cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20633260
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democratic state lawmaker, and some news agencies are falsely claiming that U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib said Nessel’s office only filed charges against pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan because she’s Jewish.
The spurious claims stem from an interview that Tlaib did with Metro Times on Sept. 13. Tlaib, who was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrants and is the only Palestinian American member of Congress, argued the charges were an unjust and heavy-handed response to peaceful civil disobedience.
Tlaib pointed out that Nessel, who has been in office since January 2019, has not filed charges against protesters opposed to racism, police brutality, water shutoffs, and environmental contamination.
Tlaib never once mentioned Nessel’s religion or Judaism. But Metro Times pointed out in the story that Nessel is Jewish, and that appears to be the spark that led to the false claims.
Shortly after the article was published, state Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Democrat who is Jewish, posted a screenshot of the story on X and claimed that Tlaib’s response was an attempt “to divide us into ‘good’ Jews she accepts & bad Jews.”
On Sunday, CNN host Jake Tapper followed up with a segment in which he falsely claimed that Tlaib said Nessel only filed the charges “because she’s Jewish and the protesters are not.” Tapper made the statement while interviewing Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and tried to get her to weigh in on his false claim.
Oho, I see the problem. See the interview here:
This bit:
"“We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest,” Tlaib says. “We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”
Nessel is the first Jewish person to be elected Attorney General of Michigan."
So it wasn’t Tlaib saying the religion of the AG was an issue, Tlaib stated it points to “possible biases” in the AGs office, the author of the article, or perhaps their editor, inserted the line perhaps to clarify which bias Tlaib was talking about.
Factcheck article from the same source here endorsing that idea:
I posted a rebuttal to someone acting like nobody has ever done anything horrible in the name of communism in the crosspost before I realized where I was. Should have saved my breath.
Anyway, the strawmanning Talib has had to deal with is pathetic. I wish people wouldn’t fall for it but they will.
I wish people wouldn’t fall for it but they will.
Humans have evolved brains that often expend more effort to confirm their biases than to counter them.
Shortly after the article was published, state Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Democrat who is Jewish, posted a screenshot of the story on X and claimed that Tlaib’s response was an attempt “to divide us into ‘good’ Jews she accepts & bad Jews.”
Israel, as a country, does a lot of work dividing people into ‘not bombed’ or ‘bombed’, ‘having a home’ or ‘removed’, amongst other binary classifications.
I happen to prefer people - not just people who follow Judaism, but all people - who don’t endorse the killing of the innocent. I don’t think it’s me making a judgement that harming the innocent that is bad, but the fact that harming innocent people is accepted.
