The antisemitic ‘right-hand woman’ in Rashida Tlaib’s congressional campaign

With an election on the line, Rasha Mubarak goes on the attack against Jews.

By Joe Kaufman, FrontPage Magazine

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib’s animus against Jews is well known. Her belief that Israel should not exist and her use of ‘dog whistles’ to spread antisemitic libels have been widely reported.

Yet, she is not the only person related to her campaign who has targeted Jews. There have been more. One who is particularly close with her, Rasha Mubarak, practices this bigotry on an almost daily basis and continues to do so, well into election season. This month, Mubarak celebrated Tlaib’s primary win by retweeting someone the Simon Wiesenthal Center compared to a Nazi propagandist. Will Democrats continue to ignore the hatemongers of this campaign?

On Sunday, July 24th, three members of the so-called “Squad,” a group of far left Progressive Representatives – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley – arrived in Michigan to help their fellow “Squad” member, Rashida Tlaib, win her Democratic Primary election. A pro-Israel PAC had spent nearly $700,000 for one of Tlaib’s opponents, in a late push to challenge Tlaib, so the group of Socialist-leaning politicians assembled to energize Tlaib’s base to come out to vote.

A photo tweeted by Tlaib depicted the four “Squad” members together, along with some others. One of them was a woman dressed in an all-white jumpsuit; it was Rasha Mubarak. Her appearance in the photo is a testament to her high standing within the Tlaib campaign. Indeed, since Mubarak has been working alongside Tlaib, she has received from the campaign, through her consulting group Unbought Power, over $200,000.

Normally, it would be viewed as inappropriate to have someone like Mubarak involved in something as serious as this, as her unhinged obsession with Israel would be deemed potentially detrimental to most political campaigns. However, this is Rashida Tlaib’s campaign, so hatred of Israel comes standard, and in this part of the country with its heavy Middle Eastern population, it has been made known in a significant way that the voters approve.

On Primary election day, August 2nd, Mubarak tweeted a picture of herself with Tlaib – the two decked out in Tlaib campaign regalia – with the following message: “It’s official. We sending our sister Rashida Tlaib back to Congress! We won, again, y’all!” And while Mubarak took a few days to bask in the victory, it did not take her long to focus her attention (and animosity) back on the Jewish state.

On August 6th, Mubarak twice (and again the next day) retweeted anti-Israel messages written by Noura Erekat, a Palestinian activist who was condemned for her antisemitism, only this past April, by the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC). SWC stated, “Noura Erekat’s hatred of Jews is so pure it would have made Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels happy.”

In December 2020, Mubarak featured Erekat as her guest, on her first Unbought Power podcast, to honor Erekat’s terrorist cousin, Ahmed, who had just been shot and killed after attempting to run over a female Israeli border officer, at a checkpoint east of Jerusalem.

Also on August 6th, Mubarak retweeted former PLO spokeswoman Diana Buttu’s post, “Palestinians have a right to defend themselves and their land. There is no right to defend a military occupation.”

This idea of Israel having no right to self-defense is not new to Mubarak; she has been saying as such for years. In 2012, she tweeted, “#LiesImTiredOfHearing, Israel has the right to defend herself.” In 2013, she said, about Israel, U.S. diplomats mouth the words “‘right to defend itself’… when they snore.” And in 2019, after Hamas fired hundreds of deadly rockets at Israeli civilians, she tweeted against anyone who dared defend Israeli retaliation.

Further on August 6th, Mubarak retweeted a post from a fan of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group named Yara, who wrote “Long live the Palestinian resistance.”

Mubarak echoed these sentiments, this past September 11th, when she tweeted her adoration for Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)-linked prisoner escapees, writing “The Palestinian diaspora is grieving today as a total of 4 of the 6 Palestinian political prisoners from #thegreatescape were detained. Nonetheless, the hope these 6 Palestinian freedom fighters have offered us, will not be short lived – we will resist to exist.”

For Mubarak and her radical friends, including Congresswoman Tlaib, “resistance” means one thing, violence against Jews. The liberation of Israel they seek is one based on death and destruction carried out by masked terrorists, who launch rockets into civilian neighborhoods and blow themselves up in suicide attacks.

In fear of losing constituencies, like that of Tlaib, Democratic leadership has cowardly allowed this murderous bigotry to permeate their party, legitimizing the hate. Antisemitism is on the rise among Democrats, and the re-election of Tlaib is proof of this. Mubarak is being groomed for political office, as well. Democrats have failed to purge their ranks.

If Democrats do not wake up, soon the party will be saturated with this type of bloodthirsty fanaticism, to the point that raving antisemites like Mubarak and Tlaib will cease being the exception but will be the norm.

Beila Rabinowitz, director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

AntisemitismDemocratic partyRasha MubarakThe Squad