Before you enjoy the Women’s March this Saturday, watch this video:
It’s clear that Tamika Mallory, co-president and founder of the Women’s March, is in way over her head in even a semi-serious discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Setting aside her anti-Semitism, this part of the interview is embarrassing on an intellectual level. Repeating the vacuous phrase “everyone has a right to exist” to distract from a simple question isn’t something a smart person does. So perhaps she’s just not educated enough to make her points cogently. Or perhaps she believes the things she does because she’s not educated on the issue. It’s difficult to tell. But the idea that she––and other similarly absurd figures like Linda Sarsour––have positioned themselves at the head of the activist wing of the American left is a sad statement about the movement.
Now, those in the media who cover for Mallory and others who share her views often characterize this kind of rhetoric as being merely “critical of Israel.” (Or worse, they excuse and rationalize anti-Semitism.) You will notice, though, that Mallory can’t even concede that Jews are “native” to Israel (a nation she doesn’t believe should exist in the first place) because she’s not Jewish and can’t speak to how they “feel”––as if how you feel changes history. You will also notice, however, as interviewer Margaret Hoover did, that Mallory has no compunction asserting that Palestinians are native to the land, even though, as far as we can tell, she’s not Arab.
Why are Arabs “native” to the land? “[B]ecause,” Mallory explains, “they have been there a very long time.” Her inability to acknowledge a rather well-documented truth about the Jewish presence on that land––somewhere around 1800+ years before Arabs ever showed up––is telling enough. But when asked by Hoover if Jews are also native, she says she “understands” that there is an “ideology” around why “Jewish people feel” like this should be their land.
Not Zionists, but Jewish people. Not a historic fact, but an ideology.
Mallory tried to make the case that nativity is a deciding factor in self-determination. If so, admitting that Jews have stronger claim to a national origin on that land would, of course, undermine her point. So … well, “All people have a right to exist.”
But, of course, Jews in Israel could not exist under the type of government that Angela Davis, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Louis Farrakhan groupies who run the Women’s March, and all the other BDS supporters that now infest the Democratic Party advocate for. The situation in the “occupied territories” exist in first place because of Arab animosity and violence towards Jews––first in a war of annihilation that was repelled, and then through decades of terrorism worldwide against Jewish people. When it comes to Israel, antagonists would like history to begin whenever it’s most convenient for whatever argument they happen to be engaged in.
Now, Mallory’s co-president Linda Sarsour’s anti-Semitism has been well documented. But remember it is Mallory who reportedly asserted “in the first hours of the first meeting for what would become the Women’s March” that “Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people,” a story she probably picked up reading “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews,” a kind of updated version of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” published by the Nation of Islam.
“White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through,” said Farrakhan, a man Mallory believes is the “greatest of all time” and offers “hardcore truth,” in a sermon that she attended last year. When asked by Meghan McCain on “The View” whether she would condemn Farrakhan, Mallory would not.
That’s her choice. There are plenty of other racists and anti-Semites on the Left. If you have a problem with “white folk” and “Satanic Jews,” then associating with Women’s March leadership makes sense. If not, though, maybe there is another protest for you.
