The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the oldest pro-Israel organization in the U.S., is slamming Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for hosting an antisemitic event commemorating the so-called Palestinian “Nakba.”
The “Nakba,” or “Catatsrophe,” is an annual observance by Palestinians that denies the right of the State of Israel to exist, thus denying political self-determination to Jews — and only Jews — in their own homeland. It is not only anti-Israel, but antisemitic.
The term refers to the defeat in 1948 of the Palestinians and other Arab forces who tried to crush the newly-formed Jewish state as it declared independence. They failed, and about 700,000 Palestinians fled as refugees.
The Arab world, which had encouraged Palestinians to flee during the war, largely denied citizenship or other rights to these Palestinian refugees, preferring to keep them in a state of limbo to use as leverage against Israel.
A similar number of Jews fled Arab countries where they had lived for centuries. Israel — despite its poverty and uncertain security — absorbed the Jewish refugees as full citizens.
Last week, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who recently returned from a successful bipartisan visit to Israel, canceled a “Nakba” event planned in the Capitol by left-wing radical Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) that was to mark the 75th anniversary of the war.
Sen. Bernie Sanders then offered Tlaib and her supporters the use of a conference room in the Senate so that they could hold their event. ZOA President Morton Klein issued a statement on Thursday slamming Sanders for hosting the “Nakba” event — as well as Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who poses as a friend of Israel:
Yesterday, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) demonstrated that he was a moral giant and a great friend of the Jewish state and the Jewish people by blocking Jew-hating groups from holding an antisemitic “Nakba 75” event featuring Israelophobic Jew-haters Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Cori Bush (D-MO) at the Capitol Visitor Center. Deplorably, socialist extremist Senator Bernie Sanders (I/D-VT) then acted immorally by hosting Tlaib and other Jew-haters’ libelous “Nakba 75” event in a U.S. Senate Committee room. Rashida Tlaib appeared with fellow “Squad” Jew-hater Cori Bush to libel and bash Jews and the Jewish state.
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Senate Majority Leader Schumer did nothing to stop this despicable antisemitic spectacle, which abused taxpayer-funded Senate committee space, and says that he didn’t know about it. ZOA strongly urges Senator Schumer to at least condemn the Nakba 75 event after the fact.
“Nakba 75” promotes the sick, twisted, hateful, genocidal concept that it is a “catastrophe” that Israel has managed to survive, and that the Arabs failed to totally destroy Israel’s Jewish population and homeland in 1948 or in the 75 years since then. By hosting this event, Sanders sickeningly (once again) helped those that seek to wipe Israel and every Jew (including himself) off the map. (Sanders’ anti-Israel record also includes proudly announcing on his website that he was attempting to block weapons sales to Israel – during the very same week in May 2021 when Hamas shot 4,600 rockets at Israeli civilians – and making wildly-inflated claims about “innocent” Palestinian casualties in Gaza.)
Klein urged that Tlaib and Sanders, who also happens to be Jewish, be removed from their congressional committees for hosting the antisemitic “Nakba” event.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.