Bad, Worse, Worst

Rashida Talib leads the Democrat Party's "anti-Zionist" caucus

Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Vom Fluss zum Meer!

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While there’s plenty of competition of the title of Worst Member of Congress—yes, I’m thinking of you, Marjorie Taylor Greene—those other creeps and clowns have nothing on Representative Rashida Tlaib, Democrat of Michigan and Gaza. Say what you will of the most odious MAGA representatives or senators, but none of them have ever attended what Commentary’s Seth Mandel has aptly characterized as a “terrorist pep rally.”

Tlaib’s presence at the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit on May 25 was, or ought to have been, a huge scandal. The event brought together representatives of the assorted “anti-Zionist,” i.e. antisemitic river-to-sea, groups whose vile antics have polluted the streets of America’s cities and universities. It was, in effect, an Islamofascist take on the classic Nuremburg Rally. The event was sponsored in part by the Marxist-Leninist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada, the European Union and Japan.

I trust that there’s no need to detail the antisemitic rhetoric, the cheers for Hamas Iranian missiles, the calls for a Jundefrei Palestinian state, that were spewed forth during the conference. In view of Tlaib’s attendance, however, it’s well worth noting that calls for the destruction of Israel were accompanied by calls for the fall of the United States. And Rashida Tlaib was right out in front with bitter denunciations of President Biden’s support for the Jewish state. In short, she sides with the enemies of the country that she purports to serve. One gathers the impression that Tlaib had her fingers crossed when she took the congressional oath of office. For the record, that oath runs as follows:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Yeah, sure, Rashida.

I feel strongly tempted to denounce this garbage human being as a traitor in the strict sense of the word. But the American founders, whom Tlaib and many other progressives affect to despise, were wary of that charge, which in days of old was wielded as a political weapon by kings and emperors. That’s why treason is the only crime specified and narrowly defined in the Constitution of the United States. So I’ll content myself with the observation that Talib is a despicable ingrate who has taken all the best this country has to offer, only to revile and denounce America in the style of the Iranian ayatollahs.

But Tlaib is no outlier—she’s just the worst member of a cabal of Democrats in the House of Representative and the Senate who parrot the “anti-Zionist” line. There are her fellow AOC Squaddies, including such odious characters as Ilhan Omar and Jamal Bowmen. There’s Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. There’s Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. There’s Senator Dick Durban of Illinois. The list goes on. Some of these people cloak their animus against Israel with denunciations of that country’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, asserting that he’s the only obstacle to peace and that diplomatic unicorn, the two-state solution. But if Netanyahu disappeared tomorrow, they’d soon find reasons to denounce his successor. It’s the Jewish state that they regard with distaste.

Rashida Tlaib should be chased out of the United States House of Representatives with cries of Shame! ringing in her ears—as George Santos was, for far less serious misdeeds. But that can never happen. Her fellow Democrats would rally to her defense.

Perhaps, though, we should be grateful that Talib has a D after her name. It’s a salutary reminder that the Democratic Party has come to be infected with the virus of antisemitism. This is not to say that all congressional Democrats or even a majority of them are conscious antisemites. But many of them are antisemitism adjacent, in that they tolerate the presence of Rashida Tlaib, and hum along with her hymn of hate.

For people who claim to be defending “our democracy” against Trump/MAGA fascism, that’s not a good look.