 Rashida Tlaib is being attacked by her own Democratic Party colleagues for saying the most benign innocuous thing ever. It's common sense if you understand the particulars of the situation that she's talking about, but what did she say? Well, this is her quote according to Jerusalem Post. I want you all to know that among progressives it has become clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values yet back Israel's apartheid government, said Rashida Tlaib, U.S. Representative for Michigan's 13th Congressional District during an online advocacy seminar held on Tuesday by Americans for Justice in Palestine Action and co-sponsored by American Muslims for Palestine. She continues, The need to oppose Israel's government apartheid rule is obvious. The path to freedom for Palestine is long and daunting. We must see through to its end. We owe it to not only Palestinians, but oppressed people all over the world who understand that our struggles are linked to one another. So I think that what she's saying is common sense. You cannot support a system of apartheid and claim to be a progressive. But Democrats who saw this, they are purposefully misrepresenting what she's saying to of course claim that she is anti-Semitic when in actuality they are the ones who are bigoted. They are Islamophobic and they don't believe that Palestinians deserve human rights. So Jerry Nadler, for example, called out Rashida Tlaib responding to the quote shared by Jerusalem Post saying, I fundamentally reject the notion that one cannot support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and be a progressive. Now notice how he did a little bit of a switcheroo here. She did not say I do not support Israel's right to exist. She's just saying I do not support their system of oppression and apartheid against Palestinians. But he's saying, you just said that you don't support their right to exist. So do you remember that viral video it was from a couple of months ago during pride when this guy, this conservative in particular, he walked into a pet co or a pet smart and he started to lambast the cashiers there because they had pride flags displayed at the cash registers. So he said, do you support this? And they said, yes, I support LGBTQ rights. And he responded by saying, oh, so you support pedophilia basically conflating pedophilia with LGBTQ plus rights. That's effectively what Jerry Nadler is doing right here. He's saying I do not support apartheid and he's saying, oh, so you don't support Israel's right to exist. No, that's not what she's saying. She's condemning racism and oppression. But Jerry Nadler here is pretending as if that's not what she's saying. He continues here. I proudly embrace both of these political positions and identities, even as I have criticized some of the policies and actions of democratically elected Israeli governments over time. I would happily put my progressive record and credentials up against anyone's okay. But it's both wrong and self-defeating for progressive leaders to abide by such an offensive litmus tests. Okay. So that's funny that he's claiming that he's a progressive, more progressive than Rashida Tlaib. But he's saying that this is an absurd litmus test. Okay. Well, it's only the most basic litmus test ever. It's not even like a progressive litmus test. In my opinion, it's just, are you or are you not a shitty person? Like do you think that you can be progressive and still be racist? Do you think that you can support oppression and the dispossession of an entire group of people and still be progressive? If the answer is no to that, then the same thing follows here. How can you purport to be progressive while supporting functionally anyways, despite your criticism, this system of apartheid, where Palestinians are not just treated as second class citizens. They are brutalized and displaced from their homes. How can you purport with the straight face to be progressive and support this oppressive system to be progressive is to object to the oppression of marginalized people, to support the liberation and self-determination of oppressed peoples everywhere. But you can make an exception for Israel. That doesn't make any sense to me, but he's not the only one because others decided to chime in and attack Rashida Tlaib by, of course, misrepresenting what she said by attributing an argument to her that she very clearly did not make. Ritchie Torres, for example, tweeted out, there's nothing progressive about advocating for the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Yes, because she did that. Nothing progressive about opposing the Abraham Accords, which promotes peace. Nothing progressive about opposing the Iron Dome, which protects civilians from indiscriminate rocket fire. Right. And she did not speak to that. But what about the self-defense of Palestinians who are brutalized by Israeli forces? Do you support them being protected? Do you support an Iron Dome for them? You know, we often hear about Israel having the right to defend itself. Do Palestinians have a right to defend themselves at all? Well, no, of course not. Israel, their government is supposed to be able to brutalize, murder innocent civilians with impunity. And the second that you condemn their apartheid state, well, you're saying that Israel doesn't have the right to exist. That doesn't even make sense. Like I condemn the Saudi Arabia government and their genocide in Yemen. I condemn the United States' government and our wars over oil in states like Iraq and Afghanistan. Does that mean that I don't think that the United States should not exist? Does it make you inherently Islamophobic to condemn the actions of the Saudi government? Of course it doesn't. But right here, they're playing loose with the facts because there's really no defense against what the apartheid government of Israel is doing. So they have to try to obscure the issue by pretending as if the criticisms that are being lobbed against Israel are simply coming from a place of anti-Semitism. And that's just not true. Now Debbie Wasserman Schultz chimed in saying, the outrageous progressive litmus test on Israel by Rashida Tlaib is nothing short of anti-Semitic. Proud progressives do support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, suggesting otherwise is shameful and dangerous. Device of rhetoric does not lead to peace. Now I just love that Debbie Wasserman Schultz of all people is claiming that somebody else within the Democratic Party is being divisive. Really Debbie? Perhaps you're not the best messenger for this, okay? This is the individual who in her capacity as DNC chair sabotaged one of the candidates because she wanted her friend Hillary Clinton to win the 2016 Democratic Party primary so she could get a job at the White House. But that's, you know, neither here nor there. Like Debbie Wasserman Schultz is one of the most corrupt members of Congress. Just period. And yet she's claiming, I don't know. You can't claim that we're not progressive if we don't condemn Israeli apartheid. You're not progressive Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Somebody who's progressive, first and foremost, they of course reject Israeli apartheid, but they also don't accept contributions from the payday industry. The fact that they're coming out and they're angry that she's claiming, Rashida Tlaib is claiming that you can be progressive and support apartheid is just hilarious. They take it as like a personal offense. Oh, she's saying that I can't be progressive while I'm incredibly progressive. No, you're not. Stop pretending. I understand why you have to uphold this facade that you're progressive. You're not progressive. Who cares? Like it's just a label. And it's just like anyone who purports to be progressive and supports human rights, you cannot support this system of oppression. That's not to say that you believe that Israel shouldn't exist, of course. But it's saying that this system of governance that they currently have where they subject Palestinians to human rights abuses, that can't be tolerated. You have to end apartheid in order for liberty for Palestinians. Now, if you don't believe that Israel is an apartheid state, let me direct your attention to an Amnesty International report released on February 1st of this year where they described Israel's apartheid against Palestinians as a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity with Amnesty Secretary General stating clearly, our report reveals the true extent of Israel's apartheid regime, whether they live in Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the rest of the West Bank or Israel itself, Palestinians are treated as an inferior racial group and systematically deprived of their rights. We found that Israel's cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid. The international community has an obligation to act. Now, in their summary, they go on to explain how Palestinians as a people are treated as a threat by Israel's government with a sustained effort by the Israeli government to control their movement and decrease their presence in Israel. They described Israel's apartheid system as one of explicit systemic discrimination which blocks Palestinians from leasing on 80% of Israel's land, Bedouin villages that are unrecognized by Israel are cut off from water and electricity. This affects nearly 70,000 people, not to mention how Palestinians are disproportionately left out when it comes to the allocation of state resources, with COVID aid being just one of the most recent examples. On top of that, Palestinians are displaced as the government seizes their homes and or demolishes them, their freedom of movement is heavily restricted. I mean, there's a reason why Nelson Mandela's grandson called Israeli apartheid one of the worst forms of apartheid ever. And he's following in the footsteps of his grandfather Nelson Mandela, who called for Israel to withdraw from occupied Palestinian territory, noting how they were being oppressed by the Israeli government. So let's be very clear about this. What these bigoted Islamophobic Democrats like Deputy Wasserman Schultz, Jerry Nadler, Richie Torres are trying to do is conflate any and all criticism, legitimate criticism, mind you, of the Israeli government with a hatred of the Jewish people. Because that's the only thing that they have. You can actually argue with Rashida Tlaib on the merits because it's very clearly a system of apartheid and oppression and abuse. So what they do is they claim anti-semitism. They're essentially weaponizing identity politics to silence critiques. And that's dangerous because it diminishes actual anti-semitism, which is dangerous and must be opposed by everyone. But when you're taking money from pro-Israel anti-Palestinian organizations, this is the only argument that you can make. You have to try to shut down criticism by any means necessary. So this is why you see them purposefully misrepresent Rashida Tlaib's argument by saying, oh, you're calling it apartheid. That means you don't want Israel to exist when that's not what she's saying. If you actually were confident in your beliefs, you'd grapple with the substance. But they're not. They're just saying what they want to say or what they know they need to say to shut down criticism. Now, I think it's really important that we bring in Jewish voices here. So I want to leave you with the late, great Michael Brooks, who had the clearest, most perfect response to this issue here. Take a look. Are you not concerned about the binary between either condemning Israel entirely being also a stance that a lot of very strong and notorious anti-Semitic people agree with versus seeing this as more of a complex issue where it is wrong what's going on and that there's also a way to do this that Israel still exists and is supported? So it's not a complex issue. That's the big thing. It's super simple. There's one group that has enormous power. It's the most powerful country in the Middle East. It's backed by the United States. It acts on another population of people with total impunity and is never held accountable for anything. So there's no symmetry in the relationship, period. And just as like a thought experiment, IDW people, if we know that if somehow a population of Jewish refugees ended up in West Bank in Gaza and an Arabic government in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv had an open air prison in what, you know, Jewish Gaza, which they bombed white phosphorus, they killed civilians indiscriminately and they had no provisions for medicine. They had an embargo that blocked food, that the electricity wasn't running, that there was an over 48 percent unemployment rate, life expectancy and malnutrition statistics were horrifying. One of the major policymakers in this hypothetical Arabic Palestinian state said, we need to put those Jews on a diet. In the West Bank there was another Jewish area where there was a little bit more autonomy, but there was regular Arabic settlements where they pulled up the Jewish farmers' foods, they terrorized them with rocks, the security forces broke children's bones, and they couldn't drive their own roads. We'd all have no problem understanding what that was. So there's nothing complex about it. The second part of your question, it's a pure asymmetry relationship. And the question is rights or not. So that's it. It's not complicated. The second part of your question, at this point, there's always been, there's always going to be crackpots who are anti-Semitic who condemn Israel. That's not what drives the movement, particularly in the United States. If you work around most people who are concerned with this issue, it's actually populated with a lot of Jewish people. The real question we have to ask is why is it that APAC is hosting a information minister for Slobodan Milosevic? Why is it that there's relationships between the Israeli government and far-right parties in Europe? Why is it that Benjamin Netanyahu's son is posting borderline alt-right memes? Why is it that Israel is an alt-right state, even though it is from the descendants of the victims of one of the greatest crimes in history? That's a serious question, and that's inseparable from the racism of the project, which goes back to the first part that we have to solve. But thank you, Shalom.