Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was recently connected to a Palestinian American activist who previously shared anti-Semitic posts on social media.
According to Fox News, Maher Abdel-qader, a Palestinian American activist who has put up anti-Semitic social media posts in the past, posted on Instagram in March about a virtual fundraiser attended by Tlaib. The event reportedly garnered donations between $100 and $5,000 for Sam Rasoul, a Palestinian American seeking to become Virginia’s next lieutenant governor.
Two weeks before the event, on March 7, Abdel-qader posted an image to Instagram comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
The drawing, titled “Israel’s vision for a Palestinian state,” displayed a wall with barbed wire surrounding a small village with guns pointed inside from watchtowers. A cartoon drawing of a man wearing a yarmulke says in a speech bubble, “It looks like a modern version of the Warsaw Ghetto” to a man with a wide-eyed expression.
Fox News reported that he once posted a now-deleted video on Facebook that claimed “satanic” Jews are secretly in control of the media and have exaggerated the death toll of the Holocaust. In other posts, he said, “Jews never lived in entire palestine at any time prior to 1948. They lived once in what’s known now as West Bank. Read history other than Zionist racist history.”
He has also called Israel “apartheid Israel,” and went on to say:
European Jews are the descendants of the khazar empire that existed in what’s known now as Georgia and Ukraine. European Jews have nothing to do with the Middle East, read history carefully.
Abdel-qader reportedly donated money to Tlaib’s 2018 campaign. More recently, he gave $1,000 to a PAC — Act Blue — as well as $1,000 to Minnesota Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Tlaib’s office did not respond to Fox News’ requests for comment, but reportedly told The New York Times in 2019 that it was “unfair to be held responsible for the statements of others, especially when my actions — including votes as a Michigan legislator and leading the Take On Hate campaign — make clear that I oppose all forms of hate and condemn those who dehumanize others.”
Fox News reported:
After the Daily Caller broke the news of Abdel-qader’s anti-Semitic posts in 2019, he told the outlet he had “great respect for the religion and the Jewish people.”
“What I said, Many Jews living now in the Middle East are the descendants of the great Jewish Khazar Empire in Europe,” he told the conservative news site. “I stand against Israeli and Zionist brutal occupation and in-humane treatment of Palestinians. I am for justice for all in the Middle East.”
The information comes out as Tlaib notably met President Joe Biden on the tarmac in Michigan this week. She confronted the president “over his support for Israel amid its bombing campaign against Hamas in Gaza,” The New York Times reported, adding that she “echoed a scathing speech she delivered last week on the House floor, telling the president that he must do more to protect Palestinian lives and human rights.”
According to NPR, an aide for the congresswoman’s office discussed the encounter in a statement.
“Palestinian human rights are not a bargaining chip and must be protected, not negotiated,” the aide said Tlaib expressed to Biden. “The U.S. cannot continue to give the right-wing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians. Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with U.S.-supplied weapons.”
“Congresswoman Tlaib reiterated that the status quo is enabling more killing, that the current U.S. approach of unconditional support for the Israeli government is not working, and that the White House must do far more to protect Palestinian lives, dignity, and human rights,” the aide said.
Tlaib and other members of the so-called progressive “Squad” in Congress have repeatedly defended anti-Semites or promoted anti-Semitic positions in the past.
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