{Originally posted to The Lid website}
According to the Deputy Chairman of the Democratic Party Rep. Keith Ellison, his colleagues don’t care about his ties to Farrakhan and he is probably correct because Antisemitism is embedded into the Democratic Party.
On Wednesday, Ellison received unanimous consent to take over the Expanded & Improved Medicare For All Act from former Rep. John Conyers (D., Mich.), who retired in 2017 amid multiple sexual misconduct accusations.
Ellison told the Washington Post none of his colleagues voiced concerns about the Farrakhan story as he campaigned to lead the effort on the bill, which is popular with the left.
“None of my colleagues ever asked me about that, only reporters,” Ellison said. “I am telling you, no one cares. I’ve been all over Minnesota, all over Alabama, all over Missouri, all over Pennsylvania and Connecticut, and nobody ever asked me about this. People ask me about wages, about pay, about health care, about guns, about immigration. They ask me all kinds of challenging questions. But for some reason, some folks in the Fourth Estate think that this Farrakhan thing needs to be inquired about instead.”
In his latest anti-Semitic oration, Farrakhan said that the Jews that forced Ellison to move away from his mentor:
“He wanted to help his community. He wanted to be a congressman, so when the Jews found out that he was in the Nation [they demanded he denounces Farrakhan] Keith [Ellison] was in the Nation in 1995. He was selling the Final Call newspaper, a beautiful brother,”
That may be true, but as a congressman, Ellison was part of the Democratic Party’s movement toward Antisemitism and toward becoming the anti-Israel party, something recommended by the Jon Podesta’s Center for American Progress back in 2011
In 2011, Politico reported that the Center For American Progress (CAP) which was at the time run by Hillary Clinton’s future campaign manager John Podesta was fighting with the more mainstream Democrats about Israel. They want to change the party to the Anti-Israel party.
As Caroline Glick wrote about Ellison.
“Ellison’s association with the Nation of Islam dated back at least since 1989 and stretched at least until 1998. During that period, he not only knew about the Nation of Islam’s Jew hatred, he engaged in it himself.”
During Ellison’s run for Congress in 2006, The Washington Post reported that Ellison had defended Farrakhan against accusations of Antisemitism in 1989 and in 1990 as well as calling affirmative action a “sneaky” form of compensation for slavery, calling instead for reparations
Also during Ellison’s initial congressional campaign, Scott Johnson of the must-read site Power Line, exposed Ellison’s Antisemitism and work with Louis Farrakhan in a Weekly Standard piece. One incident he described, occurred in February 1997 when Ellison was a practicing attorney:
Ellison appeared as a local spokesman for the Nation of Islam with the last name “Muhammad.” He spoke at a public hearing in connection with a controversy involving Joanne Jackson of the Minnesota Initiative Against Racism (MIAR). Jackson was alleged to have said, “Jews are among the most racist white people I know.” Jackson denied making the statement or insisted that it had been taken out of context. Ellison appeared before the MIAR on behalf of the Nation of Islam in defense of Jackson’s alleged statement. According to the Star Tribune and the full text of the statement published in the Minneapolis Spokesman-Recorder, Ellison said:
Speaking for the Nation of Islam, Ellison appeared before the MIAR in defense of the truth of Jackson’s alleged statement. According to the Star Tribune and the full text of the statement published in the Minneapolis Spokesman-Recorder, Ellison said, ‘We stand by the truth contained in the remarks attributed to [Ms. Jackson], and by her right to express her views without sanction.’ He finished his comments with, “Also, it is absolutely true that merchants in Black areas generally treat Black customers badly.”
The last sentence alluded to another of Jackson’s alleged statements, providing a personal basis for characterizing Jews as “the most racist white people” she knew. Ellison’s May 28 letter acknowledges only that others supported Jackson’s alleged statement in that controversy while falsely denying that he himself did so.
Since entering Congress Ellison has used every opportunity possible slam Israel in a way that the State Department would define as Antisemitism, Including:
- Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
- Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
For example, in 2010, Ellison convinced 53 other Democratic members of Congress to sign the infamous “Gaza 54” letter to President Obama, which falsely accused Israel of humiliating and wreaking “collective punishment” on Gaza residents and demanded that President Obama should pressure Israel to lift the Gaza blockade despite the fact that Hamas was using its imports to create bombs and rockets to kill Israeli citizens.
Ellison is a featured keynote speaker at many BDS organization events including the American Friends Service Committee which runs a BDS boot camp, Progressives for Palestine, and is a favorite of the anti-Israel group ironically called Jewish Voice for Peace. In a rare occurrence of disagreeing with progressives, The Jewish Voice for Peace was named by the Anti-Defamation League as one of the 10 most anti-Israel organizations in America (I am sure their mothers are proud).
The BDS movement is anti-Semitic because it bases its attacks on fabricated tales of human rights violations, double standards, comparisons to apartheid South Africa, and false accusations of “war crimes.” Understand, this movement has just one purpose, to delegitimize Israel and to deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination. Both the U.S. State Department and Pope Francis have declared that denying that the Jews have the right to have their own state, is a form of anti-Semitism.
There are many more examples of Ellison’s, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic actions, including connection to Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas associated groups such as MAS, CAIR, and ISNA. (MAS even paid for his Haj to Saudi Arabia).
In 2012 Democrats removed planks from its platform originally designed to protect Israel from terrorism and to protect its status as a Jewish State.
Anybody who focuses on the Congressional Black Caucuses support of Louis Farrakhan and Ellison’s historical support of anti-Semites is only looking at part of the picture. Antisemitism has become institutionalized in the Democratic Party.
Democrats such as NY’s Kirstin Gillibrand protected anti-Semite Linda Sarsour and other Democrats like NY’s Governor Cuomo invite her to speak to our college students. Sarsour blames her bad image on the Jewish-controlled media., Al Sharpton, a man who led two anti-Semitic pogroms in NYC advises Democrats (and celebrated by Jewish politicians like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer), and of course, Barack Obama the former President of the United States is an anti-Semite.
In January 2018 a Senate committee was evaluating the nomination of Ken Marcus for the position assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education. Mr. Marcus was subjected to an aggressive slander campaign by leading anti-Israel groups seeking to kill his nomination because he has worked to combat the anti-Semitic boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement on college campuses and is the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a pro-Israel group. When meeting with Marcus supporters a senior policy adviser to Democratic Senator Patty Murray said her office in the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) does “not care about anti-Semitism,” according to two people who attended the meeting
The DCCC which was run by NY Democrat Steve Israel at the time published a petition supporting Occupy Wall Street which is looking for 100,000 signatures in support of Occupy Wall Street which had already been proven to be Antisemitic.
| Sign From Occupy NY |
Along with Rep Israel, and President Obama, statements in support of the anti-Semitic Occupy Wall Street were given by VP Joe Biden, and Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Louise Slaughter (D-NY), John Larson (D-CT), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) and of course Keith Ellison (D-MN), and others.
The Barack Obama White House and State Department refused to acknowledge that the attack on the Kosher supermarket in Paris a few hours before the Jewish Sabbath when families are shopping for their Sabbath Dinner, had anything to do with Antisemitism.
Obama also reawakened the medieval anti-Semitic blood libel with false accusations against the Jewish State and refusing to acknowledge the Palestinian’s use of human shields and condemning Israel for any civilian casualties despite the fact that his own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said that Israel went to “extraordinary lengths” to limit civilian casualties in the recent war in Gaza and that the Pentagon had sent a team to see what lessons could be learned from the operation.
“I actually do think that Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties. In fact, about 3 months ago we sent, we asked [IDF Chief of Staff] Benny [Gantz] if we could send a lessons learned team – one of the things we do better than anybody I think is learn – and we sent a team of senior officers and non-commissioned officers over to work with the IDF to get the lessons from that particular operation in Gaza. To include the measures they took to prevent civilian casualties and what they did with tunneling, because Hamas had become very nearly a subterranean society. And so, that caused the IDF some significant challenges. But they did some extraordinary things to try to limit civilian casualties to include calling out, making it known that they were going to destroy a particular structure. Even developed some techniques, they call it roof knocking, to have something knock on the roof, they would display leaflets to warn citizens and population to move away from where these tunnels.”
Immediately afterward Jen Psaki the spokesperson for the State Department, did what she could to shoot down General Dempsey.
It remains the broad view of the entire administration that they could have done more,” Psaki said during a press briefing Friday when asked about the Dempsey. And they should have taken more feasible precautions to prevent civilian casualties.
AP reporter Matt Lee pointed out that, according to Dempsey, Israel had lived up to the “high standards” to which the Obama administration holds Israel. Still, Psaki said, Israel’s efforts were not enough.
The real truth is that Obama, Kerry and the Democratic Party team of Israel haters that included Hillary Clinton simply want to demonize the Jewish State–as a way to demonize Jews.
For years the US Presbyterian Church owned a piece of land in the West Bank where it ran a tuberculosis hospital and then a hostel on the site. Obama didn’t care when it was owned by Presbyterians. But when the land was legally purchased in 2009 by Dr. Irving & Cherna Moskowitz from US Presbyterian Church. Well, actually it wasn’t that actually the building of houses that the Obama administration objected to. If it were intended to house Christians or Muslims they wouldn’t have objected. The Obama administration objected to the fact that Jews were going to live in those buildings.
From its first day, the 2016 Democratic Nominating convention was an anti-Israel/anti-Semitic hatefest. The convention opened with , Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) a Hillary Clinton super-delegate, took time away from his party’s nominating event to speak at an anti-Israel meeting sponsored by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, an organization trying to unite the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, against Israel. According to the Washington Free Beacon Johnson, who once warned that too many Marines on Guam may tip the Island over, said among other things that Jews who lived in the disputed territories were termites.
Keith Ellison’s history and actions of mainstream Democrats demonstrate that no one should really be surprised so many in the party support Louis Farrakhan and his anti-Jewish hatred. The examples above prove the Democratic Party has become the anti-Semitic party (there are additional examples but the post is already long enough). The only remaining question is, will my fellow American Jews who overwhelmingly (and blindly) support the Democratic Party finally wake up and smell the truth.