59 Republicans condemn antisemitism after refusing to punish antisemitic congresswoman
Few House Republicans voted to punish Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene after she spread conspiracy theories about a Jewish space laser.
A group of 64 House Republicans have signed on to a resolution backing Israel and condemning antisemitism. But earlier this year, all but a few of them refused to hold a GOP congresswoman accountable for spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) introduced H. Res. 394 on Thursday, “Condemning the acts of terrorism committed by Hamas against the people of the State of Israel.”
A series of violent clashes between the Israeli military and the Palestinian Islamic organization Hamas have left at least eight dead in Israel and more than 100 dead in the Palestinian territory of Gaza over the past week.
If passed, Gimenez’s resolution would put the House of Representatives on record as condemning Hamas for the violence, backing Israel’s right to self-defense, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s “legitimate capital city,” and reaffirming “support for policies and initiatives combatting anti-Semitic behavior around the world.”
As of Friday morning, 63 Republican House members had signed on as co-sponsors.
But given a chance to condemn antisemitic behavior by their own colleague earlier this year, 59 of those Republicans refused to do so.
On Feb. 4, the House voted to remove Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committee assignments “in light of conduct she has exhibited,” following a series of antisemitic, Islamophobic, and racist comments Greene made.
In a 2018 social media post, Greene had blamed secret space lasers controlled by the prominent Jewish Rothschild family for a deadly California wildfire. That same year, she shared an anti-Muslim video that portrayed Jews as trying to destroy Europe through “immigration and miscegenation.”
Gimenez voted with the majority to hold Greene accountable for her words and actions, as did three other Republican co-sponsors of the current resolution. New York Rep. Claudia Tenney had not been sworn in yet at the time of the vote on Greene.
The rest voted against punishing Greene.
One of the Republicans now condemning antisemitism, Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, complained to the Jewish Insider in a November interview that it is really hard to get Jews to stop being Jewish.
Asked if he’d ever tried to convert Jews to Christianity, Cawthorn responded, “I have, unsuccessfully. I have switched a lot of, uh, you know, I guess, culturally Jewish people. But being a practicing Jew, like, people who are religious about it, they are very difficult,” he said. “I’ve had a hard time connecting with them in that way.”
In 2017, Cawthorn wrote excitedly on social media about his visit to Adolf Hitler’s vacation home, which he said had been on his “bucket list.”
Another co-sponsor of the resolution, Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, read portions of Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf” on the House floor in March 2019.
He claimed that doing so was somehow a criticism of Democrats and the American media.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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