many supporters of Israel think Israel looks bad for cancelling the trip initially, especially as Netanyahu is being depicted as “weak” for acceding to Trump’s request.
Others think that whatever advantage the anti-Israel forces gained by Israel’s flip-flop, they then lost when, after Israel announced that, as a “humanitarian gesture,” Tlaib could come “to visit her 90-year-old grandmother” as long as she committed herself to not promoting, while in Israel, the BDS Movement. Tlaib at first agreed, but a few hours later, when “Palestinians” expressed their outrage at this agreement, she suddenly cancelled. Apparently that visit to her grandmother, “possibly the last time I will see her” (said Tlaib), turned out to be less important than in hewing to the anti-Israel script.
Optics, optics – who looks good, who looks bad, who made the right and who the wrong decision? Hard to tell, isn’t it? Some days you think Israel should have welcomed them with open arms, feigning friendship – taqiyya isn’t just for Muslims — with Israelis eager to please and ready to show their country to the clearly unsympathetic visitors, making it harder for Tlaib and Omar to paint them as cruel oppressors, determined to keep them from reporting on Israeli reality. And on other days, you think Israel did exactly the right think to keep them out, (save for that conditional “humanitarian gesture” made to Rashida Tlaib, which she turned down).
Second, we should learn a little more about those behind the Congresswomens’ intended visit. This was Miftah, an anti-Israel group that sponsored the Omar-Tlaib trip and planned their entire itinerary. Miftah is a Palestinian NGO headed by that longstanding PLO propagandist and Arafat henchman, Hanan Ashrawi. It has done far more than support the BDS movement. On its website, Miftah has praised Palestinian suicide bombers and published antisemitic material.
A report posted on Miftah’s site in 2006 praised Palestinian women who took part in the second intifada. In particular, Miftah praised Wafa Idris, who in a suicide bombing killed one Israeli and wounded 150 others. The report said that Idris, the first female suicide bomber of the second intifada, “marked the beginning of a string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives for the cause.”
After President Obama held a Passover Seder at the White House in 2013, Miftah staffer Nawaf Al Zaru published the following:
“Does Obama in fact know the relationship, for example, between ‘Passover’ and ‘Christian blood’?! Or ‘Passover’ and ‘Jewish blood rituals?! Much of the chatter and gossip about historical Jewish blood rituals in Europe are real and not fake as they claim; the Jews used the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover.”
This is the Blood Libel from the Middle Ages, that over the centuries prompted many a pogrom. And Miftah was happy to post it. When that Arabic-language post was then discovered by a horrified blogger, Miftah at first defended the article and attacked the blogger who had noticed it, but eventually, when too many outsiders became aware of the original article, Miftah decided to apologize and claimed it had disciplined Al Zaru. Since Al Zaru remained on the staff of Miftah, it’s unclear what kind of “discipline” he endured. Al Zaru himself made no apology. Possibly he was told something like this: “Please don’t do this , because even if you write in Arabic, too many Zionists will find and report on it. Yes, we know the story about the blood for matzahs is true, but we still have to consider the situation. The Zionists have managed to convince everybody that such a story is ‘antisemitic.’ So for now, leave that story alone.”
Third, what do we know about Rashida Tlaib and her family? She’s a vocal supporter of BDS. But is there more to her anti-Israel views than that? Both her mother and her husband (Tlaib is now divorced) come from the village of Beita, a West Bank hotbed for extreme violence, including terrorism, against the Israelis. Her husband and her siblings are a window into her other views. Her sister Layla, for example, has been on the FBI’s No-Fly List for the past seven years. We don’t know what she did to deserve this, but the FBI’s anti-terrorism center does not put people on that list lightly.
Then there are her brothers. Her brother Nader has posted comments online praising “the heroes of Hamas.” Hamas has been widely recognized as a terrorist organization in many countries, including the U.S., and here is Tlaib’s brother calling some of its members “heroes.” Nader has also posted as a comment to a news story that “Canada will soon be a Muslim-majority country.” That’s what he chooses to believe; clearly, it is what he hopes will happen. It’s too bad that no one has quoted his remark to Rashida Tlaib and asked her if “she looks forward to the day when America will be a Muslim-majority country.” However she answers, that answer will damn her, among Infidels if she answers “Yes,” and among her fellow Muslims if she answers “No.” That same brother has been peddling the preposterous myth that the Jews in Israel – the “so-called Jews” — are not really Jews at all but impostors, and thus have no valid claim to Israel.
Another of Rashida’s siblings, Ibrahim Elhabed, praised a post that said “Zionists control the media.” Does Rashdia Tlaib share that view? And if she does, how does she explain her rapid rise to political stardom? Why couldn’t the “Zionist-controlled media” have prevented that, or even prevented her election?
Finally, her former husband Fayez Tlaib has posted online his deep admiration for that arch-terrorist Yassir Arafat, head of the PLO.
By her husband, sister, brothers shall we know her? Is it fair to attribute to her the venomous views that her relatives seem to share? Of course it is.
In January 2019, Rashida Tlaib attended, with her family, friends, and supporters from across the country, a private dinner in Detroit to celebrate her election. Among the invited guests was the pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah activist Abbas Hamideh, the co-founder and executive director of Al Awda, which means “right of return.”
Hamideh once tweeted: “Criminal Zionism will eventually die just like Nazism. No racist and supremacist political ideology should maintain itself. Israel does not have a right to exist. The terrorist entity is illegal and has no basis to exist other than a delusional ISIS-like ideology.” He’s an ardent supporter of Hezbollah. In August 2015 he tweeted: “Happy Birthday to the most honorable Arab-Muslim leader of our lifetime.” He was referring to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the man who routinely utters bloodcurdling threats to destroy Israel.
In March 2019, Rashida Tlaib posed for a picture with Nader Jalalel, a Palestinian activist who in 2o18 mourned the death of Ahmed Jarrar, a terrorist who led an attack in which a rabbi was murdered. Above the image of Jarrar, Jalalel wrote “Allah Yerhamo,” or “May God have mercy on him.” He died “after a long battle resisting the brutal Israeli occupation and defending his people and his land. We will never forget.” That sounds like support for terrorism to me. How likely is it that Tlaib knew nothing of Nader Jalalel’s views?
The itinerary Miftah had planned for Omar and Tlaib was titled “U.S. Congressional Delegation to Palestine.” It was to have taken Omar and Tlaib through the major Palestinian population centers in Jerusalem and the West Bank, and a string of meetings with Palestinian non-profits and activists, and international human rights groups. There were to be no meetings with any Israeli officials, whatever their views, and no meetings with Arab members of the Knesset. Nor were there plans for the two Congresswomen to spend any time within the pre-1967 borders of Israel. On August 16, after the visit had been called off, Omar tweeted that “I planned to hold meetings with members of the Knesset (both Jewish and Arab) along with Israeli security officials.” Of course she did.
They were due to meet with Hanan Ashrawi, a long-time PLO propagandist and member of its executive committee. They were also to meet with members of B’tselem, a “human rights” group of lsraeli far-left activists, and with three other non-Israeli organizations, similarly dedicated to finding fault with Israel.
Tlaib and Omar were to visit Hebron, accompanied by yet another left-wing Israeli group, Breaking the Silence. No doubt that group would have pointed out the tiny Jewish enclave of Kiryat Arba, (population 7,400), describing it as a permanent provocation to the Palestinians (pop. 215,000) in Hebron, and thus ultimately responsible for the Arab terrorism in the area.
In Jerusalem, Omar and Tlaib were to visit certain holy sites: the Temple Mount (or as they refer to it, Haram al-Sharif), which would have been described in their accounts as if it were an exclusively Islamic site; the Buraq Wall, similarly appropriated from the Jews (who know it as the Western Wall), where, from its plaza, Muhammad supposedly made his Night Journey to Heaven and back, on his fabulous winged steed Al-Buraq.
That’s what those intrepid travelers Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar were scheduled to do on their visit to “Palestine.” What they were not scheduled to do, on a visit to Israel, is even more telling.
Sun says
Apparently, that visit to her grandmother was not the most important thing in her life so far. The last visit seems to be 13 years ago.
https://www.fr.de/panorama/rashida-tlaib-haus-checkpoint-11874157.html
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.fr.de/panorama/rashida-tlaib-haus-checkpoint-11874157.html&prev=search
Anjuli Pandavar says
And if granny were to expire tomorrow without granddaughter seeing her, guess who’ll get the blame.
Sun says
Well planned.
gravenimage says
Yep–seems that Rashida hasn’t cared about visiting granny for the past thirteen years.
Will says
It’s all about the Allahu-Akbars …. Baby……
These damaged creatures want to instigate an other intifada , so frantic is their bloodlust for Israelis… a bloodlust that runs deep and cold ….
Antifa is biting at the bit to be there militia against American resistance …..
E T says
They are Muslim Brotherhood hoods plants. Every word they spew is sickening.
Elliott says
You opened your article with the phrase “visit to Israel/Palestine”.
As this could imply that there is an equivalency between the country “Israel” and the area know as the “Palestinian Authority”, readers should note that Israel IS a country; the ‘PA’ is NOT.
Thanks
CRUSADER says
“palestinian DELUSION”
soon out !
Angemon says
There goes the “US are Israeli puppets” theory… Remember that NYT cartoon, not that long ago?
gravenimage says
Yes. The truth that we just have values in kind is rarely considered.
somehistory says
Banned for breaking the law, only ‘allowed’ in if obeying strictly the law, and shown for what she is by putting evil before family…which moslims claim is so important to them, family that is…the entire episode stinks like dead rats.
An article in the Washington Standard stated that the grinning, lying, pretend crying idiot for islam has never seen her grandmother.
Since she is breaking Israeli law by promoting bds, then with a foot in Israel, she is a “criminal” and should be treated as a criminal. Israel was being too kind by allowing her in, but perhaps they knew that she would reject the offer.
Since she and her ugly cohort are members of Congress, should they not support the rulings, statements, resolutions, etc., that Congress passes?
Soon, these two ugly witches of islam will cease to make the news pages. After all, the only thing human that is permanent is change.Great will be that day.
ntesdorf says
If Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib had visited Israel, they would have been able to be struck by an incoming Hamas rocket. That would have given them something real to report on.
jewdog says
From their planned itinerary, they planned provocations that probably would have resulted in violent demonstrations. Israel doesn’t need any more of those. I’m glad they were excluded. It’s just too bad that they are here, although I think it’s instructive for Americans to get a close-up view of the sort of crude mentality Israel has to deal with.
CRUSADER says
They’ve barely been in office for a year….
and look at their splashiness!
How much longer till they are voted out of office?
What’s next for them? Caliphate condolences?
Islamist medals of commendation?
gravenimage says
I have never seen junior Congress people grabbing the news like this. Of course, the main point is that they are utterly evil.
Kerry Wade says
Excellent article. Clear and informative intelligence. My view is Israel was right to deny entry. Who knows what violence would erupt if the two hate mongers were let in.