Yesterday Breitbart reported that senior Democratic members of Congress are said to have launched discussions to formally censure the U.S. Ambassador to Israel and Jerusalem’s envoy in Washington over Israel’s decision to bar entry to congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Keep in mind that Rashida Tlaib was later given permission to visit her grandmother in Israel on the condition that she not promote BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) while she was there. Representative Tlaib changed her mind and that point and decided not to visit her grandmother.
The article reports:
Around a dozen lawmakers, several of whom are Jewish, have begun talks to communicate a “deep lack of confidence and trust” in Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer and U.S. envoy to Israel David Friedman, the McClatchy news service reported, citing congressional sources.
According to the report, the Democrats are considering releasing a statement of no confidence in Dermer and opening an inspector-general investigation into Friedman.
Among the twelve are House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel and House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey, two Jewish lawmakers from New York.
“We are reviewing all of our options,” McClatchy quoted a source as saying. “With Dermer, the issue is that there already was a severe lack of trust. But now there is a severe lack of confidence. It is completely unclear that he represents his government given he has made promises that he has not kept and wasn’t clear if he ever had any chance of keeping.”
Last month, Dermer assured lawmakers that Omar and Tlaib — open supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel — would be allowed into Israel “out of respect for Congress.”
The article further states:
The prime minister said that Tlaib was welcome to apply to visit on humanitarian grounds to see her family, with the caveat that she not engage in promoting boycotts of Israel while in the country. Tlaib acquiesced, and quickly received permission to visit. However, she changed her mind hours later, saying that coming to Israel on its terms would be “humiliating” and she would not “bow down to their oppressive & racist policies.”
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who recently led a large Democratic delegation to Israel, issued a statement Thursday censuring Israel over the decision and said it contradicted what he and others had been told by Dermer.
McClatchy quoted the source as saying, “Dermer is saying privately that he expects this to go away within a day — it’s a real lack of understanding on the consequences of this.”
In the discussions Friday, the lawmakers raised an incident in 1975 in which Henry Waxman, a longtime Democratic congressman from California, was initially banned from Saudi Arabia for his Jewish roots. He was eventually granted entry following pressure from the State Department.
Friedman’s endorsement of Israel’s decision to bar Omar and Tlaib’s entry into the country broke with that precedent, they argued, and as a result called for an investigation “into the role the ambassador played in barring them from entering the country,” the report quoted another congressional source as saying.
I guess my question is whether or not we would welcome a dignitary from another country into America who wanted to visit Texas while waving a Mexican flag and claiming that it was Mexico. As usual, the Democrats are acting like the spoiled brats they have become. I guess there is no longer a place for moderate Democrats who do not hate Israel in today’s Democrat party.