President Trump and Republicans will need to get pickier when attacking House Democrats. They’re numbing the nation to real anti-Semitic outrages and they risk making people stop caring, as they have stopped caring about liberals’ claims to see racism in every person, place, and thing under the sun.
The text of recent remarks from freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., during a radio interview is Exhibit A. They do read like she’s taking a passive-aggressive swipe at Jews around the world by emphasizing the suffering Palestinians endured on behalf of Israelis. Read the transcript and Tlaib sounds like she’s elevating the attempted mass extermination of Jews with efforts to offer them help. But listen to the audio and she sounds genuinely reflective, if even naive, about the enduring conflict between Arabs and Jews.
“There’s kind of a calming feeling, I always tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust,” she said. “And the tragedy of the Holocaust and the fact that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their lands and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity. Their existence, in many ways, have been wiped out and some people’s past — all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and horrific persecution of Jews across time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors who provided that in many ways.”
Trump and Republicans sniffed out a line of attack based on the “calming feeling” Tlaib feels about the Holocaust. But it was weak. It didn’t cut to the heart like the appropriate onslaught against Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., whose pattern of behavior really did reveal her to be, if not an anti-Semite, certainly skeptical of America.
Tlaib is of Palestinian descent and thus has a direct stake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Omar, by contrast, is a Somali refugee from a war-torn country, who has flippantly described the Sept. 11 attack as “some people did something.” (The context of what she said was actually much worse than the clip spread by conservatives, particularly in light of everything else she’s said about Jews, money, and hypnosis.)
Any American, to say nothing of just Republicans, would be right to have been taken aback by Omar’s every utterance. They’re alarming and alien.
What Tlaib said about the Holocaust was neither, even if it wasn’t accurate. (One dispute pertains to her recollection of the history of Israel’s formation.) Trump called her comments “horrible and highly insensitive.” Untrue. She was respectful about a still-painful subject.
Political attacks only work when they carry the truth. That’s why Trump has been so effective in pounding Democrats on immigration, Islamic-inspired terrorism, and U.S. foreign relations.
The attack on Tlaib, on the other hand, doesn’t have an inherent accuracy. It failed, and if it that happens again, Trump and Republicans are going to lose ground in the political fight over anti-Semitism.
