 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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