Some Congressional Candidates Spout Anti-Semitic, Anti-Israel Views

As candidates campaign for Congressional seats across the United States this summer, anti-Israel and in some cases overtly anti-Semitic views have manifested themselves among outliers in both parties.
 

• Ilhan Omar (D), a Minnesota state legislator who hails originally from Somalia, is campaigning for the seat being vacated by Rep. Keith Ellison (D), who is running for state attorney general. Some of her past tweets on Israel have drawn criticism as her profile has risen. In 2012, for example, she tweeted, “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evils of Israel.”

 

• In Illinois, American Nazi Party member Arthur Jones won a Republican primary in a Chicago-area district currently represented in Congress by Rep. Dan Lipinski (D). Jones is a Holocaust denier and a sympathizer of the Ku Klux Klan. "This idea that 'six million Jews,' were killed by the National Socialist government of Germany, in World War II, is the biggest, blackest, lie in history,” Jones wrote on his campaign website.

 

• Rashida Tlaib (D), a Palestinian American running unopposed in Michigan and thus slated to become the first female Muslim to serve in Congress, recently criticized Israel during Hamas rocket attacks. “My roots as a Palestinian American are strong and important. I believe every human being deserves to live with dignity,” she tweeted. She keynoted an anti-Israel conference in Chicago in April and supported convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh in her bid to evade deportation from the U.S.

 

• John Fitzgerald (R) is running against Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D) in California. Fitzgerald recently appeared on a neo-Nazi radio show, saying, “Everything we’ve been told about the Holocaust is a lie. My entire campaign is about exposing this lie.” He also peddles in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, asserting that nine percent of U.S. government officials are dual citizens of Israel.

 

• Perhaps the most famous candidate to throw pointed jabs at Israel this year is New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated Rep. Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary. She derided Israel’s defensive operations on the Gaza border as a “massacre…To me it would be completely unacceptable if that happened on our shores,” adding “What people are starting to see at least in the occupation of Palestine is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition.” Ocasio-Cortez has emerged as the face of Democratic Socialism, an ideology she has endorsed.

 

• Paul Nehlen (R), who describes himself as “pro-White,” is running to fill the Wisconsin seat of retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan (R). Like Fitzgerald, he has also touted the anti-Semitic dual loyalty theory. “There is one nation where this condition presents particularly egregious pain: Israel,” said Nehlen, who has said that all of his critics are Jewish.

 
These candidacies showcase familiar tropes on the left and right, respectively. Though right-wing groups are generally anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim as well, their opposition to integration and their ongoing embrace of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are intensely threatening to Jews. On the left, the demonization of Israel and the double standards applied to it have increased the stigmatization and marginalization of the Jewish state.  This trend has fueled momentum for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and for harassment of Jewish students on university campuses.
 
Not all of these candidates, or others who share their views, will prevail in November. But the lesson for now is that anti-Israel and anti-Semitic exponents continue to find a voice in the public discourse and landing spaces in our political system. How mainstream officials and institutions in both parties react to these outliers and their ideas will shape the future of U.S. policy with respect to pluralism and Middle East policy.

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Eric Fusfield, Esq. has been B’nai B’rith International’s director of legislative affairs since 2003 and deputy director of the B’nai B’rith International Center for Human Rights and Public Policy since 2007. He holds a B.A. from Columbia University in history; an M.St. in modern Jewish studies from Oxford University; and a J.D./M.A. from American University in law and international affairs. Click here to read more from Eric Fusfield.

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