‘Deafening silence’ of progressives on anti-Semitism blasted by Minnesota Democrat

Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips slams ‘deafening silence’ of progressives, demands they start condemning anti-Semitism and violent attacks on Jews.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

A Democratic member of Congress called out his progressive colleagues Monday for failing to condemn the recent wave of violent anti-Semitic attacks against Jews in America.

“I’ll say the quiet part out loud; it’s time for ‘progressives’ to start condemning anti-Semitism and violent attacks on Jewish people with the same intention and vigor demonstrated in other areas of activism. The silence has been deafening,” tweeted Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota, whose district is located in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul Twin Cities.

Last week Phillips also tweeted about the conflict in Gaza, challenging progressives to engage him in debate on the Israel-Palestinian issue where anti-Israel activists have consistently tried to drown out any dialog.

“If you believe that oppression is inhuman, nationless people deserve self-determination, the loss of children to reckless violence is abhorrent, and firing 4,000 missiles indiscriminately into population centers is a war crime, then we can have a conversation,” Phillips tweeted.

Phillips’ comments came after several widely reported anti-Semitic attacks took place across America as Israel battled terror groups in Gaza following an Iran-backed Hamas rocket attack on Jerusalem.

Jews in Los Angeles and New York were attacked by pro-Palestinian supporters following anti-Israel rallies in those two cities, while other anti-Semitic attacks took place in Seattle, Chicago and Albuquerque.

“Conservatives call out violence in all forms and on all sides, those on the far left-remain silent until political expediency loosens their lips,” Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina told Fox News.

“We must denounce anti-Semitism at every opportunity,” Cawthorn added. “There is no place for intolerant political thought for those who tout the endorsements of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood abroad, but remain silent on anti-Semitic violence at home.”

Progressive Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that anti-Semitism should not be tolerated and called the recent surge in attacks “horrifying,” saying “we stand with our Jewish communities in condemning this violence.”

However, Ocasio-Cortez and her colleagues were slammed for being the ones who had fanned the flames of anti-Semitism by adopting Palestinian propaganda slogans that smear Israel with the false “apartheid” label and baseless claims that Israel is carrying out “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.

“Rep. Ocasio-Cortez didn’t call for violence, but she carved out an area of respectability for a certain type of anti-Semitism, and others were only too happy to rush in, fists flying,” American Jewish Committee global director of young leadership Seffi Kogan wrote in a Newsweek op-ed.

“While anti-Zionist gangs beat up Jews in her city, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was providing a quasi-intellectual basis for their actions, defaming Israel as an apartheid state employing indiscriminate force in what she seems to think is a capricious quest to murder as many Palestinian children as possible, instead of a highly restrained military operation tightly targeted on terrorists,” Kogan said.

Last week, five of America’s largest and most prominent Jewish organizations called on President Joe Biden to take immediate action on anti-Semitism after hate crimes against Jews skyrocketed across the country.

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