by Miko Peled
“As the anticipation built for Israeli president Yitzhak Hertzog’s (Isaac Herzog) visit to Washington, DC insiders scrambled to hide the fact that Israel is a racist state. At first, the center of the crisis was the incomprehensible fact that someone had told the truth about Israel. Yet House Representative Pramila Jayapal, a progressive democrat, would later apologize for calling Israel what it is, a racist state.
Her remarks at an event in Chicago where she called Israel a racist state were seen to be so controversial that House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries weighed in. He and three top leadership aides quickly took to the media, proclaiming, “Israel is not a racist state.” According to Reuters, the most criticism they could muster was, “There are individual members of the current Israeli governing coalition with whom we strongly disagree.”
ABSOLUTE HYSTERIA
Representative Jayapil told the truth and has irrefutable evidence of it, so why did she back down? The 2022 Amnesty report on Apartheid in Palestine demonstrates beyond any doubt that what the congresswoman said is true. However, the panic her truthtelling sparked was so powerful that she apologized for telling it rather than holding up the report as evidence of her proclamation. Then, leader Jeffries ran out to make sure everyone knew it wasn’t him, that he never said or even thought that Israel is a racist state – “she did it” was all that was missing from his statement.
His apologia harkened back to foregone days when people would rush to deny that the world is round or that the earth revolves around the sun for fear of being excommunicated or burned at the stake. An atmosphere where telling the truth is a dangerous prospect.
Then things got worse. As the visit by the head of the apartheid state approached, more and more members of Congress announced they would boycott the joint session. This would be a problem in any circumstance, but what made it worse was that they were all people of color, which didn’t stop Israel’s apologists from calling them racist. Then in a state of fury, the House decided to demonstrate its love of apartheid Israel by passing a resolution stating that Israel is not a racist or an apartheid state.
One can only imagine the relief millions of Palestinians felt when they learned of this resolution. Here they were for decades, thinking they were being abused, targeted, murdered, dispossessed, subjected to ethnic cleansing and even genocide. Now, here is the U.S. House of Representatives announcing loud and clear that millions of Palestinians were wrong. Now Palestinians can rest assured none of this is true. They are fine, there is no racism, no apartheid, and they can sleep soundly at night from now on.“