By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
CHULA VISTA, California — Some of the most embarrassing mistakes that occur in human communication happen when people experience an unfortunate “slip of the tongue.” The words come out differently than what we consciously intend for them to mean.
Sigmund Freud was a remarkable man whose interests spanned across the psychological spectrum—often touching upon the areas of communication and humor. Freud stressed that the “slip of the tongue” may seem inadvertent, and yet, it can reveal much about the speaker’s unconscious thought or attitude. To the attentive listener, “a slip of the tongue” may reveal more what is in the actual heart of the speaker, which the speaker might under normal circumstances, consciously try to avoid disclosing.
While Freud believed most “slips of the tongue” are usually sexual in nature because they reveal deeply repressed desires from a person’s subconscious. Jung concurred and added that slips of the tongue, as well as slips of the pen, reveal a hidden psychic material just beneath the surface of everyday language.
And while our language is full of such expressions, and the awkwardness of these expressions, I recall reading a biblical commentary where the author accidentally wrote “martial strife” instead of “marital strife,” the slip up produced a measure of amusement among the readers—who thought “martial strife” was a call to arms!
The reason I mentioned this is because in the news is controversy over Representative Rashida Tlaib’s comment about the Holocaust and its impact upon her: “There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust . . .”
Let us read the rest of the citation in its entirety:
- “There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports. And just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.
How could Rashid mention “Holocaust” and, “calming feeling” in the same sentence? Had Trump made that statement, the entire Congress would crucify him in the press.
Let us briefly put the “slip of the tongue” statement aside and for argument’s sake—let us give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she did not mean for her words to come out the way they did. After all, English is not her native language. For now, let us forget about that unfortunate remark.
Anyone listening to her might be inclined to think the Palestinians acted in a perfectly loving manner toward the Jewish settlers of Palestine. Historically, virtually that was never the case. The Palestinian leadership was under the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, the influential leader of the Arabs in Palestine. During the war, he moved to Germany and met Adolf Hitler, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Heinrich Himmler. He met with other Nazi leaders in an attempt to coordinate Nazi and Arab policies in the Middle East. The following is a record of a conversation between Hitler and al-Husseini in the Presence of Reich Foreign Minister and Minister Grobba in Berlin. The Mufti used his charisma to appeal to Arab countries to enlist in the German effort to defeat the West. Sharing a mutual antipathy for the Jewish people, the English, and the Communists—the Mufti worked to create an Arab Legion to help the Nazis in the Balkans.
The Nazis and the Islamo-Jihadists shared a common vision of the world—a world without Jews. Nazi war criminals often found refuge in the Arab countries where they became celebrities and had the status of rock stars.
The real problem with Tlaib’s statement is that the Arabs in Palestine (later to be referred to after the 1967 war as “Palestinians”) completely supported Hitler’s attempt to rid the world of Jews. Not only did the Arabs in Palestine support the German extermination of Jews, but they also violently resisted the creation of a Jewish state.
Even before the Holocaust, the Arabs of Palestine did not get along well with the Jewish settlers;
- There was a massacre that occurred in Jerusalem, 1920.
- In Jaffa, 1921
Jews were massacred in Hebron in 1929 - Another massacre took place in Safed in 1929.
- Tiberias, 1938
Since the birth of Israel, there has been a relentless campaign of terror aimed at the most vulnerable members of the Jewish community. Many of the people Tlaib admires are people who have killed the elderly, women, and children. One of those persons is the Palestinian activist Abbas Hamideh, a Palestinian who is one of Hezbollah’s staunchest defenders. He posed with Tlaib at her swearing-in ceremony after she won the election in Detroit.
In December 2015, Hamideh called convicted terrorist Samir Kuntar a “legendary Hezbollah martyr,” days after he was killed in an explosion in Damascus. Among the victims Kuntar killed was a young four-year-old girl named Elinat, whose skull he smashed on beach rocks.
Tlaib’s admiration for Louis Farrakhan, as seen in an op-ed she had written in a paper, and her defense of her fellow freshman representative Ilhan Omar’s (D., Minn.) anti-Semitic remarks about Jews buying Congress— add to this profile of the congresswoman.
And it is for this reason I do not believe Tlaib’s claim that her family helped save Jews during the Holocaust, I am inclined to doubt her authenticity. The reason is simple. When she first ran in Michigan for office, she had many interactions with the Jewish community. Why did she not mention this biographical information about herself when she was soliciting their support for her candidacy?
Now there were Muslims in Albania, Bulgaria, and Morocco who helped saved the Jews of their communities—but this was not the case in Palestine. No amount of wishful thinking can alter the fact that the Arab population remained determined to keep the Jews out of Palestine. Those who might have helped the Jews risked death at the hands of fellow Arabs.
For all the reasons we have mentioned above, Tlaib’s statements ought to be viewed with skepticism. This is not the first time anti-Semites like her have tried to deceive the Jewish community.
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Rabbi Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista. He may be contacted via michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com