The Rashida Tlaib Confusion Shows Our War Discourse Is Broken – The Forward

The shocking recent media portrayal of Rep. Rashida Tlaib — in the form of a widely condemned comedian who he ran in National Review AND false accusations that she used anti-Semitic rhetoric against the Michigan attorney general — succinctly encapsulates everything that is wrong with our toxic public discourse on Israel’s war with Hamas.

In the months since Hamas terrorists brutally attacked Israel, sparking a war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and destroyed nearly all of Gaza’s infrastructure, the world has seen a massive rise in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Israeli and anti-Palestinian bigotry. There has been so much hateful talk thrown around mindlessly that it’s hard to single out any one comment, headline, or speech as particularly horrific.

Well, until now.

In the comic drawn by Detroit News Henry Payne employee and published after last week’s pager attack in Hezbollah, Tlaib is shown sitting at her desk, staring in consternation at a smoking pager. “Weird, my pager just exploded,” she can be seen thinking.

The cartoon is offensive in more ways than one. It suggests that Tlaib, whose parents were born in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, is somehow connected to a paramilitary group operating in Lebanon, an entirely separate country, apparently simply because she is of Arab descent. (On Payne’s website, the cartoon was titled “Cartoon: Tlaib Pager Hamas,” suggesting that he, too, views Hamas and Hezbollah as one and the same.)

Ignores Tlaib’s rich history calling for peace between Israelis and Palestinians to suggest that he is a secret member of a paramilitary organization – which is very reminiscent of anti-Arab racism, which considers all Muslims and non-Jews from the Middle East to be terrorists.

Most egregious of all, it trivializes an attack that left thousands injured and at least 12 dead, including two children, as nothing more than a minor inconvenience. The broken pager in the cartoon looks like a toaster that’s been on too long: it emits only a small puff of smoke, a tiny ring of destruction. It doesn’t seem capable of the kind of violence that could kill a 9-year-old girl by mutilating her face.

It would be bad enough if the cartoon stood alone, just one maniac telling a cruel, racist joke about one of the first Muslim women to serve in Congress. But it doesn’t.

Over the weekend, even mainstream media outlets began to break the story that Tlaib had suggested Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel should file charges against pro-Palestinian campus protesters in the state simply because she is Jewish. There’s just one problem: This is not true.

Tlaib actually criticized Nessel for prosecuting pro-Palestinian protesters, especially considering she has not taken similar action against environmental activists and Black Lives Matter protesters, among others. Tlaib did not actually mention Nessel’s religion, only her actions. She said only that “it seems like the attorney general has decided that if the issue is Palestine, he will treat it differently, and that in itself speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency that he leads.”

And yet the false story that Tlaib exposed Nessel’s Jewishness has been repeated even by respected journalists, including CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. Yes, even the best journalists make mistakes and stories get misreported. But it’s hard not to feel that because of Tlaib’s race and religion, and her willingness to speak out against Israel’s military actions, she has been flattened into a brutal, Jew-hating caricature.

Taken together, these incidents seem to be the culmination of a dehumanization that has been brutally suppressed in discussions of Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East conflict since October 7. Throughout this devastating conflict, too many people who vigorously support Israel or Palestine have found it easier to justify their loyalty by reducing the “other side” to a grotesque, simplistic caricature.

In this toxic black-and-white scheme, Palestinians are not victims of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide who simply want to return safely to their historic homeland; they are born terrorists whose only desire is to spill Jewish blood. Israeli Jews are not themselves victims—or descendants of victims—of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide who sought peace and security by creating a nation in their historic homeland. They are scheming colonizers whose only desire is to spread terror around the world.

Needless to say, none of this rhetoric has moved the conversation forward—quite the opposite. It has made us more likely to distrust each other; more likely to ignore each other; more likely to continue fighting for the moral high ground when we could be advocating for change that could lead to true and lasting peace.

For decades, Israelis and Palestinians have tried to “defeat” each other. For decades, our two nations have only sunk into an increasingly brutal war that now threatens to engulf more and more of the Middle East. Further dehumanizing each other will not lead to a peaceful end. It will only further entrench both sides in violence and hatred.

Payne’s comic was condemned by a number of Michigan political leaders, including Tlaib herself AND Governor Gretchen Whitmerwhich also refused to condemn Tlaib for her criticism of Nessel. But responding well to isolated incidents is not enough. We need to understand that these individual controversies are not isolated at all, but rather connected to a broader anti-Palestinian narrative — and larger, systemic problems with many conversations about this war.

If we truly want peace, we must do more than condemn the most obvious, most vicious racism. We must look at the ways in which we are all responsible for dehumanizing the “other side” and begin the process of unlearning our ignorance.