Pro-Israel group demands Tlaib’s ouster over links to ‘terrorists and anti-Semites’

“Rashida Tlaib’s anti-Israel record is just the tip of the iceberg,” maintains the Zionist Organization of America, which called for her immediate removal from Congressional committees and ejection from the Democratic Party over the lawmaker’s alleged ties to “terrorists, anti-Semites, and conspiracy theorists.”

By World Israel News Staff

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) released a statement on Thursday urging Congress to immediately remove freshman legislator Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D–MI) from key committees. The statement also called on Democratic leadership to throw her out of the party, which has increasingly come under scrutiny from pro-Israel groups like the ZOA for its statements and positions on the Jewish state and its approach to anti-Semitsim.

According to the ZOA statement, “Tlaib’s anti-Israel record was already well-known before she was elected in last year’s midterm elections. She calls Israel a ‘racist country’ on the basis of the lie that Israel discriminates against those ‘darker skinned,’ supports the destruction of Israel in favor of an Arab-dominated state (‘It has to be one state’), ‘absolutely’ backs withholding U.S. aid from Israel, and openly supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is committed to international ostracism and weakening of Israel with a view to its eventual elimination.”

The statement focused on “newly revealed evidence of [Tlaib’s] pernicious associates, produced by the Israel Advocacy Network (IAN),” referring to a video posted to YouTube presenting social media activity in which Tlaib “personally and publicly singled out for praise” several “close associates” who assisted her in “win[ning] office.”

The statement noted that the IAN video presented evidence that some of the people Tlaib thanked are “close associates of Palestinian terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands,” noting, “In all, 18 individuals she praised . . . are rabid haters of Israel and proud supporters of blood-soaked Palestinian terrorists. Several of them have posted the most blatantly anti-Semitic material.”

Among the associates identified are Rasmea Odeh, with whom Tlaib appears in a photo, described in the statement as “a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the murder of two Israeli university students in a 1969 Jerusalem supermarket terrorist bombing for which she served 10 years in an Israeli prison.”

The statement also notes that “Tlaib posted approvingly an image” of Mohammed Ali, a “terrorist who stabbed three Israeli soldiers in Jerusalem in an incident that was captured on a video,” and Mwafaq Jbara, “a Fatah member . . . living in America who has posted the most extreme material and who has been in contact with the highest level terrorist prisoners, including Hamas co-founder Abdel Aziz Rantisi.”

The statement notes that “Jbara has posted blatantly anti-Semitic material, including cartoons showing Israel to be controlled by such diverse characters as the Rothschild banking family and Britain’s Queen Elizabeth (bizarrely depicted as being a Jew), [and] Jews depicted as rats.”

Jbara has also praised on social media Imad Mugniyeh, a Hezbollah terrorist “responsible for the murder of 242 U.S. servicemen in a 1982 suicide bombing in Lebanon against U.S. forces stationed there on a UN-sanctioned peace-keeping mission; Hamas bomb-maker Yehiya Ayyash, responsible for the death of 75 Israelis in several suicide bombings –– with Jbara saying approvingly of him in one post that, ‘when you see the roof an [Israeli] bus flying, you will know it is Ayyash.'”

Jbara also posted a message claiming “Hitler will be a dove in comparison” to Palestinian terrorists.

Tlaib posted a photo of herself posing with Jbara.

In response to the revelations in the IAN video, ZOA National President Morton A. Klein and Chairman Mark Levenson, Esq. commented, “It is perfectly clear that Rashida Tlaib is not in the smallest degree ashamed, and has not the slightest inhibition about, being publicly being associated with these anti-Semites, terrorists and glorifiers of Jew-murderers.

“Someone who knowingly and enthusiastically consorts with the most virulent anti-Semites, blood-soaked terrorists and conspiracy theorists is clearly beyond the pale, or no-one is beyond the pale,” they added, demanding, “The Democratic Party must do the only honorable thing, which is to expel her from the party and remove her from Congressional committees.”

The statement concludes, “A terrible precedent will have been set if someone so obviously tainted with the most pernicious hatreds and associations does not inspire the party to which she belongs to expel her. In that case, the unmistakable message will have been sent that associating with vicious anti-Semites and terrorist shedders of innocent blood is no impediment to political office in the United States of America.”

anti-SemitismDemocratic partyPalestinian incitementRashida Tlaib