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Rep. Rashida Tlaib spoke over Memorial Day weekend at a conference endorsed by individuals associated with a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
The Michigan Democrat spoke at the People’s Conference for Palestine on Saturday, where she chided President Joe Biden for not doing enough to stop Israel from conducting a “genocide,” according to a video posted to Instagram by the Palestinian Youth Movement, one of the event’s organizers.
Salah Salah, a founding member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, endorsed the conference, and Wisam Rafeedie, another individual who produced literature for the PFLP, spoke to attendees about how “movements achieve transformation.”
The State Department designated the PFLP as a terrorist organization in 1997. The organization has conducted “suicide operations,” hijacked planes, and launched rockets at civilians, according to the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The PFLP also reportedly participated in the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks and held Israeli hostages, according to NGO Monitor, an Israeli nonprofit. The terrorist group posted multiple images and videos of their fighters infiltrating Israeli military installations to its Telegram channel on and after Oct. 7, according to NGO Monitor.
A message from the Palestinian intellectual and revolutionary Salah Salah in support of the People’s Conference for Palestine, May 24-26 in Detroit, Michigan. We’ll see you soon at the conference — link to register in our bio! ?? pic.twitter.com/y8T3LJTgI1
— Palestinian Youth Movement (@palyouthmvmt) May 19, 2024
“I extend to you my thanks and regards for these efforts that are a continuation of your achievements organizing unprecedented protests across North America and other capitals and cities around the world,” Salah said in a May 19 translated video posted by the Palestinian Youth Movement. “This is an initiative of extreme importance, I call on members of the Palestinian and Arab communities and friends and supporters of our cause to participate in this People’s Conference.”
Salah compared the actions of “Zionist forces” to Nazis in his endorsement of the conference, according to the translated video.
“Participation in this People’s Conference is crucial on a large scale and on the highest level to set a plan that offers further coordination and an agreement on a strategy for unified action that guarantees continuity and consistency to achieve the goals and tasks posed by the conference,” he continued.
Rafeedie ran an underground publishing operation for the PFLP in the 1980s and was detained by the Israeli government for involvement with the organization in 1991, according to Amnesty International. He also endorsed the conference before it started, according to a post on X.
Yesterday, I saw that PFLP member Wisam Rafeedie, who is set to speak later today (presumably virtually), also endorsed it pic.twitter.com/FQFyx7wEVz
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) May 26, 2024
Rafeedie participated in a panel at the conference that explored how pro-Palestinian activists in America can “utilize this moment of heightened contradictions to advance our struggle for liberation from within the imperial core,” according to the event’s website.
“These Zionists lie like they breathe,” Rafeedie said during his appearance, according to the Palestinian Youth Movement.
“These Zionists lie like they breathe.” – Wisam Rafeedie pic.twitter.com/PTuRClVtzp
— Palestinian Youth Movement (@palyouthmvmt) May 26, 2024
Tlaib called Biden an “enabler” during her speech at the conference, according to video posted by the Palestinian Youth Movement.
“The International Court of Justice just ruled that the Israeli government must stop its invasion of Rafah. But President Biden says what’s happening in Gaza is not a genocide,” she said. “Where’s your red line, President Biden?”
The United Nations International Court of Justice ruled on May 24 that Israel must end its military operations in Rafah, a city in the southern region of Gaza, due to the impact the continued assault would have on the civilian population. Biden previously vowed to restrict aid to Israel if the Jewish state invaded Rafah, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken later confirming that the United States is holding back some of its aid.
Tlaib and the Palestinian Youth Movement did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment. Rafeedie and Salah could not be reached for comment.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
The post Rep. Tlaib Addresses Conference Endorsed by Founding Member of Palestinian Terrorist Group appeared first on The Daily Signal.
New polling from Scott Rasmussen reveals that America’s elite 1%—those with high incomes, urban residences, and postgraduate degrees—are significantly out of step with the rest of the country on a range of issues.
It’s a troubling trend for America, and it doesn’t bode well for our future considering the elite 1% occupy many of the leadership roles in our cultural, educational, and government institutions.
There’s perhaps no statistic more shocking than the 69% of politically obsessed elites who think it would be better if only people with college degrees could vote. By comparison, just 15% of all voters hold that view. (Rasmussen defines “politically obsessed” as elites who talk about politics every day.)
Rasmussen’s latest survey, conducted by RMG Research, asked other questions ranging from government censorship to gun ownership. On nearly every issue, there’s a wide gulf between the ruling class and everyday Americans.
You can learn more about work on the elite 1% by tuning into “The Scott Rasmussen Show,” which airs Sunday at 10 a.m. ET on Merit Street Media.
In the meantime, listen to our full interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast” or read an edited transcript below.
Rob Bluey: What are the headlines coming out of your latest research?
Scott Rasmussen: As a reminder, the last time we talked about how the politically obsessed elites think the American people have too much individual freedom and people in this elite world really trust the federal government.
What we did this time is began to ask some of these same groups, the elite 1 % and the politically obsessed, what do they think America looks like?
Perhaps the funniest finding of all is we ask the question, “Do most Americans agree with you on most important issues?” Now, if we ask voters, about half say, “Yeah, I think most people agree with me.” Among the politically obsessed elites, 82% of that group thinks that most Americans agree with them on most issues. It’s not even close to true, but they’re looking in a mirror. They see what they want to see.
What’s scary about that, if you think about it in context of the administrative state, if these people believe that their views are representative of America, it justifies them cheating a little bit or bending the rules because they can say, “We’re fighting for the American people.” In fact, they’re fighting against the American people.
Bluey: Are there particular policy issues where you see that playing out more so than others? For instance, one that comes to mind is climate change.
Rasmussen: It’s actually harder to find places where the American people are with the elite. You mentioned climate change. About 2 out of 3 of this politically obsessed elite think that most voters are willing to pay $250 a year or more to fight climate change.
When we do polling to ask people how much they’re willing to pay—in terms of taxes or higher prices—about half say they’re not willing to pay anything, and 72% say nothing more than $100.
If you think about that in a policy sense, these influencers believe the American people are willing to pay something they’re not, and that’s why they can support some different policy ideas.
But look, it’s starts with a very basic thing: 71% of the politically obsessed elites think most Americans trust the federal government most of the time. That has not been true for 50 years. It’s been a half century since people tended to trust the government that much. Today, only 22% of voters voiced that much trust in government.
That is one of the core distinctions. If you trust the federal government, you trust the regulatory apparatus a lot more. You trust other rules and regulations, and voters just aren’t there.
Bluey: Another area that you polled had to do with social media. What did you find when you surveyed the elite 1% on that particular topic?
Rasmussen: Everybody, whether you’re in the elite or not, has some concern about disinformation and fake news. Where the difference comes is what to do about it.
Among most voters, they say that having the government decide what is misinformation and fake news is a bigger threat than the fake news itself. Among the elites, they say just the opposite.
Should the federal government be allowed to censor social media posts? Among all voters, 16% say yes. Among the politically obsessed elites, just over 50 % say, “Of course, we should have the right to censor social media.” Fundamentally different views.
The views of the elite 1% amount to a rejection of America’s founding ideals. Even on something as simple as, “Does the federal government listen too much or not enough to the American people?” Overwhelmingly, voters say the government is not listening to us and the elites are saying it’s listening too much.
Bluey: There seems to be a wide discrepancy of views when it comes to who should vote and who should have a say in our country’s future. That number to me was one that stood out and was quite alarming.
Rasmussen: Absolutely alarming.
We asked a question that seemed to me to be absurd, Would it be better if only people with a college degree were allowed to vote?”
Appropriately, most Americans just soundly reject that idea. But among the elites, they heavily believe this country would be better off if all those deplorables who didn’t go to college weren’t allowed to vote.
Bluey: And one issue where there’s also quite a big disparity is gun ownership. How do the elite view guns?
Rasmussen: Consistently for decades, voters say they want to live in a community where guns are allowed. Sometimes it’s in the low 60s, sometimes after a horrific shooting event, it moves down to the low 50s, but consistently a majority of Americans can support that.
Among the elite 1 % that politically obsessed portion of it, about 70% of them say, “No, we want to live where guns are outlawed.” And 76% of them want to ban the private ownership of guns.
If you are in that politically obsessed elite and you believe strongly that we should ban guns, and if you believe that most American people want to live in a community where guns are outlawed, then you take an almost religious fervor to the fight to ban guns because you can convince yourself that you’re fighting on behalf of the public. And once again, you’re actually fighting against what the American people are looking for.
Bluey: Do you feel that the elite 1 % are more out of touch in 2024 than maybe they were in past generations?
Rasmussen: First, I don’t have data from past generations, so I can’t make a clear assessment on that. But I think it’s probably a little bit different.
There have always been elites. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were clearly elites of their era, but they also had a commitment to something larger than themselves. Thomas Jefferson, in writing the Declaration of Independence, said he was just articulating what the American people were feeling. At the same time, Alexander Hamilton said, “We need to establish a monarchy.” If you actually read his plan, it’s horrific.
So there have always been some people and elites who kind of rejected the founding ideals, who rejected the concepts of the Declaration of Independence.
>>> ‘Most Terrifying Poll Result I’ve Ever Seen’: Scott Rasmussen Surveys America’s Elite 1%
What’s changed in the last couple of generations are two things.
No. 1, we’re a little bit more sorted geographically. Members of the elite aren’t encountering non-elites on a regular basis. It’s not just that we live in gated communities or separate areas. Public transportation has been replaced by Uber. There’s not a lot of contact with people who aren’t like you.
The second part is there has been the rise of what a lot of people view as the global elite, where people begin to see others from other countries as more like them than they do their own countrymen.
Bluey: The use of pronouns has become quite pronounced in a lot of corporate settings, even in our federal government. There are some departments and agencies that now include them in email signatures and things of that nature. Is there a difference of how elites view pronouns vs. the rest of America?
Rasmussen: Let’s start with the fact that most Americans don’t even know what you’re talking about when you’re expressing your preferred pronouns. Only about 1 out of 10 voters has ever introduced themselves in that manner.
When they hear talk of it, it seems very foreign. But among the politically obsessed elite, about 60%, have introduced themselves expressing their preferred pronouns. And it’s hard to overstate the cultural difference at that point.
If you’re in this elite world—if you’re in the elite schools or many agencies of the federal government—it is absolutely normal and an everyday occurrence that you meet somebody and they tell you not only their name and their position, but their preferred pronouns. In the rest of America, that just doesn’t happen.
When you get into discussions about misgendering somebody, there are regulations being pushed right now that would require employers to punish somebody for misgendering—for not using somebody’s preferred pronouns. Only 9% of voters think that’s a fireable offense, but even more than that, they don’t even know what the discussion is about.
This is where that glaring gap between the elites and most Americans is quite visible. It is the cultural world they’re in, whether we’re talking about guns, or climate change policies, or preferred pronouns, or even the topic of should biological males be allowed to play in women’s sports.
Among the politically obsessed elite, 41% say they should. Now, that’s not a majority, but essentially, the politically obsessed elite is evenly divided on this question, whereas to most Americans, it’s ridiculous. Of course, biological males have a physical advantage. Of course, it is dangerous to let biological males into the women’s locker room. But the elite is having a discussion about it. That is out of step with the country. It is dangerous.
It’s fine to have different views. We all live on our own bubbles. Your bubble is a little different than mine, but probably has some overlap. But you have to be able to look outside your bubble and see what the rest of the country is doing.
If you’re in this elite world, you have enormous influence and you think your views are reflecting the public at large, that’s a really dangerous combination.
Bluey: One of the most notable examples of the last decade is when Donald Trump was elected president. It seemed that the elites were in shock. What might happen if Trump is victorious in November and how might they react?
Rasmussen: On Election Day 2016, most of the conversation was Hillary Clinton is up by three in the polls, but there’s a margin of error, she’ll probably win by six. There was a shock. They couldn’t believe it. They couldn’t imagine what was happening. And because in their mind, Hillary Clinton was the ideally prepared person.
Looking ahead to this year, first thing I will tell you is if the election is at all close, the way the last nine elections have been in, whichever team loses, they’ll believe the election was stolen. If Donald Trump wins, we will hear an awful lot about how he stole the election from these elites.
But something else is happening that’s playing a part in the election. It’s a distorted view of the public.
When we see the campus protests about the Palestinian situation, 62% of the elites have a favorable opinion. They think it’s great what these protesters are doing. Most voters don’t. Only 24% of voters support the protesters.
That leaves the pundits to misread the way a situation has played out. In fact, since the campus protest started, support for Israel has gone up—not what some of the protesters might have hoped for.
A lot of the elites are misreading the dynamics going on right now. About 80 % of the elite 1% approve of the way Joe Biden is doing his job.
The post 69% of Elites Want to Restrict Voting to College Graduates Only appeared first on The Daily Signal.
The war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza strip is the most morally clear conflict in modern history.
It pits an actual terrorist group that just engaged in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust against a democratic country that protects citizens—Jewish, Muslim, and Christian. It pits a monstrously evil tentacle of Iran—handed control of the Gaza strip by Israel in 2005 when Israel pulled out of that area and forced 8,000 Jews out of their homes—against a democratic ally of the United States.
It pits an army of atrocity-seeking villains—who are attempting to maximize Palestinian casualties by locating themselves among civilians, stealing humanitarian aid, and literally murdering anyone who gets in their way—against an actual professional army risking the lives of its own soldiers in order to protect Palestinian civilians.
And yet Joe Biden can’t quite make up his mind.
On the one hand, Biden mouths platitudinous support for Israel in its battle against Hamas. On the other, he continues to grant the central premise Hamas promotes, which is that Israel is a human rights violator and indiscriminate killer of Palestinians—even as Hamas holds Americans hostage in Gaza.
Biden has spent the last several weeks pressuring Israel not to go into Rafah, the sole major repository of the Hamas terror apparatus, where some four brigades of terrorists are digging in. Instead, he has deployed his head of the CIA, his secretary of state, and a wide variety of other officials to promote “negotiations” between Israel and Hamas.
In fact, he’s done more than that for Hamas. While fully articulating his understanding that Hamas seeks a permanent end to the conflict in Gaza, which would leave them in control and hand them a victory they could never earn on the battlefield, Biden has pushed just that: a permanent end to the conflict leaving Hamas in place. Biden has not explained just how this would benefit the United States, Israel, the Palestinians themselves, or the region more broadly. He has simply calculated that an end to conflict is an end in and of itself.
To that end, Biden has been slow-walking aid to the Israelis—including ammunition that allows for better targeting, which would minimize civilian casualties. He has deployed his negotiators to play both sides of the table, even going so far as to allow his CIA head, William Burns, to negotiate with Egypt and Qatar a series of terms without submitting them to the Israelis—and then allowing Hamas itself to declare its acceptance of such nonsensical and irrelevant terms, presumably in an effort to humiliate the Israelis into accepting their own quasi-surrender.
Biden has trotted out spokespeople to claim that America continues to back Israel, while simultaneously claiming—falsely—that Israel is engaging in human rights abuses.
The result is the worst of all possible worlds for Biden: a dissatisfied radical base convinced that Biden is behind the war in Gaza; an angry pro-Israel citizenry bewildered by Biden’s inability to call evil by its name; and a stalemate in Gaza, which means that radical protesters will undoubtedly descend on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in order to harass Biden as he receives his renomination.
It’s all stupid.
But it does raise an obvious question: Why?
Why is this so seemingly tough for Joe Biden? Is it all just a misread of the political moment—adherence to a stunningly imbecilic belief that if Biden appeases extremists within his party, he’ll be able to win the 2024 election?
Or is it something deeper—a moral malaise that has taken root in the upper echelons of our politics, in which Western powers, including Israel, are seen as inherently problematic while the West’s enemies, including Hamas, are seen as inherently victimized?
If the tens of thousands of protesters on America’s streets are any indicator, the latter seems more likely than the former. Which spells doom for a West that cannot see the difference between decency and barbarity.
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The post If You Can’t Tell the Bad Guy in Israel Vs. Hamas, You’re the Problem appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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