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SHAPIRO: The Myth Of The Intersectional Coalition

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Rep. Ilhan Omar And Rep. Rashida Tlaib Hold Press Conference To Address Being Barred From Travelling To Israel
Adam Bettcher/Stringer via Getty Images

On Tuesday’s episode of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Shapiro talks about the fragility of the left-wing coalition. Video and partial transcript below:

So Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar hold a press conference yesterday, and in this press conference they make a bunch of anti-Semitic statements. And the Democratic Party, again, backing them to the hilt, because this is the game in the Democratic Party. They will defend their radicals under nearly every circumstance without even asking as to whether their viewpoints are radical. Here’s Rashida Tlaib comparing Israel to South Africa despite the fact that Arabs and Muslims in Israel can vote, hold positions in the Knesset, are members of the Israeli Supreme Court, that Arabic is an official language in Israel, despite the fact that Arab Muslims in Israel are treated better than they are anywhere in the Arab Muslim world, does not matter. [Here’s] Rashida Tlaib ripping on Israel, calling it an apartheid state:

TLAIB: History does have a habit of repeating itself. I learned this week that a former member of Congress, Congressman Charles C. Diggs Junior, was denied entry into apartheid South Africa in 1972. He was also the representative for the 13th congressional district in Michigan. I was born and raised in the beautiful Detroit where many of my African American teachers taught me about the realities of oppression and justice and the need to speak up and take action.

Calling Israel an apartheid state is obviously anti-Semitic because it is not an apartheid state, and it is of course singling out Israel in a way that Rashida Tlaib would never single out anybody else. And Ilhan Omar made this perfectly obvious. She actually called for an end to aid to Israel. I can’t imagine why Israel didn’t let her in. She’s literally calling for an end to aid to Israel and a boycott of the state of Israel. I can’t imagine why they didn’t allow her in to propagandize on behalf of Israel’s destruction.

OMAR: We give Israel more than three million dollars in aid every year. This is predicated on their being an important ally in the region and the only democracy in the Middle East. We must be asking, as Israel’s ally, the Netanyahu government to stop the expansion of settlements on Palestinian land and ensure full rights for Palestinians if we are to give them aid.

Okay. [As if] she wants to give Israel aid, like they’re an ally. Okay, well let me be frank about this. Benjamin Netanyahu put a unilateral settlement freeze in place two years ago and none of these people cared one iota about that. This is all a lie. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, they want Israel destroyed. And they’re obvious about this, and they’re so disingenuous about it as well. Again, the idea that she is a secret ally of Israel is insane. You have to be a nutty person to believe this sort of nonsense.

And she tried her intersectional appeal, she tried to say, you know people keep calling me an anti-Semite; I don’t know why, even though I just tried to campaign with a group that has pushed the blood libel. Sure, I don’t know why people keep calling me an anti-Semite, you know this is all about Trump trying to separate Muslims from Jews.

Well, I would go more with it is you being a radical Jew hater. I got into a little bit of a spat with Ilhan Omar on Twitter yesterday because the folks in Media Matters — doing their usual solid work — took me out of context on something. I tweeted about it, Ilhan Omar then tweeted that I was both a fool and hateful, to which I tweeted back, “Well, you know I must have hypnotized the world using my Benjamins.” In any case, Omar tries this intersectional approach where she’s not an anti-Semite, it’s just the Trump administration trying to separate off the Jews and the Muslims. This is insanity.

OMAR: We know Donald Trump would love nothing more than to use this issue to pit Muslims and Jewish Americans against each other. The Muslim community and the Jewish community are being othered and made into the boogey man by this administration. But as we will hear today, people of all different faiths are coming together to speak up against the status quo in the region. I am grateful for the solidarity shown by…

This is the myth that Ilhan Omar and the Democratic Party tell themselves. The myth they tell themselves is that there is such a thing as an intersectional coalition and they’re all on each other’s side, and they all oppose Trump, and that’s what will hold them together. In the end, that coalition will fall apart, it will break apart on the shoals of its own identity politics. The fact is that Ilhan Omar, she doesn’t like the Jews very much. And it is obvious from all of her behavior, and everything that she says, that this is the case. And then she brings in token Jews from Jewish Voice for Peace — which is a pathetic anti-Israel, anti Jewish organization. And then she talks about how pro-Jewish — it’s insanity. But the idea is that hatred of Trump will hold that coalition together. It will, until it doesn’t. And it’s one of the reasons why it is incumbent on President Trump to actually as president try and embolden the decent people still left in the Democratic Party, [inspire] many of them to stand up against the hatred inside their own party.

It’s funny, I hear from Democrats all the time: Why won’t Republicans denounce people inside their own party who say bad things? If you’ve ever listened to this show, you know that I do it on a regular basis. You know that I’ve denounced people up to and including President Trump repeatedly for things that they have said. You know that I maxed out to [Randy] Feenstra, Steve King’s opponent in Iowa, right out of my own pocket. I’ve encouraged [Randy] Feenstra’s race, hundreds of thousands of dollars, in large part because I’ve had [Randy] Feenstra on my show, because I think that Steve King needs to be ousted from Congress. People in the Republican Party are doing a much better job of standing up to people inside their own party.

Democrats are rallying around Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. They’re not even asking the question: “Oh weird that they would be rallying with groups that want the destruction of the state of Israel and openly celebrate terrorism? Very weird, very odd. We mustn’t pay attention to it because, after all, the heart and soul, the zeitgeist of the time suggests that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are in the ascendancy.” And I don’t think it’s in the long-term or even medium-term interests of the country for the Democrats to rally around their worst members any more than I think any more Democrats should root for Republicans to rally around their worst members so that they can nitpick, and then use the worst Republicans in order to suggest that that is the entire Republican Party.

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