After House leadership blocked Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) from headlining an anti-Semitic gathering, she was thrown a lifeline by Senate Democrats, who hosted her Wednesday evening to mourn Israel’s creation.
The Michigan “Squad” member was given space for the event by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who welcomed Tlaib and a crew of anti-Israel advocacy groups to take over a Senate committee room. The move came after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) intervened late Tuesday to stop Tlaib from headlining the anti-Semitic gathering in a Capitol Visitors Center auditorium, where he instead held an event celebrating the 75th year of the U.S.-Israel alliance.
“Let the headlines read ‘McCarthy tries to erase Palestine but fails,’” Tlaib boasted about the event on Twitter Wednesday night.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) was silent Wednesday evening, and although a source close to him told the New York Post he was “totally unaware” that the event would be hosted on the Senate side of the Capitol, his office failed to respond to multiple Washington Free Beacon requests for comment that were sent on Monday and Wednesday informing him of Tlaib’s plans. Also unaware was Sanders’s Republican counterpart on the committee that hosted Tlaib, adding new drama to a controversy that has been brewing on the Hill since the Free Beacon first reported Monday on the event.
“I wholeheartedly disapprove of the Majority permitting the use of the HELP Committee room for this divisive event,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.), the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s ranking member, said in a statement provided to the Free Beacon. “The Capitol Grounds should not be used as a pedestal to legitimize anti-Semitic bigotry.”
Schumer’s silence conflicts with his repeated claims of being a pro-Israel leader in the Democratic Party. The Jewish senator frequently boasts about his pro-Israel bonafides but has publicly defended Tlaib and her anti-Israel colleague, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Min.), most notably during a 2019 episode in which Israel denied the two House members entry into the country. Other Democrats on the committee also did not respond to requests for comment on the matter.
The Wednesday evening event was held to honor the Nakba, an Arabic term that loosely translates to “catastrophe” and is used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists to lament Israel’s creation.
A Republican committee source said that Cassidy was not made aware of the event beforehand and was not consulted on Sanders’s decision beforehand.
McCarthy told the Free Beacon on Tuesday that he canceled the event because “it’s wrong for members of Congress to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes about Israel,” adding that “as long as I’m speaker, we are going to support Israel’s right to self-determination and self-defense, unequivocally and in a bipartisan fashion.”
Joining Tlaib at the Nakba event were a host of organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, an anti-Semitic effort to wage economic war on Israel. They include Jewish Voice for Peace, a “radical anti-Israel activist group” that has come under fire for glorifying Palestinian terrorism. Other organizers include Emgage Action, which claims Israel is an “apartheid state,” and Americans for Justice in Palestine Action, an advocacy group that claims Jewish money is infecting politics.
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