Rep. Tlaib’s event honored a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group at war with Israel.
(JNS) In Israel, Inga Avramyan, 82, died under a collapsed ceiling. The elderly immigrant from Armenia heard the sirens warning of an Islamic terror strike, but did not reach a bomb shelter in time because she was trying to help her disabled husband make it along with her.
Sergei, Inga’s husband, had lost a leg in a car accident and needed a wheelchair to get around. The rocket smashed through the side of the building, the ceiling collapsed and Inga was killed.
Four days before the Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket killed Inga, Senator Bernie Sanders helped host an event in the Senate building promoting the terror group.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had canceled a House event by antisemitic politician Rep. Rashida Tlaib commemorating “Nakba Day”—mourning the failed effort by invading Muslim armies to exterminate Israel’s Jewish population.
“I think it’s outrageous that Speaker McCarthy threw them out of a room they had reserved,” Sanders fumed.
The socialist senator then arranged to have the terrorist supporters host their event promoting the destruction of the Jewish state by abusing his chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee to use its hearing room.
What does the Senate’s oversight of pensions have to do with destroying Israel? Ask Bernie.
Inside the event, Noura Erakat boasted, “It is of utmost importance to say that here because we are within the very institution that has sustained the ongoing nakba.”
The institution is the United States government, and the nakba [“catastrophe” in Arabic] is the existence of Israel.
In Canada, Erakat had generated a political controversy when a Ontario New Democratic Party (ONDP) politician retweeted her message calling dead Islamic Jihad leader Khader Adnan a “martyr.” In the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., Erakat read a quote about “resisting,” a euphemism for terrorism, from the dead terrorist.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad is not just a problem for Israel. The terrorist group was spun off from the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Jihad operation in Egypt. That terror group, often described as Egyptian Islamic Jihad, to avoid confusion, became part of Al Qaeda and eventually took it over.
In the months before 9/11, Islamic Jihad and Al Qaeda became a single organization. When Al Qaeda’s hijacked planes killed thousands of Americans, the U.S. Capitol, suspected to be the target of the last plane, was rapidly evacuated.
Now Al Qaeda’s stepbrother terrorists are hailed in the offices of the Senate.
Khader Adnan, hailed in the offices of the Senate, has been described by the media as an “activist,” “detainee” and a “hunger striker.” Those are long-winded ways of saying terrorist. The “martyr,” whose hunger strike was a prolonged suicide, can be seen on video at the funeral of another terrorist, urging the crowd on to more attacks.
“Who among you is Hassan Abu Zaid [the suicide bomber, who murdered seven people]?” he demanded. “Who among you is the next martyrdom-seeker? Who among you has the next explosive belt? Who among you will carry out the next shooting?”
The New York Times responded by comparing the Islamic Jihad terrorist to Gandhi. And the Senate allowed Sanders to hijack its facilities to hold an event promoting the destruction of Israel and celebrating an Islamic terrorist.
There’s no room in the Senate to discuss an 82-year-old woman crushed under a ceiling while trying to help her amputee husband reach safety, but there’s always room to praise terrorists.
Nor was it Noura Erakat’s first time in Congress.
When Pelosi and the Democrats took Congress, Erakat, a key BDS figure, became a legal counsel for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. She attained this position even though her uncle, Saeb Erakat, was a top official in the PLO terrorist group. Her cousin, Ahmed Erekat, was killed while carrying out a terrorist attack that injured a female Israeli officer.
This is the murderous terrorism that House and Senate Democrats choose to enable.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who when politically convenient occasionally claims to be Jewish, was not outraged over Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s murder of Inga Avramyan, but by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy denying Rep. Rashida Tlaib space in which to promote the terrorists trying to kill Jews.
The only reason that Rep. Tlaib had to resort to the socialist senator’s assistance was that Republicans held the House majority. Had Pelosi and the Democrats still been in charge, there is no doubt that the event celebrating terrorism and attacking Israel would have gone forward.
“People should be allowed to congregate, to have discussions, to express their viewpoints and ideas,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, the third ranking House Democrat, had complained about Speaker McCarthy’s decision to cancel Tlaib’s Nakba event “That’s who we are.”
Supporting Islamic terrorists killing Jews is who the Democrats are.
Senate Democrats, who could have intervened and stopped this ugliness, carefully ignored it. Senate Majority Leader Schumer’s allies claimed that he was “totally unaware of this event.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Republican ranking member on the pension committee, condemned Senate Democrats for allowing the hearing room to be used to “legitimize anti-Semitic bigotry.”
Once controversial, antisemitic House members like Rep. Tlaib and Rep. Omar have been embraced by Biden and the Democrat establishment. When Speaker McCarthy booted Rep. Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee, Democrats held the line in supporting the antisemitic politician. The hate fest at the Dirksen Office Building shows where the Democrats are headed.
Democrats defiled the Capitol by turning into a haven for celebrating Islamic Jihad terrorists, who are backed by Iran and closely related to Al Qaeda. They did it while Islamic Jihad was firing rockets into Israel in a ruthless effort to kill Jews.
Islamic Jihad celebrated Inga’s murder by gloating that “our Palestinian people raise their heads high with this blessed and sacred response from the Palestinian resistance.”
What better way for the Arab Muslim invaders to “raise their heads high” than with the “blessed and sacred” murder of an 82-year-old Israeli woman.
Perhaps Sanders can arrange to allow Rep. Rashida Tlaib to hold an event celebrating this latest heroic “resistance” of the Islamic Jihad in the Senate office building.
This is an edited version of an article first published by FrontPage Magazine.