U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin, seems to equate homophobia with the plight of the Palestinians. His experiences as a homosexual, he suggested, helped him empathize with the “human rights” violations suffered by the Palestinians.
Pocan joined Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib on Feb. 27 during the Washington, D.C., confab that triggered the congressional resolution reviling all kinds of prejudice big and small. Taken literally, the resolution implies that the majority of the House of Representatives supported bigotry prior to Thursday’s 407-23 vote.
For that matter, the 23 representatives who voted against the resolution must still be outright bigots. All Republicans, naturally.
This was the least of the drawbacks with the resolution, which was inspired by Omar’s statement: “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
Not only was Omar’s name left out of the resolution but so was a series of Israel-bashing slanders that were uttered at the event. Some of these slanders are as disturbing or more so than the words causing Omar trouble.
Most absurd were Pocan’s words, as quoted by The Jewish Insider: ”As someone who’s not religious and (is) gay, it doesn’t seem to be natural that Palestine would be an important issue, but it’s an important issue because it’s a human rights issue.”
As the one-time victim of a severe homophobic beating with a baseball bat, Pocan might readily identify with a gay Palestinian in Gaza who was “forced to stand in sewage water up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects and other creatures he could feel but not see,” which was taken from a 2002 New Republic article cited in the gay publication Inside Outword.
The publication affirmed the rampant oppression of homosexuals throughout the Arab world, wherein gays are executed in some countries solely because of their orientation.
Pocan, who is co-chair of the House’s LGBT Equality Caucus, recalled leading a delegation of five members of Congress two years ago to East Jerusalem and the West Bank’s Ramallah and Hebron, the latter of which was the scene of the 1929 massacre of 67 Jews. Had Pocan toured Tel Aviv, he might have participated in one of the many gay pride events that are held in Israel.
Omar, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, also implied Israel is an apartheid state when she said, “So I know many (members of Congress) were fighting for people to be free, for people to live in dignity in South Africa.”
Omar and her Democratic “Progressive” friends have played the race, religion and feminist cards since Omar, of Minneapolis, and Tlaib, from Detroit, became the first two Muslim women in Congress. With two Muslim women in Congress, she noted, “here is a group of people that we want to make sure that they have the dignity that you want everybody else to have. We get called names and we get to be labeled as hateful. No, we know what hate looks like.”
When House members debated the resolution, Omar’s defenders argued that she was being singled out. No, Omar, Tlaib and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have made themselves suspect because of their crude approach to criticizing Israel and its American supporters. They are right that Congress should rebuke all others who behave so badly – although that is a convenient opportunity for Omar to deflect attention from her own slanders.
These more obscure comments would have added weight to Omar’s most notorious accusation – that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee pressed for “allegiance” to Israel. In the first place, AIPAC hardly represents all American Jews. More importantly, the American Jewish community maintains loyalty to the United States while aiding Israel, which is a vital American ally.
The House resolution should have been limited to reprimanding Omar in this instance. Expanding this resolution to everything else under the sun while excluding Omar’s name was silly, though the political motives for doing so are understandable. A few Republicans who opposed the resolution said it should have only covered anti-Semitism.
Most Democrats were too soft on her while Republicans were so heavy handed they nearly elevated Omar to martyr status.
After the vote, an icy Omar was ominously silent, hardly the chatty Cathy from the week before. Pocan spent the week unnoticed in the media.
Republished from San Diego Jewish World