Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
More Corruption in the House of Representatives
Just when we thought the anti-Semitic activities in the House of Representatives might be quieting down, Rashid Tlaib and Ilhan Omar have decided to push their hateful actions one step farther. Even worse, we are watching the House of Representatives being attacked from within, and no one is taking notice; the cries against anti-Semitism are pushing the questions about the integrity of the House into the background. These two issues arise due to Tlaib, Omar, and their fellow representative from Minnesota, Betty McCollum, who are co-sponsoring legislation that is filled with an abundance of false information directed—of course—against the state of Israel.
The story actually begins in 1979 with the creation of an organization called Defense for Children International; the Palestinian branch was founded in 1991 (DCI-P). This organization has extensive links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. For those who may not know, PFLP is a well-known terrorist organization.
Fast forward to November 2017, when McCollum sponsored bill HR4391, which would prohibit “U.S. assistance to Israel from being used to support military detention, interrogation or ill-treatment of Palestinian children in violation of international humanitarian law.” It’s important to note that our federal law already prohibits providing funds to a foreign security force that commits gross human rights violations; clearly, Israel was being targeted in this new bill. Also, the bill did die in committee, but was re-introduced on April 30, 2019.
Fortunately, the NGO Monitor researched the claims against Israel and updated their findings in 2017. Their research verified that “the entirety of the proposed bill is premised on factually inaccurate claims from anti-Israel advocacy NGOs, including direct quotes from the DCI-P’s “No Way to Treat a Child” 2016 report.
To give you a sense of the “facts” that were provided in this report and later versions, here is a sample:
From testimonies of 739 Palestinian children detained by Israeli forces from the occupied West Bank and prosecuted in Israeli military courts between 2013 and 2018, DCIP found that:
- 73 percent experienced physical violence following arrest
- 95 percent were hand-tied
- 86 percent were blindfolded
- 49 percent were detained from their homes in the middle of the night
- 64 percent faced verbal abuse, humiliation, or intimidation
- 74 percent of children were not properly informed of their rights
- 96 percent were interrogated without the presence of a family member
- 20 percent were subject to stress positions
- 49 percent signed documents in Hebrew, a language most Palestinian children don’t understand
(Words in bold appeared in bold in the report.) To characterize some of these actions as “abuse” is questionable.
Remember, the DCI-P wrote the majority of the bill that was submitted to the House by McCollum and her colleagues. In spite of her condemnation of Netanyahu and Israel’s “apartheid-like policies,” one member of the House spoke out supporting Israel. Mark Mellman of the Democratic Majority of Israel. He said, in part:
While Prime Minister Netanyahu proudly wears the right-wing label as McCollum asserts, and while many of us have serious disagreements with some of his polices, he came to office in a fair and democratic election in which every Arab citizen of Israel had the same right to vote as any Jewish citizen. Indeed, that same election resulted in the Joint Arab list being the Parliament’s third largest party.
In spite of the outrageous attacks on Israel and the Jewish people, a more insidious effort to manipulate the House is in play. In all this discussion, no one mentions the deceptive nature of the proposed legislation. Either the Representatives who submitted the legislation were grossly irresponsible in not checking out the accuracy of the information that substantiated the legislation; did not check the veracity of the DCI-P that wrote the report that was the basis of the legislation; or intentionally deceived their fellow representatives to further their agenda.
If any or all of these factors were involved in crafting the legislation, we all have a much more serious problem than anti-Semitism in our Congress. Our legislators are determined to find ways to stop funding Israel, apparently at any cost.
The reputation of the House Democrats has already been damaged with their hostile actions toward the President and his administration over the last three years. Now we have even more reason to distrust them.
Published in Politics
When a people train their children to hate and murder another people…to become mass murderers, what kind of treatment can they expect their children to get when captured? I seriously doubt the veracity of any “facts” elucidated by the Palestinians or their sympathizers, but as Golda Meir said the Palestinians sorely need to love their children more than they hate the Israeli’s.
And they do train their children to hate the Israelis. Their cowboy and indian games are with flags and guns, acting out killing the enemy.
I hope the average voter recognizes the Democrat Party’s inability to denounce the hate within itself – or does the party covertly approve?
That was the point I was suggesting, @stad. I have heard no outcry against the deceptive wording of the legislation. If anyone has, please let me know.
Of course, the legislation will appeal to those college students who’ve been brainwashed on BDS . . .
Susan,
This has been a long time coming. The Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Democrat Minority Leader of the Senate have nothing to say as their two Jihadist sympathizers run loose. The Jewish mainline organizations (excepting only ZOA) couldn’t see the handwriting on the wall and condemned Trump & Netanyahu for keeping Talib & Omar from their Jihad tour of Israel. Thus AIPAC reveals what I have always known about them. They are nothing but an arm of the Democratic Party. Their gimmick about bipartisanship is only to co-opt conservatives into wasting their time and money on them. More importantly, they have left the State of Israel without proper support in the propaganda war while they lust after political power for themselves.
The Democrat political schizophrenia is going to be fully revealed as we move forward and they will lose and lose big. However, in the meantime, we conservatives who still can think rationally stand alone. That’s the way it is. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
Regards,
Jim
I’m not asking for or expecting easy, Jim. I just want the word to get out in spite of MSM. Maybe even that is asking too much. And yes, AIPAC has shown their true stripes. At least now we know. Thanks.
It is worth noting that this bill died in committee back in 2017, according to the House link. Bad that the legislation, a pack of lies, would be introduced; good that it went nowhere, including getting no hearing in committee.
@cliffordbrown, I didn’t include the date that McCollum re-introduced the bill on April 30, 2019. It may very well die in committee now that the truth has come out, but that doesn’t change the original deceptive actions.
So, now H.R. 2407. It too has been languishing in committee, no hearings scheduled. I think the strongest points to be made are:
The current bill has 21 cosponsors. The 2017 bill had 30. Good list of the hard core anti-Semites.
As the House turns Muslim and the country Hispanic it will be interesting to see how the Jews or Christians fare.
Reconquista Part 2?
NGO-Monitor’s points were contested:
http://policyworkinggroup.org.il/report_en.pdf
From the Executive Summary:
“NGO Monitor was founded in 2002 as a part of the conservative Israeli think tank JCPA (the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) and registered as an independent organization in 2007. NGO Monitor presents itself as “an independent and nonpartisan research institute dedicated to promoting transparency and accountability of NGOs claiming human rights agendas, primarily in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict.”
“In reality, as this report concludes and will establish, NGO Monitor is a politically-motivated organization that maintains close coordination and cooperation with the Israeli government. It consistently shields and promotes government policies that seek to perpetuate, consolidate and expand Israel’s occupation of, and control over, the Palestinian territories.”
Which is a fair enough editorial position, but it should be openly stated.
From 972mag
https://972mag.com/what-is-ngo-monitors-connection-to-the-israeli-government/90239/
The spearhead of the battle against Israeli human rights organizations, NGO Monitor, is run by a man who, at least for a period of time since its founding, was closely affiliated with the Prime Minister’s Office….
“Hello, I have the honor of representing NGO Monitor, and I think that I will be the first speaker to talk from a point of view that is neither governmental nor quasi-governmental, but rather from, what is called: civil society.”
— Gerald Steinberg speaking at the Knesset Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee, July 9, 2013.
….we found Gerald Steinberg’s resume from 2004, two years after he established NGO Monitor. In it, under “additional activities,” Steinberg testifies that he served as a “consultant [to the] Government of Israel,” and as a member of the “Steering Committee, Forum on Antisemitism, Office of the Prime Minister, Government of Israel.” On his Hebrew-language profile on the NGO Monitor website, Steinberg describes himself as a “consultant to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” (His English profile is missing that information.) In a profile attached to a 2006 op-ed, he is described as a consultant to the National Security Council, which is a part of the Prime Minister’s Office.
In other words, Gerald Steinberg claims that he works — or at least has worked — for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, and that is long after he founded NGO Monitor.
Everyone has an agenda, @zafar. No surprise there. I clearly have an agenda, as do you. The only Policy Working Group I could find was a Leftist organization that works on climate change. I guess we have to look at all the information and decide who is more credible and which information do we want to accept. When it comes to Israel and the Palestinians, you and I frequently disagree.
Play the ball, not the pitcher. Regardless of the source, the claims are either valid or not.
We are both open about our agendas, though, aren’t we? Which seems like a good thing, and I like that even if we disagree.
@iwe, trying to determine the truth is not always easy. So the source does matter when we are trying to determine which facts to accept.
Here is another way to see it:
“Truth” is not connected to its source. From a logical perspective, the messenger does not make the message true or false.
BUT
“Likely True” is a matter for statistics, not absolute logic. And on this basis, we can include track record, established prejudices, history of good faith, etc. All will make a source more or less likely to be credible.
Which means that while CAIR may be right from time to time, their track record makes anything they say highly suspect.
So I think you have convinced me, at least in part!
The difficulty comes when we don’t know the reputation or track record of an organization. In our busy lives, do we always check them out? Do we look for other sources that we believe we can trust? I may write a post on this . . . ;-)
My level of trust for the Congressional members of the Democratic Party of Hate begins at zero. I don’t see how it could go any lower.
Unfortunately, in the order of things, the most anti-semitism comes from Muslims, next from leftist/socialists, and then African Americans (not negroes in general, but American Negroes). It’s another conundrum involving Jews. Why are we despised so by African Americans? I have some answers based on experience and direct questioning, but the answers just seem silly.
Anyway, it’s really one and the same thing. Anti-Israel = Anti-Semitism.
I applaud you for your strong posts regarding attacks on Israel.
But Susan, I hope you have your passport in order. You never know when you might have to get out in a hurry.
No good deed goes unpunished. You bite the hand that feeds you. All such cliches are in order.
No group did more to advance black civil rights than the Jews.
It is odd, isn’t it @cdor. After all, we all have slavery in our history, and now we live free. I suspect it might be jealousy of Jewish success–it’s so much easier to blame the Jews for your situation than take responsibility for yourself.
I was in a round table Sunday morning breakfast meeting that combined members of my Synogogue with members of Congressman Emanuel Cleaver’s church. The subject of antisemitism was discussed. These were all college educated young American Negroes. Their negative experience that made them feel vengeful against Jews went back to their childhood. The population of their neighborhoods was originally Jews and Italians. As those two groups moved out and into suburbs, the “Blacks” moved in. However, the original Jewish owned small businesses remained in the area. The local Mom and Pop grocery store, for example, was guilty, as described by these young educated church goers, of charging high prices on their food and high interest on the credit the Jewish store owners gave to these people’s parents. “Interest on credit?” I asked. “You mean these little grocery stores with very limited purchasing power, charged a higher price than the mega stores in the suburbs? And they gave your parents credit?” Yes, they answered. Our parents were poor and living from check to check. We would usually run out of money by the middle of the week. So the neighborhood Jewish grocer gave our parents food on credit until Friday, when they got paid. And we all thought that he jacked up the bill. My mouth was agape. “When was the last time you asked the cashier at a grocery store to let you come back in a few days, after you got paid, to take care of your bill? And when was the last time you viewed the manager/owner of your local Quick Trip with hostility for charging a higher price for milk and beer than the large grocery store?” Antisemitism, like racism, cannot be explained rationally. It is just a sickness.
What a story, @cdor! The extent to which people will go to blame others.