Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), who is Jewish, repeated his frustrations on his colleagues’ rhetoric on Israel during a CNN appearance on Monday.
Anti-Semitism has spiked since Hamas attacked Israel, leading to an 11-day fight. Phillips has demanded progressives to stop with their anti-Israel hyperbole all week.
Phillips wants fellow Democrats and progressives to be consistent when it comes to rhetoric. They claim Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and President Donald Trump caused violence with their words and speeches.
“I’m 52-years-old,” Phillips told CNN host Poppy Harlow. “I’ve never had to stand up in this way in my entire life. As I’ve said in my tweet, these are the times my grandparents, my great-grandparents warned me about.”
Phillips wants them to acknowledge their words have caused the same violence they condemn:
“[J]ust as the former president called COVID the China flu, which provoked attacks on Asian-Americans, calling Israel a terrorist state or an apartheid state, you know, to me is doing the same thing to the Jewish community which has been persecuted for so many generations, and it’s time to stand up and ask my progressive friends and colleagues and brothers and sisters to recognize what is at stake here, and to look back in history, not long ago, in Germany, where Jewish people felt as safe as they do in America right now, but these are the signs and signals that are very disconcerting for the community,” Phillips outlined. “And I feel an obligation to point that out and not condemn but invite my progressive colleagues to help us.”
Phillips did not name his colleagues, but only a few Democratic congresspeople spew anti-Israel tweets and speech as much as the Squad: Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN):
While Phillips did not mention any of his fellow lawmakers by name, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — the first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress blasted the Biden administration on the House floor earlier this month for sending money to what she described as Israel’s “apartheid government.”On the same day, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) condemned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “far-right ethno-nationalist.”
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