Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and a handful of progressive Democrats introduced a resolution on Monday referring to Palestinian Arabs as the “indigenous inhabitants” of Israel and endorsing Palestinian right of return, one of the most sensitive issues in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

The resolution seeks to set as U.S. policy recognition of the “Nakba” — the term, translating to “catastrophe,” that Palestinians use to refer to the mass Palestinian exodus that accompanied the foundation of Israel — and accept as a settled issue Palestinian refugees’ right of return to inside Israel’s borders. It also refers to Palestinians as the “indigenous population” of the region, but does not acknowledge Jewish history in the region.

The legislation accuses Israel of having “depopulated more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities” during its 1948 War of Independence and characterizes ongoing Israeli “expropriation of Palestinian land and… dispossession of the Palestinian people,” including Israeli settlements, as part of an ongoing Nakba. In a statement announcing the legislation, Tlaib accused Israel of “ongoing ethnic cleansing.”

Tlaib’s resolution has been cosponsored by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Marie Newman (D-IL), Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).

Neither Tlaib nor any of the cosponsors responded to a question from Jewish Insider about whether they viewed Jews as also being “indigenous” to the region.

Newman is currently facing a primary challenger, Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL), who is backed by various pro-Israel groups, including J Street, which had endorsed Newman in 2020. Bowman has faced criticism from the Democratic Socialists of America over his positions on Israel, including voting for supplemental Iron Dome funding and traveling to the Jewish state last year. He has since removed himself as a cosponsor of legislation supporting the Abraham Accords.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) blasted Tlaib’s resolution as “predicated on a demonstrably false historical narrative… predictably failing to mention the hundreds of attacks on Jewish communities in the British mandate of Palestine by Palestinian militias.” 

Sherman noted that the resolution “omits” that Israel was attacked by eight Arab states in 1948, that the 1948 war began with attacks by Arab forces seeking “a war of annihilation” against Jewish militants and civilians, that “not a single Jew was left alive in the portion of the British mandate controlled by Arab armies, that no Jews lived in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem for two decades and that 800,000 Jews were expelled from neighboring Arab countries.”

“Thankfully, the vast majority of my colleagues in Congress and in the House Foreign Affairs Committee understand that the historical narrative in Congresswoman Tlaib’s resolution is an outrageous falsehood and thus this bill isn’t likely to be passed or even considered,” Sherman added.

Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) agreed that the resolution has no “hope of moving forward,” claiming the resolution seeks to “rewrite history and question Israel’s right to exist.”

“It’s unfortunate that this histrionic and invidious resolution was introduced now, particularly, as we see continued progress in efforts to normalize relations between Israel and its neighbors in the region,” Gottheimer added. “Divisive efforts like this only set back our fight against terror and the advancement of democracy in the region.”

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who advised multiple secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, said that the legislation asks Congress to “wade into the intricacies and volatility of some of the most combustible issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and essentially recognize a narrative.”

“This legislation is packed with landmines and traps,” Miller continued. “The whole issue of right of return is an issue that for years in negotiations we realized was the most combustible, most complicated, and the one which we had the least chance of resolving…. That’s the third rail of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.”

Miller emphasized that the legislation has no prospect of seeing widespread support in “any Congress that I can imagine.”

He described the legislation as “designed basically to support what the framers regard as an unrecognized, underreported and unacknowledged narrative in the American political scene of the Palestinians.” He added that the “Palestinian narrative has never been adequately explored or acknowledged” in U.S. politics and argued that “there was a way perhaps to go about this which would have recognized both Israeli independence and the Nakba being intertwined.” 

Some Republicans seized on the legislation.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) called it “the latest in a long line of antisemitic, anti-Israel statements, policies and actions by the most radical voiced in the Democratic Party.” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) called it “disgusting anti-Semitism.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said “the continued anti-Semitism from radical socialists in the House is horrific.” The three Republicans also sought to tie House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to the initiative, demanding that she condemn the move.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) defended the Republican Party against allegations of antisemitism in its ranks during a web event Monday held in conjunction with the Republican National Convention, which kicked off today in Charlotte, N.C.

“I, personally, haven’t encountered any antisemitism within the Republican Party,” Zeldin, who is one of two Jewish Republican members of Congress, said. “From a personal perspective, I can tell you — from kindergarten through 12th grade, college, law school and four years of active duty, I never once experienced antisemitism at all.”

The New York congressman said during Monday’s call, which was hosted by the American Jewish Committee, that he’s only faced antisemitism in recent years, something he attributes to the current political atmosphere. He estimated “several thousand” instances of being called a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer but added, “I’m not aware of any of it coming from within the Republican Party.” 

Zeldin instead assigned blame to the Democratic Party, pointing in particular to comments made by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in 2019. ”I spent four years in the New York State Senate, and through my first four years in the U.S. House of Representatives, I didn’t experience it inside the actual chamber until the beginning of 2019,” Zeldin said. “That became an issue within the House Democratic Caucus in the first half of 2019.” He recalled that the House of Representatives passed a watered-down resolution against hate following Omar’s comments regarding AIPAC and lawmakers’ support for Israel. Zeldin noted that a few months earlier, in January 2019, the House voted in near unanimous fashion on a resolution to condemn Rep. Steve King (R-IA) following comments from the congressman that appeared to defend white nationalists and white supremacists. Republicans “named names, there was a resolution that passed, that member lost his committee assignments,” said Zeldin. “We shouldn’t have double standards, we shouldn’t have moral equivalencies.” 

Zeldin suggested that if Omar’s statements had been made by a Republican legislator, “I guarantee you that we would have passed a resolution that singularly, emphatically and forcefully condemned antisemitism. There would have been no moral equivalencies, that member would have been removed from her committee assignments, and it would have been basically a unanimous effort in doing so.”

A number of Republican candidates have faced criticism this cycle for promoting antisemitic stereotypes. Georgia Senator David Purdue, who is facing a tough reelection challenge from Jon Ossoff, came under fire last month for a campaign advertisement that appeared to enlarge Ossoff’s nose. In the state’s 14th congressional district, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has made claims about George Soros and the Rothschilds, won her party’s runoff and is all but guaranteed a seat in the next Congress.

Zeldin also suggested that the reason there’s not a major shift in support for President Donald Trump among Jewish voters is because Israel is “not popping at the top of their list” of priorities. “I’ll talk to a Jewish voter, and it’s possible that if I ask them for their top 15 issues, they might just not mention Israel,” he explained. 

By Jacob Kornbluh & JI Staff

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