In all the partisan fighting going on in Congress, support for Israel is one of the bipartisan issues we can still find. Not all members are willing to cooperate with the opposing party on this matter. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has gained popularity throughout this week, largely in connection with his attacks on House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY), who seeks to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism – especially on college campuses. There was an enhance in anti-Semitism after Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, when terrorists brutally killed 1,200 Israelis, Americans and others, and committed rape, kidnapping and torture.
Last Tuesday, Harvard President Claudine Gay, then-University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, and MIT President Sally Kornbluth appeared before the House Education and Workforce Committee. They continued to provide particularly scant answers to Stefanik’s questions, in which he asked whether calls for genocide against Jews constituted abuse and harassment. Magill resigned later this week.
Stefanik and her fellow Republicans weren’t the only ones who expressed outrage at such disastrous responses. Last Friday, Stefanik was joined by Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and 72 other House members from Both events who wrote the letter calling for the removal of Magill, Gay and Kornbluth.
Raskin was not among them. On Sunday, Raskin spoke with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi to sharply criticize Stefanik, wondering why he is “excluding” efforts to combat anti-Semitism when he supports former and potentially future President Donald Trump.
“Where is Elise Stefanik going to lecture anyone on anti-Semitism when she is the biggest supporter of Donald Trump, who traffics in anti-Semitism all the time? “She didn’t utter a peep of protest when they hosted Kanye West and Nick Fuentes for dinner with Nick Fuentes, who doubts whether October 7 even happened because he thinks it was some shady propaganda move by the Israelis,” Raskin said . “And the Republican Party is full of people caught up in such anti-Semitism. And yet somehow he gets on a horse and gives a lecture to the president of the Jewish university at MIT,” he added.
Mediata highlighted about the exchange “Raskin did not criticize university presidents.” He did refer to his role as a parent, pointing out that “well, I think of my father as a parent. I mean, my children were sent to college at great cost, you know, millions. I want to know that if someone is actually calling for genocide of Jews or anyone else on campus, that we have a college president who will say, “Quickly call the campus police,” that maybe is to be that person. a threat to other people around them.” He then went on to raise complaints about “lax Republican gun laws.”
Moreover, Velshi hosted guests who spread pro-Hamas propaganda. “Over the weekend, Velshi was also joined by a former Palestinian Authority spokesman who said that the U.S. “aided and abetted genocide“supporting Israel’s actions in response to the horrific October 7 terrorist attack, but who did not condemn or even mention the attack during the interview,” the Mediaite report mentioned, referring to former Palestinian Authority spokesman Hanan Ashrawi.
At the end of the week, Raskin created his official X account to continue whining about Stefanik.
This includes sharing his column published Wednesday by CNN: “Five questions Elise Stefanik should answer” which was actually “adapted from Raskin’s posts on X’s social media site”, according to the editor’s note before the column.
Way @RepStefanik: :
Last week, you called on Ivy League presidents to condemn anti-Semitism with “moral clarity” by answering yes/no questions. Dissatisfied with their responses, you agitated for their removal. What about tolerance for anti-Semitism among presidential candidates?— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) December 11, 2023
Instead of directly answering 5 straightforward questions about malicious anti-Semitism in America – the kind of yes/no questions you insist on! – this scammer changed the subject and dodged all 5 questions in exactly the way you warned college presidents never to do!
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) December 12, 2023
I am still waiting for a sedate answer from Mr. Stefanik. Will he condemn virulent anti-Semitism in the GOP, including calls for Jewish genocide from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago dinner guest, Nick Fuentes, leader of the America First Political Action Conference?https://t.co/KOf58lcheq
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) December 13, 2023
Most of these questions focused on her support of Trump — which included misrepresenting his comments about “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville — as well as the great replacement theory.
Raskin’s other social media post concerned the House’s handling of Stefanik’s resolution regarding Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), which Stefanik herself also addressed on her official X account.
Kathy – thank you for your wonderful letter and for exposing Elise Stefanik’s shocking intellectual dishonesty and narcissistic hubris. He knows much more about plagiarism than about anti-Semitism. https://t.co/0mMyFMtTko
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) December 13, 2023
🚨🚨🚨 Desperate and demented Democrats are now attacking us for uniting the country around calls to fire university presidents.
Here are the facts: Congresswoman Kathy Manning approached me on the House floor with an initial draft of a joint letter to management…
– Representative. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) December 11, 2023
Stefanik’s decision was a bipartisan bill she introduced alongside House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), as well as Moskowitz and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (R-NJ). Passed 303-126, with 3 Democrats voting “present.” Raskin joined 124 other Democrats and Republican Thomas Massie in voting against the resolution, although Manning voted for it. Many posts With Stefanik X’s account To have he promissed that the resolution is “only the first step”.
The passage of my resolution marks a historic, bipartisan effort to advocate for moral truth. The world watches as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle stand firmly with the Jewish people to condemn anti-Semitism on college campuses and the morally bankrupt testimony of…
– Representative. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) December 13, 2023
By making the case focus more on Stefanik rather than anti-Semitism on college campuses, Raskin joins not only the likes of “Saturday Night Live” and their unfunny “Cold Open” from last week’s episode, but also the Harvard Board of Trustees in he insists on keeping gays and was reportedly afraid to let Stefanik “force” the takedown. Earlier this week, Harvard announced that Gay would remain.
But this is just one example of Raskin wanting to respond to Republicans in delicate of the rise in anti-Semitism following the October 7 terrorist attack.
Last week, the House voted on the resolution “[s]“strongly condemning and condemning the drastic increase in anti-Semitism in the United States and around the world,” as presented by Republican Representatives David Kustoff of Tennessee and Max Miller of Ohio. Raskin, along with fellow Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman, both of New York, urged their colleagues to vote “present” instead, and a total of 105 Democrats refused to support her, with 92 voting “present” and 13 voting against .
But it’s not just resolutions. Raskin led the debate last month in which she defended Republican Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) from the House floor when she faced criticism for spreading anti-Israel narratives as well as defending the genocidal phrase “from the river to the sea.” Rep. Rich McCormick’s (R-GA) resolution ultimately succeeded, with even Democrats joining in to condemn their colleague.
