Responding to a Tweet sent by Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) from her official government account on Monday, calling Israel an “apartheid state” and claiming that it was “born out of violence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld, President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, issued the following statement:
The violence at Israel’s formation was the “War of Extermination” declared by the Secretary-General of the Arab League, promising to do to the Jews in the Holy Land what Hitler had done in Europe. And the ethnic cleansing was of Jews from Arab states, over 850,000 driven from their homes, the majority of whom found refuge in Israel. By contrast, the Arab population of Israel has grown more than tenfold since 1948.
It is beyond vile to falsely accuse the victims of ethnic cleansing of being its perpetrators. But it is not unprecedented: In Nazi Germany, Julius Streicher described Jews as bacteria feeding upon others. It should not need to be said, but rhetoric from Nazi Germany does not belong in Congress.
