Not In McCarthy's House: Speaker Rains On Progressive Representative Tlaib's Parade After She Plans Anti-Israel Event In Congress

Progressive Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) had planned to host a Nakba Day event, an event that mourns the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 (Nakba being the Arabic word for "Catastrophe"), but House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had other plans, according to Just the News. Representative McCarthy reserved the space that Tlaib planned to host her event for his own event. This event, unlike Tlaib's, would be pro-Israel as it will be dedicated to celebrating 75 years of US-Israeli ties.

Speaker McCarthy, who recently returned from a bipartisan trip to Israel, told the Washington Free Beacon, "It’s wrong for members of Congress to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes about Israel...As long as I’m Speaker, we are going to support Israel’s right to self-determination and self-defense, unequivocally and in a bipartisan fashion." Mr. McCarthy also took to Twitter to announce that "This [Tlaib's] event in the US Capitol is canceled. Instead, I will host a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the US-Israel relationship."

 

This event in the US Capitol is canceled.

Instead, I will host a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the US-Israel relationship. https://t.co/s6YXltFOhu

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) May 10, 2023

His intervention came after a letter sent by the Coalition for Jewish Values decried Tlaib's event. The letter mentioned that "It is unsurprising but appalling that the featured speaker at this event will be a Member of Congress who describes the only Middle Eastern country to give equality and voting rights to both Jews and Arabs as ‘apartheid'...We hope that our request will meet with your favorable response, and that you will condemn this event in the strongest terms as soon as possible." 

The invitation to Tlaib's event read "May 15th marks 75 years since the beginning of the Nakba, which means 'catastrophe' that... Seventy-five years ago, Zionist militias and the new Israeli military violently expelled approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland in what became the state of Israel." It mentioned how the speakers at the event will "uplift the experiences of Palestinians who underwent the Nakba, and educate members of Congress and their staff about this history and the ongoing Nakba to which Israel continues to subject Palestinians."
   
When McCarthy visited the Holy Land, Representative Tlaib wrote in a tweet that "Speaker McCarthy wants to rewrite history but the apartheid state of Israel was born out of violence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. 75 years later, the Nakba continues to this day."
 

Speaker McCarthy wants to rewrite history but the apartheid state of Israel was born out of violence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

75 years later, the Nakba continues to this day. 

— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@RepRashida) May 1, 2023

Fox News displayed how the community notes that were once attached to the tweet refuted her allegations. She was first fact-checked by noting that the concept of a Jewish state was voted favorably on by the United Nations General Assembly. A second fact check noted that the "ethnic cleansing" that Tlaib likes to taut "affected both Jewish and Arab communities caught up in the war initiated by 5 Arab states who opposed the existence of Israel" and the last note pointed out that at the present time, Israeli Arabs make up around 20 percent of Israel's population and that they enjoy "full and equal rights."

The apartheid accusation is utterly without meaningful foundation as demonstrated by an article in The Platform Mag. In terms of the ethnic cleansing charge, most academic scholars have noted that most Arabs in that war fled without ever seeing a single Israeli soldier. One notable Israeli scholar, Benny Morris, who was critical of old Israeli narratives surrounding the war, wrote that "there was no such plan or policy [of mass explusion] in 1948 [by the Israeli high command]." 

By contrast, the grandfather of the Palestinian national movement, Haj Amin al Husseini obtained from Adolf Hitler in 1941 promises that read, "Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti [al Husseini] would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared." Husseini conducted propaganda for the Axis during World War Two, helped raise a Muslim SS division for the Germans, and prevented the rescue of Jewish children from the Holocaust. 

It should be noted that a number of pro-Palestinian activists admitted that the negative buzz terms they use against Israel like "ethnic cleansing" and "apartheid" is not asserted for accuracy's sake but rather for the narrative effect that these terms have.