This past weekend, Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib retweeted a story that falsely accused Israelis of killing a Palestinian child in Jerusalem, when in fact, Israeli first responders had attempted to revive the child before he tragically passed.
Tlaib retweeted a tweet by Hanan Ashrawi, a Palestinian leader and activist, who had quote-tweeted an account that claimed Israeli settlers had kidnapped and assaulted an eight-year old Palestinian boy before tossing him into a well. Ashrawi commented, “The heart just shatters.” But none of the details outlining the young boy’s death were true.
The young boy, named Qais Abu Ramila, had gone missing Friday afternoon before slipping in a reservoir of rainwater in East Jerusalem’s Beit Hanina neighborhood and accidentally drowning. Israeli first responders attempted to revive Abu Ramila but were tragically unable to do so.
According to Kann News, police stated that “efforts at the rainwater reservoir lasted throughout the night… Unfortunately the boy was found lifeless, and Magen David Adom [paramedics] were forced to declare him dead.”
Despite the unfortunate chain of events, rumors spread throughout the young boy’s neighborhood that Jewish “settlers” were responsible for his death, resulting in a mob of Palestinian rock throwers attempting to assail a nearby Jewish neighborhood. Dani Dayan, the consul general of Israel in New York, compared Tlaib’s retweet, for which she has yet to apologize, to “blood libel.”
“I am always extremely cautious in criticizing U.S. elected officials,” Dayan tweeted on Saturday. “However, when an American elected official retweets an unfounded blood libel against Jewish Israelis, I cannot remain silent. Congresswoman @RashidaTlaib just did.”
Tlaib has since deleted her retweet, but she has offered no explanation or apology, though Ashrawi has apologized. It’s worth noting that Ashrawi is the founder of the antisemitic, terrorist-apologist organization known as MIFTAH, the group that offered to sponsor Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) trip to Israel last year before Israel denied them both entry for their involvement with anti-Israel movements.
For those unfamiliar, MIFTAH has published an article claiming the blood libel against Jews to be true, a lie that accuses Jews of murdering Christian children in order to use their blood to make matzah at Passover, as well as re-published (and later deleted) content produced by neo-Nazis.
Ashrawi has justified Palestinian terrorism as a form of understandable resistance, stating in a 2017 interview, “You cannot somehow adopt the language of either the international community or the occupier by describing anybody who resists as terrorist (sic).” Ashrawi has also referred to the first female Palestinian suicide bomber as “the beginning of a string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives for the cause.”
Despite Tlaib’s prior ties to MIFTAH and her recent, now-deleted retweet, I have yet to see one journalist grill her on her insidious connections to an antisemitic hate group or on her latest attempt to spread a contemporary version of the same tired blood libel that has been used for centuries to justify violent mobs attacking Jews.
But, as I’ve done since she was elected to office, I’ll refrain from holding my breath, since no realer truism this past year has rang sadly more true than the following: when the antisemitism emanates from the left, our media simply doesn’t care. Indeed.
