Democrats and Republicans circle the wagons around their own antisemites. Jews are on our own.

The political rhetoric on Wednesday between Republicans and Democrats made it crystal clear that Jewish lives don't matter in America. We are just cannon fodder in the never-ending and often stupid partisan fighting between the major political parties.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is a conspiracy theory spouting nutcase who embraces antisemitism as one of her many insane beliefs. She was in the news last week after a 2018 Facebook post surfaced where she blames California wildfires on a conspiracy partially hatched by "Rothschild Inc." She has shared a video that says that quotes a Holocaust denier saying that  “[A]n unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists and Zionist supremacists has schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation, with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands.” And she has a range of crazy conspiracy theories about George Soros that go way beyond his financial support for leftist causes and enter the realm of the Jewish puppetmaster controlling the world. 

She doesn't belong in Congress, let alone as a member of important Congressional committees.

Yet yesterday, instead of stripping her of her powers in Congress, Republicans did nothing but condemn her crazed statements - which requires no political courage at all - and then said that evil Democrats are worse, anyway.

Here is House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy's full statement:

“Past comments from and endorsed by Marjorie Taylor Greene on school shootings, political violence, and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories do not represent the values or beliefs of the House Republican Conference. I condemn those comments unequivocally. I condemned them in the past. I continue to condemn them today. This House condemned QAnon last Congress and continues to do so today.

“I made this clear to Marjorie when we met. I also made clear that as a member of Congress we have a responsibility to hold ourselves to a higher standard than how she presented herself as a private citizen. Her past comments now have much greater meaning. Marjorie recognized this in our conversation. I hold her to her word, as well as her actions going forward. 

“I understand that Marjorie’s comments have caused deep wounds to many and as a result, I offered Majority Leader Hoyer a path to lower the temperature and address these concerns. Instead of coming together to do that, the Democrats are choosing to raise the temperature by taking the unprecedented step to further their partisan power grab regarding the committee assignments of the other party.  

“While Democrats pursue a resolution on Congresswoman Greene, they continue to do nothing about Democrats serving on the Foreign Affairs Committee who have spread anti-Semitic tropes, Democrats on the House Intelligence and Homeland Security Committee compromised by Chinese spies, or the Chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee who advocated for violence against public servants.

“In the end, this resolution continues to distract Congress, especially given the limited time that Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat leadership want the House to debate and work, on what it needs to focus on: getting Americans back to work, getting kids back to school, and providing vaccines to all Americans who need it.”

This is a long-winded attempt to take no responsibility for Greene's antisemitism and then deflect it by saying that Democrats are politicizing it.

Are they? You bet they are. The Democrats are guilty of the exact same papering over of antisemitism from their own members as the Republicans are. Representative Ilhan Omar is still a member of major Congressional committees after saying that Jewish money controls the United States and Jewish Americans are guilty of dual loyalty.

And, just like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Omar avoids using the word "Jew" in a pathetic attempt to pretend that she is not targeting Jews. Democrats pretend that attacks on "Zionists" using age-old antisemitic tropes are not dog whistles for classic antisemitism. 

So the Republicans, instead of acting like adults and marginalizing Greene, did literally nothing - and used Greene as an excuse to call Democrats antisemitic. 

The response from the Democrats was to push their own resolution to strip Greene from her committee assignments. Which would be appropriate - except that their own actions in 2019 show that there is nothing ethical about their supposed horror at Greene's remarks. That is when, instead of condemning  Ilhan Omar's antisemitic statements and taking away her own committee assignments, they pushed a watered down, meaningless resolution that condemned "hate" - a resolution that Omar herself could vote for. 

Democrats and their allies went even further, not only trivializing antisemitism. Twitter was filled with the accusation that those attacking Omar are racist and Islamophobic. 

Both Democrats and Republicans circled the wagons around their own antisemites while claiming that the other side was antisemitic.

The bottom line is that Jews cannot rely on either political party to protect them in America. Both parties claim to be against antisemitism - yet when it comes to actions beyond rhetoric, both parties will actively defend the antisemitism of their members. 

Both Democrats and Republicans are trying to woo the Jewish vote and Jewish money by shouting how much they support Jews and Israel, how much they hate antisemites and Nazis and white supremacists. When the chips are down, though, they both are willing to throw Jews under the bus to protect their own antisemitic bigots.

The clear message to Jews in America is that we are on our own. 

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