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 OUR JN MISSION: We aspire to communicate news and opinion that’ s trusted, valued, engaging and distinctive. We strive to refl ect diverse community viewpoints while also advocating positions that strengthen Jewish unity and continuity. 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