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On Saturday Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the "Progressive Caucus," publicly announced to a crowd of Palestinian protesters that she has been fighting hard "to make clear that Israel is a racist state." Her blatantly false and inflammatory comments are fully consistent with prior statements that she and other members of her caucus have previously made. They are shocking but not surprising.
What was surprising was that on Sunday, after the pressure to explain herself became unbearable—and a letter from her own Democratic colleagues condemning her remarks began circulating—Jayapal released a pathetically tepid non-apology. She first blamed her remarks on the heat of the moment (as she tried to "defuse a tense situation") then failed in any way to explain why she said what she said—and why she believes what she apparently believes. Sadly, Jayapal's non-apology apology gives us a great insight into the "progressive" mindset of the Democrat's extremist left wing, where feelings do not care about facts and non-experts wax poetic about situations they clearly do not even care to comprehend.
While she backed away from the outright antisemitic notion that the idea of a Jewish State is racist, Jayapal still stands behind her claim that Israel in practice is racist towards Palestinians—while offering zero evidence to back up that assertion. The conflict in Israel is not, and never has been, about race.
The treatment of some members the various people grouped together as Palestinian is not based on their race; they all share the exact same exact ethnic and racial identity. It is, however, based on their legal status as either Israeli citizens, residents of territories under military administration, or non-citizen foreigners. Should they, for example, give the same rights to an Arab Israeli living in Tel Aviv and a Hamas militia member living in Gaza who has sworn to bomb Tel Aviv? No, and that has nothing to do with race, period.
Even in her non-apology, Jayapal cannot help but take swipe after swipe at the Israeli government, who "make it extremely difficult" to achieve peace. In the entire "apology" there is not a single mention of any of the actual challenges that the Israelis currently face. Not a single mention or acknowledgement of incessant terror attacks that target innocent men, women, and children, supported by a 'peace partner' (the Palestinian Authority) that literally pays the terrorists to kill Israeli civilians. In Jayapal's statement, and clearly in her mind, there are not two sides to this conflict, just innocent Palestinians who are suffering and racist Israelis who are making their lives miserable.
As she made clear in her statement, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict the only "pain and hurt" Jayapal can conceive of as it relates to "Israelis and their Jewish diaspora community" (to contrast with the Palestinian's sense of despair and wish for equal rights) is that they must still be reeling "from the trauma of pogroms and persecution, the Holocaust, and continuing antisemitism and hate violence." Again, there is no mention of the terrorist groups that shoot and bomb Israeli cities incessantly, targeting innocent Israeli and Arab men, women, and children; or of the cold-blooded killers that stalk the streets of the historic Jewish homeland with knives and axes, or ram its citizens with cars.
To be clear, we soundly reject Jayapal's "apology." Her statement is part and parcel of a growing movement within the progressive left wing of the Democrat Party, which no American should support, no matter their race, religion or party affiliation. Jayapal and her friends have a history of reflexively criticizing Israel without actually knowing the facts, or caring about the context. Studies have shown that their brand of inflammatory, discriminatory, antisemitic rhetoric often leads directly to antisemitic violence, yet they continue to try and infuse the national conversation with their reckless and demonstrably dangerous lies.
Words matter, and facts matter, even when the country that is being lied about is Israel, and even when the people who end up being attacked are Jews.
Dr. Mark Goldfeder, Esq. is director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center.
Gabriel Groisman is a partner at LSN Law in Miami, Florida, a Jewish rights leader and the former Mayor of Bal Harbour, Florida.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
