As the head of Detroit’s Jewish Community Relations Council for the last four years, Rabbi Asher Lopatin said he has tried to build a working relationship with Rashida Tlaib, the far-left anti-Israel congresswoman who represents the state’s twelfth congressional district.
Despite Tlaib’s fierce opposition to the Jewish state, there were issues around social justice on which they could work together, Lopatin said. Some of the JCRC’s affiliated organizations criticized the bridge-building efforts, but Lopatin said they were willing to take the risk.
He put Tlaib, a Palestinian American, in contact with Detroit Jews to broaden her perspective. It didn’t work, he said. If anything, her anti-Israel rhetoric has only grown more strident.
Lopatin said he’s now severed any relationship with Tlaib because of what he calls her “shameful, shameful” comments and actions in the wake of Hamas’s brutal attack on Israeli civilians on October 7. In Lopatin’s eyes, Tlaib is now “persona non grata,” he said.
“What Rashida Tlaib is saying is heinous, it’s terrible, it’s madness,” Lopatin said.
“We really want to have nothing to do with her,” he added. Unless Tlaib is willing to apologize, he said, “no dialogue, no discussions.”
National Review reached out to several prominent Jewish leaders and Jewish Democrats in Detroit. All of them were frustrated by Tlaib’s unwillingness to forcefully condemn Hamas, her promotion of Hamas talking points, and what they see as her attempts to equate Israel’s response to terrorism to Hamas’s butchery of innocent civilians.
Attempts to reach Tlaib’s office via email and on the phone on Friday were unsuccessful.
While President Joe Biden has called the Hamas attack “abhorrent” and “an act of sheer evil,” descriptions that have received wide bipartisan support, Tlaib and other elected Democratic Socialists of America have said instead that Israel itself is to blame.
Just days after the attack, when asked by a Fox News reporter if she believed Israel had a right to defend itself after Hamas terrorists “cut off babies’ heads and burned children alive,” Tlaib said nothing. Instead, in a statement she said she grieved for “the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today, and every day,” before going on to attack the U.S. and Israel.
“As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue,” she said.
This week, Tlaib and Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota parroted Hamas talking points that claimed Israel fired a rocket that hit a Gaza hospital and killed 500 civilians. When U.S. intelligence refuted the claim — the rocket appears to have been misfired by Palestinian terrorists, and it hit a hospital parking lot, not the building itself — Tlaib was unwilling to correct her mistake and ducked questions from National Review about spreading misinformation.
While most political leaders have supported Israel’s efforts to root out Hamas terrorists, Tlaib and other DSA-aligned politicians don’t want Israel to fight back, calling instead for a cease-fire. She’s also taken aim at Biden, accusing his administration of funding Palestinian “genocide.”
“We will remember this,” Tlaib said during a Wednesday protest.
David Kramer, a prominent Michigan businessman and Jewish leader who is active in Democratic politics, said Detroit Jews are “beyond disappointed” with Tlaib.
“The Jewish community, including those of us that are active Dems, have been very uncomfortable with Rashida for a long time, long before this,” Kramer said. “This is, unfortunately, sort of to be expected.”
Still, Kramer said, he thought Tlaib would have at least condemned the terrorist attacks on civilians. Her expressed concern for both sides “is not nearly sufficient for us,” he said.
Allan Gale, a former JCRC director who focused on pro-Israel advocacy for the organization, said that Tlaib wasn’t as vocal on Israeli–Palestinian issues when she was in the state legislature. He said her anti-Israel rhetoric is concerning because her seat in Congress gives her a megaphone.
“The Jewish people who are interested in politics have pretty much written her off, that they can’t change her mind, they can’t get her to be more compromising on issues like a two-state solution or Israeli–Palestinian cooperation that could lead to peace,” Gale said. “She thinks the Jewish enterprise over the last 100 years was wrong, and there shouldn’t be a Zionist state.”
In the wake of the Hamas attack, Tlaib’s rhetoric has “reached a new low,” Lopatin said.
“And I think the vast majority of Jews here feel that,” he said.
One Jewish Democratic activist who lives in Tlaib’s district, who asked that her name not be revealed for safety purposes, said that Tlaib’s opposition to Israel seems to be increasing.
“Her rhetoric makes all of us feel unsafe. It’s not right,” the activist said, adding that Tlaib “does not represent the Democratic Party.”
“The sad reality is, because Rashida is Palestinian, she could be a voice for a two-state solution instead of being an Israel denialist,” the activist said.
Not all Detroit Jews oppose Tlaib and her position on Israel. Earlier this week, about 100 metro-area Jews gathered downtown calling for an end to “the genocide of Palestinians,” according to a Detroit Free Press report. Far-left groups such as Detroit Jews for Justice have historically defended Tlaib from what they deem to be “smears” against the congresswoman.
Lopatin said those groups make up a “very small percentage” of Detroit’s Jewish population.
Jewish activists who spoke with National Review said there is little political advantage for Tlaib to moderate on Israel or to tone down her rhetoric that verges on antisemitic. Jews are a small part of her largely African-American constituency, they said.
“While the Middle East may concern that community, it’s not the top of their agenda,” Gale said. “Mostly its economics and crime and other issues that concern the African-American community.”
Her support in the district is based on her work on urban issues and her constituent services.
“If you look at what motivates people to go into the polling booth, it’s not this issue, it’s not foreign affairs. It’s economics, it’s poverty, it’s taxes,” Gale said. “Foreign affairs and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is way down the list, if it’s even on the list, for most American voters.”
While there has been some chatter on social media about someone mounting a serious primary challenge to Tlaib, it seems unlikely, Kramer said. “I haven’t heard of any credible names who are really seriously considering that at this point,” he said.
“Certainly, if there was a good challenger, I would support that person,” said the Democratic activist who lives in Tlaib’s district.
The Jewish activists who spoke with National Review agreed that while they have virulent disagreements with Tlaib, the tensions between Detroit’s Jewish and Muslim communities have not really flared up on the ground. That could be, in part, because the two communities are generally geographically separate — the Muslim community is concentrated south of Detroit, while the Jewish community is more to the north and northwest. But it also can be attributed to years of coalition-building and efforts to work together for state aid.
Gale said he is “a bit worried” about the rhetoric of some Arab Muslim leaders who use terms such as “apartheid” and “genocide” when they talk about the conflict in Israel, and about Arab news reports that claim that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not Hamas or Hezbollah, is the real terrorist in the region.
Kramer agreed that Tlaib should not be portrayed as a mainstream Democratic voice. The most prominent Democrats “are very strong allies of Israel,” he said.
But, he said, “I have a little bit of a long-term concern if we see more of these members on the far left start to proliferate in the party.”
American Jews have long been one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituencies. But polls show that Democrats nationwide are growing increasingly more sympathetic to Palestinians than they are to Israelis.
The Democratic activist in Tlaib’s district said that for now she’s not worried because anti-Israel Democrats like Tlaib don’t hold the most prominent positions nationally.
“What does concern me,” she said, “if I look on college campuses and say, Are these the people coming up? Are these the next people?”