JULY 30 • 2020 | 13
She and Rep. Ilhan Omar
planned to visit Palestine under
the direction of Miftah, a
Palestinian group that has pub-
lished articles accusing Jews of
using Christian blood to bake
matzah and claiming Israeli
rabbis instruct their followers
to destroy Palestinian farms.
Tlaib never once mentioned
Palestinians, Palestinian ter-
rorism or Palestinian lead-
ership’
s multiple refusals of
the state they claim to want.
It was Mahmoud Abbas who
told the world Jews “have no
right to desecrate” Islamic
and Christian holy sites “with
their filthy feet,
” yet Tlaib calls
Netanyahu a racist. To Tlaib it’
s
always the Jews.
It’
s clear she accepts some
Jews, the ones who share her
pathological hatred for Israel.
— Harry Onickel
Ferndale
BDS is the Big Issue
Very interesting to hear her
interviewed by the JN … but it’
s
too hard to get past her support
of BDS. I do agree with the
Mark Bernstein quote in the
article … I appreciate much of
what she has to say, but BDS is
the big issue that makes fully
supporting her not really an
option.
— Doug Cohen
West Bloomfield Township
Facebook comment
‘
Inadequate’
This piece would have been
fine for someone coming into
their first House term, but for
a national legislator about to
complete their first term, it is
inadequate and at best so-so:
definitely not great, certainly
not even good, but also not
horrible.
Andrew Lapin’
s questions
for her were remarkably gentle
to the point of being over-cau-
tious. This gets compounded
by the fact that he lets her off
without any particularly rigor-
ous follow-up, allowing her to
get away with dodging on a few
pretty important points.
Of particular note to me
were the questions and answers
around BDS, JVP and Zionism.
As well, there’
s a striking, com-
plete omission of any discus-
sion of the racism and other
failures of Palestinian leader-
ship (either Fatah or Hamas),
even when Ms. Tlaib somehow
manages to make a (deserved)
space for calling out the racism
of Netanyahu’
s policies.
When Lapin introduces the
terms “Zionist” and “Zionism”
,
she replies to the questions
without even acknowledging
the terms. By steering her
answers so far away from those
words, she avoids accepting
Zionism’
s legitimacy and Israel’
s
right to exist, and also avoids
condemning them as illegit-
imate. That’
s an enormous
omission.
On the questions touching
on JVP there’
s no mention of
tokenism, nor does she even
acknowledge that the JVP
points of view represent a tiny
fraction of the Jewish popula-
tion — and Lapin doesn’
t point
this out.
When anti-Semitism in BDS
gets raised, she dismisses it by
falling back, pointing out that
some Jews support it, essential-
ly using tokenism to justify that
dismissal rather than demon-
strating she’
s actually hearing
the complaint at all, let alone as
a legitimate one.
If the goal of this piece was
to provide clarity to her voting
constituency, then I believe it
fails to do so and actually raises
new questions.
If the goal of this piece is to
create a relationship between
the DJN and Rep. Tlaib that
opens the door to subsequent
interviews, then only time will
tell.
— Noah Tepperman
Windsor, Ontario
Facebook comment
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