Benny Morris, a historian and a professor of Middle East studies, ends his essay for the prestigious Atlantic Monthly in a profound and humorous fashion: "Perhaps in her prospective trip to the West Bank with the Humpty Dumpty Institute, which she announced on the podcast, she [Rashida Tlaib] can try them [her ideas/fabricated historical facts] out on the people who actually live in the area. We'll see what happens."
Earlier in the essay he reminds us that "from 1933 onward, Palestine's Arabs - led by the cleric Muhammad Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem - mounted a strident campaign to pressure the British, who governed Palestine, to bar all Jews from entering the country. To press home their demand, in 1936 they launched an anti-British and anti-Zionist rebellion that lasted three years."
"The false notion that the Palestinians are 'paying for the Holocaust' presumes that the world granted the Jews a state primarily because it felt overriding guilt and sympathy. Serious scholars concur that politics, not morality, motivated support for the Jewish state's creation - guilt and sympathy at most played a minor role in the establishment of the State of Israel, if at all," writes Rozett.
My view on this latest of Tlaib's remarks is that it is not anti-Semitic. It is however historically ignorant. I have (since she got elected) found her to be on the wrong side of facts more often than not. I think hate is a significant source for her statements and fear that mixing facts up is simply her survival tactic. I hope it backfires and her district finds future representatives who have a greater interest in the truth.
