Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., has made yet another shocking and historically ignorant claim: That thinking about the Holocaust gives her a “calming feeling” because her Palestinian ancestors provided a “safe haven” for Jewish victims of the tragedy.
Tlaib, a close ally of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who is no stranger to anti-Semitic controversies herself, made the latest statement on a podcast called “Skullduggery” in an episode titled “From Rashida with Love.”
“There’s always kind of a calming feeling I tell folks when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports,” Tlaib said just after the 28 minute mark. “And just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away and it was forced on them.”
There are so many historical inaccuracies in one statement that it’s difficult to even know where to start. But to highlight a few:
— The Jewish presence in the area currently known as Israel dates back thousands of years, and the modern migration of Jews back there pre-dated the Holocaust by many decades, starting with the migration of Jews from Yemen in 1881.
— With the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the British government supported the establishment of a Jewish state in the area, an idea rejected by Arabs.
— In 1937, the British Peel Commission proposed a two-state solution to Jews and Arabs, which the Arabs once again rejected because they could not accept any Jewish presence in the region.
More at the Washington Examiner