Rashida Tlaib in secret group of HAMAS apologists

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who recently suffered censure over her anti-Israel comments and activities, now finds herself in worse trouble. Someone has unmasked a “secret” Facebook group to which she belongs, the head of which has apologized openly for the Islamic Resistance Movement (Arabic Harakah al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, abbreviated HAMAS). Her membership in that group reflects badly on her and on the House of Representatives. Moreover the group’s founder has raised funds for her campaign. The obvious question now arises: will she face more censure over this newly revealed association?

What is this group to which Rashida Tlaib belongs?

Fox News Digital has the key report, which ZeroHedge, The First, Headlines USA, The Patriot Journal, and The Gateway Pundit cite as a source. Fox broke the story yesterday at 4:00 a.m. EST. The group, which calls itself the Palestinian American Congress, carries the “secret” setting on Facebook. Secret groups are not visible to other users, and membership in them is by invitation only. Apparently Rashida Tlaib has been a member of this group for six years, and posted to it during her 2018 campaign. The Daily Caller called her to task in 2019 for “ties to antisemitism.” The Daily Caller knew about the group, but did not mention its “secret” designation.

This group’s founder, Maher Abdel-qader (or Maher Abd al-Qader), has a history of promoting two kinds of theory about the Jews of Israel, and Jews generally. They are:

1. Israel’s Jews are all Ashkenazic Jews, who in turn are not Jews at all, but are the long-lost Khazars. These Khazars disappeared from history after originally controlling much of modern-day Ukraine.
2. The Holocaust cannot have claimed six million victims.

The Daily Caller shared a link to an antisemitic video by Abdel-quader. Unfortunately the link resolves to a not-found error on Facebook. Even the Wayback Machine cannot resolve the link. But both The Daily Caller and Fox News Digital have screencaps of that video and other antisemitic posts by Abdel-quader and other members of Palestinian American Congress.

Links of the congresswoman to the group

Abdel-qader is one of Rashida Tlaib’s biggest fundraisers. He and she were sharing photographs of one another to this group even in 2018. They continue to do so today. The two make much of Rashida Tlaib being “the first Arab-American Muslim woman elected to Congress.”

When The Daily Caller story broke, Abdel-qader denied ever having promoted either of the antisemitic theories in his video. But he did say:

What I said, Many Jews living now in the Middle East are the descendants of the great Jewish Khazar empire in Europe… I stand against Israeli and Zionist brutal occupation and in-humane treatment of Palestinians. I am for justice for all in the Middle East.

Fast-forward to the Fourth Arab-Israeli War. Though Tlaib has posted little or nothing to the group since she first won election in 2019, others have. The group features many posts apologizing openly for HAMAS, and issuing a demand:

We don’t want to throw you in the sea… we want you to ride it back from where you came.

In other words: unconditional surrender, full evacuation – and a Second Diaspora. That message appeared five days after the war began. Seven days later came a post highlighting Israeli casualties as an “achievement” of HAMAS. The post also called Israel proper “Northern Occupied Palestine.”

Three days after the attack, one member left a largely ungrammatical, rambling post accusing “the American media” and “the people directing [them],” of creating Israel essentially de novo. That same member quibbled over the definition of terrorist and whether HAMAS qualified as such.

Exactly how Fox News Digital gained access to this group and snapped so many screencaps of it, is unclear.

Tlaib’s current chief fundraiser, Rasha Mubarak, has her own history of antisemitic commentary, also according to Fox News. Among other things, she has accused Israel of desiring “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.

Further problems for Rashida Tlaib

Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit last reported on Rashida Tlaib’s questionable ties three weeks ago. Specifically he highlighted a group called Canary Mission, which seeks to expose anyone whose stock-in-trade is unreasoning hate. Eight days ago Canary Mission had fresh information on Rashida Tlaib. According to them:

• The congresswoman employed three known HAMAS-linked activists for her 2018 election campaign.
• Three years earlier, Tlaib founded “Black4Palestine,” which has tied to the group “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine” (PFLP). This group famously hijacked an Air France flight to Entebbe Airport in Uganda in 1976. Yonatan Netanyahu (brother of Binyamin Netanyahu) famously died in action while leading a commando raid to free the hostages from that episode.

The names of her associates are less important than their affiliations and activities. More important still, Congress should have no place in it for someone who apologizes for atrocity,, and openly advocates for unworkable “solutions.” The full evacuation of all Jews from Israel is not going to happen. Furthermore, the poster on Palestinian American Congress who seemed to call for that, is dissembling at best. Tom Copeland at The Centennial Institute reminds us that HAMAS’ top commanders do not talk of permanent peace. One such commander speaks of hudnah – a temporary truce. Even the full evacuation for which that poster called, would result only in hudnah. (Incidentally, the poster included a photograph of an Israeli hostage, suggesting that the poster belongs to HAMAS and is in place in Gaza right now.)

Conclusion

That HAMAS commander said something else that should give every non-Muslim pause. When someone asked him, “What if all the Jews on Earth were dead?” he answered: Salaam. Which means that everyone on Earth becomes Muslim.

Rashida Tlaib is now shown to belong to a group, at least one member of which might be guilty of, or at least complicit in, atrocity. As such she is obliged to reveal him, per the principle set at Nuremberg. Even if that person is not so involved, he has taken a position no one can defend. The only grounds on which the congresswoman can defend her continued membership in that group, is its secrecy. Even so, membership in secret groups that promote group hatred are not becoming a Member of Congress. So she should resign from either the one, or the other.