An
open letter to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib
Dear
Congresswoman Tlaib,
Congratulations
on becoming the first Congresswoman of Palestinian origin. “ Tahanina”, or as
we say, “ Mazal Tov.” If things in 1948 had turned out as the UN planned, with
two entities, one for Jews, one for Arabs, without the bitter fighting that
ensued, perhaps we could have sat down to really celebrate, have some pita and hummus,
drink coffee with “hel”( cardamom), shout “ kululoo” for you. After all, so many
Israelis, Jews, as well as Arabs and Druze, shared the same language, and the
main language of Israel, Hebrew, is “ kissing cousin” to your Arabic. Even our
gene pool (including those blond-haired, blue eyed European colonialist white
invading Jews) is more similar than either of us care to admit.
Sadly,
your people have been led down a thorny path by their leaders, and your family
back in the West Bank have inherited their disasters.
So,
please let me address some thoughts to you.
First,
it is with great pride that I recognize that you could swear your oath to
uphold your duties on the copy of the Quran owned by President Jefferson.
Please keep in mind, that the right, to express your faith, without any restrictions
or interference by the State, did not come easily. When the first Jews came to
these shores, in 1654, they had to prove their value to the Dutch Governor of
New Amsterdam. Even after Jefferson’s famous Statute on Religious Liberty of
Virginia became the basis for the First Amendment’s freedom of religion, Jews
still had to struggle for many generations, till they could hold elected office
in some states, reach high rank in the military, or travel freely in the
pursuit of a livelihood (General Grant’s famous foul-up in Tennessee).This was
true for Quakers, Baptists, Mormons, and Catholics as well( think of JFK). Your
rights, regardless of your religion, are built upon the backs of others.
Which
is why I found your quip about “ Dual Loyalty” in regard to the debate on
banning BDS to be especially disgraceful. It is more befitting of a David Duke.
It certainly sounds duplicitous as you, yourself, at your victory party,
wrapped yourself in a Palestinian flag. Now, it is very common, in the course
of American history, that descendants of various immigrant groups showed signs
of pride and affection for the country of their origin- Irish for Ireland,
Italians for Italy, and I would not begrudge a Palestinians affinity for fellow
Palestinian Arabs ( Jews were Palestinians until 1948; my brother-in-laws birth
certificate says so).
However,
It is not common to support a movement whose express goal is to eliminate
another state, as the BDS organizers, and you yourself, have stated openly.
I
note that you quickly back-tracked on your statement, to claim it was in
reference to lawmakers who were not loyal to the Constitution. It is ironic
that the progressives, such as in your Democratic Socialists of America ,are
among the most vocal to advocate truncating rights of free speech or
religion--for others.
(Just
an aside, as an irony of history, your movement’s founder, Eugene V Debs, was a
white racist, who wanted to keep African Americans down, and keep out
immigrants, such as Chinese and Jews. The movement was later taken over by truly
great figures, such as Michael Harrington and Irving Howe, and then almost died
out, literally of old age).
And
speaking of duplicitous, when you began your campaign, you claimed to be in
favor of a two -state solution, one for Israelis, and one for Palestinians.
Fine, that’s what Israelis accepted in 1948. But, once your campaign picked up
speed, you switched, to a one state solution, with the right of return for all
Palestinians, so that there would, in effect, no longer be a State of Israel.
Even JStreet dropped you like a hot potato.
Now,
please allow me to correct some clear racial profiling you have created in your
speeches.
This
is from an interview you gave in the run up to your successful election on
August 14, 2018:
“…Seeing the unequal treatment in Israel, in the different colored
license plates for Palestinians; and even in the ocean. When I was 19 and with
my family and some of them had head scarves on, we all jumped in the water and
the Israelis jumped out as if my cousins were diseased. “
There
is this transcript of an interview you gave just after your election, on Nov.
18, to UK ‘s Channel 4 News:
Look
I am a person that grew up in Detroit where every single corner of the
district
is a reminder of the civil rights movement. I can tell you when I was 12 years
old I sat there with my mother when she was shifted into a line with all the
other brown people and then all the other folks you know mostly citizens of
Israel and another section, and the way that she was treated less than that,
inequality.
You
were born in 1976, so that this 1st experience of yours at age 19 occurred
in 1995, just 2 years after Paris accords, after Israel opened the doors of
Gaza and West Bank to Palestinian Authority with great expectations. And what
happened? Israelis were being murdered
as they boarded buses. My daughter was a student at the Hebrew University that
year, and it was her good fortune not to have taken the bus when it was bombed.
Instead, she often took the buses of east Jerusalem( Arab) to get around, as it
was less likely that the terrorist would bomb their own!
I
had lived in Kfar Sava at that time, and till that time, there had been a free
flow of people from the “ West Bank” to Israel proper, until the PLO’s henchmen
started planting bombs and we had to have parents take turns watching our
children’s schools for any suspicious objects. One family was burned to death
in their car as they drove near the neighboring town of Kalkiliyah.
So,
to jog your memory, I am posting a list at the end of this letter, just of
bombings of Israeli civilians boarding buses in that same period, after Israel
had begun the process of giving the Palestinians the foundation work for a
future state, that period in which you were surprised by Israelis jumping out
of the water.*
And
those license plates-well, first, they were given your people by Jordan. The Israelis
kept separate registration because they kept the area under Jordanian civil
law, not Israeli law. Now, your people asked for, and got, separation from
Israel, under the Paris accords, eagerly agreed to by the Rais ( top man)
himself, Yasser Arafat. It’s not Israel’s fault that the Palestinians asked for
separation!
You
gave the second interview when you were 12, which would have been in 1988. The line you are referring to, the only line
I can imagine, is the line getting in to Ben Gurion airport. Yes, there are two
lines- one for citizens, one for non-citizens, just as in the US. Was there
extra scrutiny of Arabs, especially those who were “ Jordanians” ( after all,
Jordanian law still held in the land that had been occupied by Jordan from
1948-1967).? That was following a
previous decade of bombing and terror attacks on airplanes and airports by the
PLO and its allies.
As
for identifying with “ browns”, keep in mind, that at that around that time, in
Detroit, the African-American community felt itself exploited by the local
Arabs
. ''They exploit us,'' said
Robert Walls, a senior official in the city's Neighborhood Services Department.
. . . When the subject of Arab merchants arose, the conversation turned angry.
''Let me tell you about overcharging,'' Gaines [ one of the city officials at the meeting)
said. ''They operate on pure greed.'']
''It is greed,'' said Smith-Gray. ''And it's the way they act
toward us. You can go into some stores where kids have to walk with their hands
at their sides'' - presumably an antishoplifting measure. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/29/magazine/the-tragedy-of-detroit.html
Your fellow Arabs were the whites at that time. In fact, Arabs
were labelled as white on the US census as a result of a lawsuit—in 1915!
As
for “ brown”- most Israelis are “brown”, just as Ahed Tamimi and many other
Palestinians are “fair-skinned” or have blue eyes.( Centuries of invasions by Greeks,
Romans, Arabs, Vikings, Franks, and so
on have left their mark).
Now,
as to Israelis jumping out of the water—perhaps your confusing this with the
experience of Jews in Iran and Yemen, when they lived under Shiite rule, and
were considered ritually impure and untouchables. You see, in Israel, they can
have a judge of Arab origin, George Karra, preside over the trial of the
President of Israel; that’s not what apartheid regimes do. I was in Israel this
past summer, during Ramadan, and repeatedly saw, in the evening, at sunset, at
the end of the daily Ramadan fast, Arabs
sitting at the same restaurants with Jews, and shopping freely in the
same stores. Nobody was “ jumping out”.
I
took these pictures this summer.
Do these pictures look like the South under Jim Crow or Apartheid in South Africa?
Black-skinned, white-skinned, who cares, on a Jerusalem
street- but both have the tzizit hanging out!
In
sum, Hon. Congresswoman Tlaib, before you speak of Jewish dual loyalties,
please keep your story straight. Stop using racial dog whistles and stop
pitting “ browns” against “Jews”.
Maybe,
one day, we will be able to get together over a cup of coffee with “hel”.
Inshallah, Im Yirtzeh Hashem, God Willing,.
Inshallah, Im Yirtzeh Hashem, God Willing,.
Salaam,
Shalom,
Rabbi
Norbert Weinberg
*
Palestinian bombings of Israeli civilian buses 1994-1996.
1994 (5 bombings)
Name
|
Date
|
Location
|
Dead
|
Injured
|
April 6, 1994
|
8
|
|||
April 13, 1994
|
5
|
|||
October 19, 1994
|
22
|
|||
November 11, 1994
|
3
|
|||
December 25, 1994
|
none
|
13
|
1995 (4 bombings)
Name
|
Date
|
Location
|
Death toll
|
January 22, 1995
|
21
|
||
April 9, 1995
|
8
|
||
July 24, 1995
|
6
|
||
August 21, 1995
|
4
|
1996 (4 bombings)
Name
|
Date
|
Location
|
Death toll
|
February 25, 1996
|
1
|
||
February 25, 1996
|
Jerusalem Central Bus
station
|
26
|
|
March 3, 1996
|
Jaffa street, Jerusalem
|
19
|
|
March 4, 1996
|
Tel Aviv
|
13
|
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