Wednesday, December 07, 2022
Elder of Ziyon
Why on Earth are there only 126 signatures on a letter asking the President for a strategy to fight antisemitism? That's less than 25% of all lawmakers.More than a hundred lawmakers sent a letter Tuesday asking President Biden for a national strategy to combat antisemitism and a “whole-of-government” approach to threats and violence against Jewish communities.“As members of the House and Senate Bipartisan Task Forces for Combating Antisemitism, we write to urge you to ensure leaders working within your Administration are working together to execute a unified national strategy to monitor and combat antisemitism,” the lawmakers said in the letter.“With Jewish communities worldwide facing increasing discrimination, as well as threats and acts violence, we believe a whole-of-government approach is needed to effectively address the scourge of antisemitism,” they added.Leaders of the Senate and House Bipartisan Task Forces for Combating Antisemitism put forth the letter with 126 lawmaker signatures from both parties to ask Biden for increased interagency coordination and collaboration.Strategic coordination would help agencies “share best practices, data, and intelligence; identify gaps in efforts; streamline overlapping activities and roles; and execute a unified national strategy,” the lawmakers said.
Moreover, you will be hard pressed to find any of the "critics of Israel" who are "against antisemitism" to have signed this letter.
As FirstOneThrough notes, in general, members of Congress who have voted against Israel have not signed this letter to combat antisemitism.
People who didn't sign this letter include the nine members of Congress who voted against funding Iron Dome: Cori Bush, Andre Carson, Chuy Garcia, Raúl Grijalva, Thomas Massie, Marie Newman, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib.
None of the co-sponsors of a bill against supplying weapons to Israel, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Mark Pocan, Betty McCollum and Pramila Jayapal in addition to Cori Bush, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omar signed the call to combat anti-Semitism letter.
Nearly all signatories of a letter to send money to Hamas didn't sign this letter: Don Beyer, Earl Blumenauer, André Carson, Judy Chu, Danny K. Davis, Peter A. Defazio, Mark DeSaulnier, Ruben Gallego, Jesús G. “Chuy” García, Raúl Grijalva, Deb Haaland, Jared Huffman, Pramila Jayapal, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr., Dan Kildee, Betty McCollum, James P. McGovern, Gwen S. Moore, Ilhan Omar, Chellie Pingree, Donald M. Payne Jr., David E. Price, Bobby L. Rush, Jackie Speier, Rashida Tlaib, Paul Tonko, and Peter Welch.
The vast majority of J-Street endorsees did not sign this letter, including Andy Levin, Tom Malinowski and Josh Harder. Also Jamaal Bowman and new House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries did not sign.
It sure sounds like antisemitism and anti-Zionism are congruent.
The probable reason for so much opposition to the letter is that it says this: "Interagency coordination also could benefit from considering a broadly understood definition of antisemitism, as several agencies have adopted or recognized individually." This could be interpreted as support for the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, which Israel haters are so against.
But that proves the point that anti-Zionism is akin to antisemitism: either these lawmakers haven't read the IHRA definition ("criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic") or they firmly believe that Israel must be treated with different standards compared to every other nation.
It shows that they know that their own criticisms of Israel go beyond normal criticism of other countries.
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