By Bruce S. Ticker
PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Oh, c’mon, Doug and Eileen, quit messing with us. To block anti-Semitism Virginia, vote for Democrats?
Both political parties seek to hang onto base voters by tolerating anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry to some degree. Perhaps the right is a more dangerous threat to American Jews, but anti-Semites on the left are holding their own among Democrats. U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, for those who brand her an anti-Semite, was even endorsed last year by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the Democratic primary for her congressional seat.
Doug Emhoff (a.k.a. Mr. Kamala Harris) and Eileen Filler-Corn, both Jewish, made such a case to a group of influential Jewish Virginians during a soiree last week in McLean, across the Potomac River from Emhoff’s new home in Washington where he resides with his wife, the vice president.
Recently in McLean, Harris encouraged an anti-Israel student to continue voicing “your truth” that Israel commits “ethnic genocide” during an appearance in nearby Fairfax.
In Arlington, the Pentagon’s hometown, Filler-Corn’s colleague in the Virginia House of Delegates, Ibraheem Samirah, blamed Israel for “fossil fuel” wars, tweeting, “Mossad creates fossil fuel wars using malicious intel, most famously the WMD lie Colin Powell spewed to the world to justify the Iraq war.”
Those are incidents in Virginia, and meanwhile tensions in Congress that alarm Jews have been on full display for nearly three years. Emhoff and Filler-Corn’s contradictions are enormously groan-worthy.
All this comes amid the election for governor, to be held this Tuesday between former governor Terry McAuliffe, the Democrat, and Republican Glenn Youngkin. The tight-polling race was already notching up new highs for insanity without Emhoff and Filler-Corn’s intervention.
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that, as Speaker of the state’s House of Delegates, Filler-Corn told her audience, “Over and over again more as of late we see this anti-Semitic and other deeply harmful language. Even worse, from political figures all over the Commonwealth, we see a rise, there’s an uptick for sure. This is a disturbing indicator of how some individuals would lead if they were given the power.”
What about the power given to Ibraheem Samirah? Maybe she figures that Jewish Virginians will not need to worry about him next year. He is leaving office after being defeated in this year’s Democratic primary.
Adds the first in history male spouse of a vice president: “It’s not just a Jewish issue. It’s an American issue because I speak out against hate of all kinds. Because if we let this go (when it comes to) anti-Semitism, where does that lead us? So we’ve got to make a stand, we’ve got to continue to speak out each and every time – I promise you as the first Jewish spouse in this position to speak out on these issues.”
We must take a stand? Kind of like the stand most Democrats have not taken when Harris told the student, “Your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth, cannot be suppressed and it must be heard.”
Pro-Israel advocates swiftly blasted Harris for failing to, so to speak, take a stand against the student’s accusations.
No doubt that Emhoff and Filler-Corn are being truthful about anti-Semites on the right along with the tolerance of Republicans. And their hearts are in the right place.
Yet for all the preaching, their Democratic allies on Capitol Hill persist in keeping quiet whenever anti-Israel members of Congress speak up, especially Omar and Rashida Tlaib. While some other House Democrats have been unfair to Israel, Omar and Tlaib have been openly hostile not only toward Israeli leaders but also Jews in general.
The party should have done everything possible to influence Omar and Tlaib’s attitudes or push them out of office. Pelosi and other Democrats should have campaigned against them in their congressional districts instead of endorsing either of them.
Democrats instead protected Omar and Tlaib because, evidently, they feared losing a large swath of voters who oppose Israeli policies either for warped or misguided reasons. This is understandable. We get it. It is all politics.
We can say the same for Republicans.
Emhoff and Filler-Corn move beyond expediency when they call on allies to rely upon Democrats to fight anti-Semitism. The Democrats’ record in the last three years has been shameful and to pretend better of it is hypocritical.
Filler-Corn also warns of growing right-wing anti-Semitism in her state as more Jews move into northern Virginia. She said she learned she was targeted for assassination by two white supremacists, and channeled her inner Winston Churchill with these words: “We will not be deterred, we will not be threatened.”
Her Democratic friends across the Potomac are not exactly fighting them on the beaches, landing grounds or anywhere else.
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Bruce Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist
I would find it impossible to be a member or supporter of a political party that tolerated Antic Semitic members and allowed them to stand for public office. Omar and Tlaib and their fellow travelers make it impossible for me to support Democrats anywhere in the country. I have been around the New Zealand National party (Conservative) for decades and I have never seen any sign of Anti Semitism in the party at all. The labour party has had one or two cases on the far left that I can remember. The Green party has a major problem with Anti Semitism in its ranks in Parliament and in the organisation.