Some ‘Squad’ members equivocate in full-throated denouncement of antisemitic attacks

POLICE INVESTIGATING POSSIBLE HATE CRIME AFTER PRO-PALESTINIAN MOB ALLEGEDLY ATTACKS JEWISH DINERS

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, a Massachusetts Democrat, though, leavened her condemnation of the antisemitic attacks with animus toward Muslim Americans.

“I strongly condemn the rise in anti-Semitism and islamophobia we’re seeing across the country. Let me say it again: our freedom and our destinies are tied. The struggle for liberation and justice requires all of us to reject hate and division in any form,” Pressley said in a Saturday tweet.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat and one of the harshest critics of Israel in Congress, later retweeted Pressley’s message.

That kind of approach isn’t good enough, said Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, who is Jewish.

“I’ll say the quiet part out loud; it’s time for ‘progressives’ to start condemning anti-semitism and violent attacks on Jewish people with the same intention and vigor demonstrated in other areas of activism. The silence has been deafening,” Phillips tweeted.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, tweeted Friday, “There is no room for anti-semitism in the movement for Palestinian liberation. Our critique is of Israel and their human rights abuses. This is not an excuse for anti-semitic hate crimes.”

Rep. Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat, and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, also put out similar statements of their own on Twitter accounts denouncing the attacks.

Last Wednesday, law enforcement opened an investigation of a potential hate crime after a mob swarmed a group of diners at a sushi restaurant in Los Angeles.

“A group of Palestinians, about 30 of them, jumped out of a car and asked who was Jewish. Two guys said they were, and they proceeded to beat them up,” one on the scene witness, who caught the aftermath, said on video. “They’re apparently going around the city and asking who’s Jewish and beating them up. This is America, guys. Things are not looking good.”

In another instance last week in Los Angeles, surveillance footage captured a Jewish man being chased by two cars flying Palestinian flags.

“I was waiting by the light for it to change, and suddenly, I saw a bunch of cars coming, and I see out of the corner of my eye they were waving the Palestinian flag,” the man reportedly said. “They started speeding up, and I heard them chanting ‘Allahu akbar.’ That’s when I started running for my life.”

In New York’s Times Square last Thursday, fights erupted between pro-Palestinian supporters and supporters of Israel, and fireworks were thrown in midtown Manhattan’s Diamond District, known for its heavily Jewish demographic, by pro-Palestinian activists.

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Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, who apologized in 2019 for making “antisemitic tropes” after her own party rebuked her, released a statement on Twitter responding to the attack in Los Angeles: “Horrific and unacceptable. Nobody should face threats and harassment based on their religion or ethnicity. This has to stop.”

President Joe Biden denounced the assaults on Twitter on Monday morning, stating, “The recent attacks on the Jewish community are despicable, and they must stop. I condemn this hateful behavior at home and abroad — it’s up to all of us to give hate no safe harbor.”

However, the condemnations from progressive Democrats are considered “practically worthless” by former New York Democratic assemblyman Dov Hikind, who founded Americans Against Antisemitism.

Law enforcement arrested a primary suspect in the attack on Jewish patrons at the Los Angeles eatery. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, the man was identified as 30-year-old Xavier Pabon. Pabon was charged with assault with a deadly weapon.