Betty McCollum is flexing her anti-Israel muscles again.
The progressive Minnesota U.S. representative joined six other radical Democrats to demand Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen revoke the tax-exempt status of American charities that support Israeli settlements.
In a letter overflowing with misinformation, Reps. Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, André Carson, McCollum, Mark Pocan, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib expressed their “extreme concern that U.S. charities are funding and providing direct support to Israeli organizations that are working to expand and perpetuate Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise in violation of international law, including supporting the dispossession and forced displacement of Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem neighborhoods.”
The screed focused on the Central Fund of Israel, a nonprofit that funds hundreds of important projects in Israel. CFI Director Jay Marcus called the Democrats’ effort “outrageous and pure anti-Semitism” and said “their goal is clearly not just to shut down the Central Fund, but all organizations that we fund.”
The left-wing lawmakers also called on Yellen, who is Jewish, to institute draconian policies toward the nonprofit status of charities that donate to Israeli causes in the West Bank and Jerusalem, including a report to Congress identifying all American charities operating in any “occupied territory” across the world.
“The ‘dispossession’ of which Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib write in their letter does not exist. Israeli settlements have been built either on state or wasteland, or on land that Jewish organizations and individuals have bought from Palestinian Arabs. No Arabs have been dispossessed of land to which they hold clear title,” Hugh Fitzgerald wrote Wednesday.
“Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez will continue to repeat their claims about ‘occupied territory’ and an ‘illegal settlement enterprise’ and ‘violations of international law’ no matter how often they are corrected. And we can only sweep back the tide of their falsehood by referring to the provisions of the Mandate for Palestine, which support the ‘settlement enterprise’ that they claim is illegal. They will keep lying, and others, including you and me, will keep insisting on the truth.”
Tlaib also asked Yellen to “act to enforce U.S. law and end these organizations’ status.”
“Tax-exempt nonprofit status allows U.S.-based 501(c)(3) entities and their U.S.-based donors to receive an effective subsidy from the U.S. government to support serious breaches of international law and violations of internationally recognized human rights related to the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise,” the Michigan congresswoman, who engaged in overt anti-Semitic rhetoric just this week, claimed.
The squad’s attack came shortly after Ben & Jerry’s surreptitiously used “Occupied Palestinian Territory” to hide the fact that their boycott extends to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the holiest spot in Judaism.
The rogue Democrats used the “occupied” attack, too, but also defined the territory several times in the letter as “the West Bank, including East Jerusalem” or “occupied East Jerusalem neighborhoods.”
Even Democrats have regularly called out McCollum’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
“The letter is pretty much what you would expect from the Israel-bashing crowd. Lots of angry, overheated rhetoric. Ample slinging of mud,” Stephen Flatlow wrote for Arutz Sheva in Israel Friday.
“The standard rhetorical blasts — ‘forced evictions,’ ‘seizing lands,’ ‘destroying Palestinian homes,’ ‘international crimes,’ ‘systematic discrimination.'”
A.J. Kaufman
A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.
