Several critics have accused Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib of making anti-semitic comments during a recent speech.
Video of Tlaib speaking at the 2021 Democratic Socialists of America National Convention surfaced Tuesday, and several commentators allege that her comments amount to “anti-semitic dog whistles,” according to Newsweek. (RELATED: ‘Anti-Blackness And Islamophobia’: Squad Defends Ilhan Omar’s Comparison Of US, Israel To Terrorists)
Tlaib says the same people who are keeping down “Palestine” are “exploiting” “regular” citizens here in the US. Is it really “ultrasensitive” to think she’s talking about Jews? Who is she talking about?
— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) August 4, 2021
“For me as a Palestinian-American, we also need to recognize as I think about my family and Palestine that continue to live under military occupation and how that really interacts with this beautiful black city that I grew up in. I always tell people that cutting people off from water is violence. And they do it from Gaza to Detroit. And it’s a way to control people, to oppress people and it’s those structures that we continue to fight against,” Tlaib said during the speech.
Tlaib claimed that people in Palestine understood that they were being exploited for profit by Israeli authorities. “If you open the curtain and look behind the curtain, it’s the same people who make money and — yes they do — off of racism, off of these broken policies. There is someone there making money and you saw it, it was so exposed during the pandemic,” she alleged.
Jewish writer Hen Mazzig commented that Tlaib failed to stand up for Palestinians without the use of “antisemitic tropes,” pointing to her comparison of Palestinians living under Israeli authority to Americans who were being exploited throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Rashida Tlaib says that if you look behind a curtain, the people behind Israel are making profit of racism, denying water access in Detroit…how can she be so careless with antisemitic tropes at a time antisemitic hate crimes are highest in decades?
pic.twitter.com/5Dj2GkKLSg— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 3, 2021
Stunning to hear @RashidaTlaib claim “behind the curtain,” those who prevent a “free Palestine” are the “same people” who exploit “regular Americans.”
We’ve heard this kind of ugly #antisemitic dog whistling before, but it’s appalling when it comes from a member of Congress. pic.twitter.com/lBc8hxKAlw
— Jonathan Greenblatt (@JGreenblattADL) August 3, 2021
This is what @RashidaTlaib means when she says “behind the curtain”.
This is a piece of Nazi propaganda that presents Jews as behind the curtain controlling the Nazi’s enemies. pic.twitter.com/EV4p8samHg
— Ben M. Freeman (@BenMFreeman) August 4, 2021
A caricature shared by author Ben Freeman titled “Behind the Enemy Powers: The Jew” was used as propaganda in Nazi Germany, according to the Holocaust Museum. The phrase “behind the curtain” is also a fairly well-known anti-Semitic trope, used often in Nazi Germany, that suggests Jews are global puppet-masters who control things from behind the scenes.
