Michigan Rep is Profile in Courage with Support for Israel, Jews
Given the ugly state of our politics, it is impossible to find an officeholder who could be described as a “profile in courage.”
Finding a politician with principles would be like discovering a healthy person in a colony of lepers.
But if it should happen –- and it has –- there is a moral obligation to acknowledge the individual.
I am referring to Democratic Michigan Representative Noah Arbit, who represents the 20th District in much of Oakland County.
Arbit, in a 10-minute speech on the House floor, recently delivered an impassioned defense of his Jewishness and the State of Israel. No, “defense” is the wrong word; it implies he was responding to negatives. He spoke with pride, embracing his religion and the Jewish homeland.
Rare, rare, indeed.
Meanwhile, much of his party has given comfort to antisemites and those seeking to destroy Israel. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Jew, has suggested Jews should sacrifice themselves along with Israel to save the world. This after stating she would not attend her own party’s convention because, being a Jew, she did not feel safe. (I am still trying to process that weeks after she made these remarks.)
I cannot do justice to Arbit’s words, so I am going to quote as much as possible from the speech, sadly having to comply to length limitations of a political column. Here are some key sections from his speech:
“Over the past decade and a half, Jews have been told not to believe our eyes or ears as individuals and movements hostile to our very existence have grown in stature, support, and power. All the while, we have watched with dread as our vibrant synagogues congeal into fortresses. All the while, we have been stalked, and threatened, and vandalized, and graffitied, and beaten, and shot, and burned, and raped, and killed.
“This is a wake-up call.
“Antisemitism is indeed the world’s oldest hatred. Antisemitism’s staying power lies in its uniqueness. Rather than just an ethnic or religious hatred, antisemitism is better understood as a conspiracy theory that places ‘the Jews’ behind any geopolitical conflict, economic injustice, societal ill, or cultural rot.
“Zionism does not mean the inevitable dispossession and persecution of Palestinians. Zionism does not mean hating Arabs or Muslims; it certainly doesn’t mean supporting [Israel Prime Minister] Netanyahu or his extremist ministers; it does not mean excusing war crimes; it does not mean settler colonialism or Jewish supremacy or any of the insane, conspiratorial garbage out there.
“So, I’m a Zionist. I have been all my life. Because my parents are Zionists, and so are my grandparents, and before them my great-grandparents, and before them… down the line, every single Jew since the Romans burned down our Temple, sacked our capital in Jerusalem, and expelled us from our country, has been dreaming, hoping, praying for our return to our Promised Land.
“But now I am told by people I once considered friends and ideological allies, that my Zionism, embracing my heritage, my faith, my history – makes me a traitor to human rights, a traitor to progressivism, to liberalism.
“When Zionism itself is distorted as an inherently evil ideology, because the vast majority of the world’s 15 million Jews are Zionists, it becomes all too easy for anti-Zionism to become a justification for any and all forms of social, economic, and political exclusion of Jews. Even worse, the logical leap to justifying violence against Israelis, and all Jews, becomes so tiny as to be invisible.
“Indeed, when you hound and harass Jewish elected officials because we refuse to disavow our support for Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people, that’s antisemitism. When you vandalize a Jewish-owned business because you oppose Israel’s leaders, that’s antisemitism. When you attack a Jewish synagogue because you oppose Israel’s military actions, that’s antisemitism. When you firebomb a Jewish vigil for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado, that’s antisemitism.
“Some will counter with the ol’ one-liner ‘it’s not antisemitic to criticize Israel!’ And guess what, that’s entirely true! There are many sane and rational ways to criticize Israeli policies, politicians, or even the nature of American foreign policy toward Israel, without invoking conspiracies that blame and endanger Jews.
“But, that’s not what we’re seeing. Not at all. What we’re seeing today is an organized hate movement calling for the elimination of a single country, smaller than New Jersey, and home to half of the world’s Jews.
“I believe fiercely in freedom, dignity, and self-determination for all peoples, including, by the way, Palestinians! Human rights. Civil rights. Minority rights. My commitment to these ideals has defined my life; they are fundamental to who I am.
“So, you can imagine my fury that I have to go through a daily cleanse of all my online accounts, sifting through the antisemitic bile on all my feeds. I have been called…a dirty Jew, a ‘Nazi, Hitlerite Jewish supremacist,’ a genocidal terrorist, a ZioNazi, a Zionist freak, a Zionist rat, an ‘Israel first fascist,’ and so much more.
“Ultimately, these awful people are not judging me based on who I am, they’re judging me based on what I am, and that…is the definition of bigotry, the definition of prejudice, and the definition of discrimination.
“…We are not Jews with trembling knees. We will continue fighting to be heard above the din of hatred and conspiracy, no matter how excruciating and painful it continues to be. There is a reason we have survived 3,000 years, and why we will survive for 3,000 more.”
There is more, much more and the speech should be required reading for all those –- Jew or Gentile –- who, by supporting Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for US Senate, have embraced Jewish-hatred and the destruction of Israel and the blood libel charge of genocide.
Arbit’s speech, of course, begs the question: Is Arbit, who founded the Michigan Democratic Jewish Caucus in 2019 and is described as a rising star, endorsing the Democrat El-Sayed?
When I reached him, Arbit said he had given his last interview on the issue but referred me to a story in the Jewish Insider, a digital news outlet, which addresses the questions I had on the upcoming election.
El-Sayed: No, he will not endorse him.
“El-Sayed aligns himself with people who want to purge the Democratic Party and American life of Zionists and, therefore, most Jews. That is unacceptable.
“Abdul consistently judges pro-Israel Jews in Michigan, and the entire Zionist movement, by Israel’s most extremist elements…yet gets very indignant when people judge him by the most extreme statements of Hasan Piker,” a Twitch streamer who has espoused antisemitic rhetoric and with whom El-Sayed campaigned during the primary.
“I have a huge problem with that hypocrisy. Should you judge a movement by its fringes, or shouldn’t you? Which is it?”
He continues in the Jewish Insider article: “The definition of antisemitism as just a shorthand for hating Jews is useless because you don’t have to hate Jews to be a vector for conspiracy theories. I think it’s very, very clear that the fulcrum of Abdul’s campaign was an antisemitic conspiracy about AIPAC being the No. 1 obstacle toward universal healthcare, better schools and better roads in Michigan and in America.
“It is a neat, clever argument. You take an unpopular policy and you say this is the reason why you don’t have nice things. It is the demagogue’s oldest trick in the book.”
He said he met with El-Sayed, stating “It was challenging to find common ground. I think it’s very difficult because he won’t even commit to a two-state solution, where one of those two states is Jewish.”
He said both El-Sayed and the Republican candidate, Mike Rogers, are “unacceptable for Michigan” who threaten his constituents and “that is a tragic place to be.”
“I feel that it is a moral question for each voter to answer as to who is frankly less threatening to them. For me personally, I don’t know how to choose between El-Sayed and Rogers –- a bootlicker –- for President Donald Trump.”
He does not, in the article, criticize Democrats who have endorsed El-Sayed.
“This is an incredibly obviously uncomfortable time to be a liberal Zionist Democrat,” he said. “We are about to find out whether there is enough space in the party for those of us who are good Democrats but also are unwilling to relinquish our connections and commitments to our homeland — to Israel.”
It has been a long time since I wrote a column on a public officeholder who was so principled and courageous and decided to speak out, damn the political consequences.
It also has been a long, long time since I used the words “principled” and “courageous” to describe a politician.
(Berl Falbaum is a veteran journalist and author of the recently published, The Media’s Defamation of Israel: A Critique of the Israel-Hamas War News Coverage).
