During a town hall on NewsNation on Wednesday, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) stated that while they have been good for Israel, the Biden-Harris administration “was slow to respond to the campus protests.” And stated that “everybody knows, if that wasn’t Jewish students, if those were minority students, if those were LGBTQ students blocked from going to their class, that wouldn’t have gotten past lunchtime on the first day.” And because “we don’t fit into this box of protected classes, … people on the left were silent and they failed.”
Moskowitz said, “Trump did a lot of good stuff for Israel in his administration. He did the Abraham Accords. He should get credit for that. He moved the embassy to Jerusalem. He should get credit for that. The Biden administration has continued those policies because they were the right policies for Israel. … But you don’t have to listen to my opinion on whether the Biden-Harris administration has been good for Israel. Go listen to the folks in Dearborn, MI, who hate the policies of the Biden-Harris administration because they have been pro-Israel. She gets protested everywhere she goes by progressives that I’ve had to deal with in my party and by socialists that don’t belong in my party, because of the Biden-Harris position on Israel. Trump has something going on in his party called isolationism. That’s a big problem for Israel. You should talk to your Republican friends about how Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) and that whole wing of the Republican Party are isolationists. Israel has not been exempt from that. And so, look, I actually think both candidates will be good for Israel. I think there’s a lot of evidence for that. I think Joe Biden’s been tremendous for Israel, okay, this idea that he has not been good for Israel is just not true.”
He continued, “Now, I think the administration was slow to respond to the campus protests. I’ve said that before. They were slow. There is no doubt. I think everybody knows, if that wasn’t Jewish students, if those were minority students, if those were LGBTQ students blocked from going to their class, that wouldn’t have gotten past lunchtime on the first day. But because it was Jews and not — we don’t fit into this box of protected classes, right? All of a sudden, people on the left were silent and they failed.”
Later, he added, “Both parties are failing [o]n this, and I’ll tell you what I mean. When Tucker Carlson has a Holocaust denier on his show, Republicans have a hard time calling him out, and Democrats have a hard time calling out stuff that comes from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Easy to call out the other side, harder to deal with it in your tent. So, all of a sudden, antisemitism is a team sport.”
Moskowitz further stated, “We’ve got to have the conversations. Democrats and Republicans work on bills together. I worked with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) on the campus antisemitism bill, together, to call for the resignations of those presidents. We’ve got to figure out how to bridge the divide. … If the Jewish community becomes a partisan issue, it’s going to be disastrous for the Jewish community.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
