As a member of the squad, Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) is a rather strong spokeswoman for two of their chief causes, defunding the police and anti-Israel sentiment. On Wednesday, a clip of her floor speech from May 13 went viral where she called on the House to give money being sent to Israel to the homeless in her district.
The fight for Black lives and the fight for Palestinian liberation are interconnected.
— Congresswoman Cori Bush (@RepCori) May 13, 2021
We oppose our money going to fund militarized policing, occupation, and systems of violent oppression and trauma.
We are anti-war. We are anti-occupation. And we are anti-apartheid. Period. pic.twitter.com/DO42FEre0W
Her speech combined her two chief causes together, as she particularly opposed how "the same equipment that they used to brutalize us is the same equipment that we send to the Israeli military to police and brutalize Palestinians."
"As a Palestinian, he was ready to resist, to rebel, to rise up with us as our St. Louis community mourned Mike Brown, Jr.’s state sanctioned murder, and as we demanded an end to the militarized police occupation of our communities," Bush said. "Palestinians know what state violence, militarized policing, and occupation of their communities look like."
Bush was not using her speech to memorialize some ordinary Black Lives Matter activist. Rather, it was Palestinian-American Bassem Masri, who died in 2018. Rather, Masri actually tweeted the BLM call about "pigs in a blanket" and would taunt police officers.
Cori Bush blames the Jews for homelessness in St. Louis…
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) August 4, 2021
And we wonder why antisemitism is rising. Elected officials are openly scapegoating Jews
pic.twitter.com/5mhCNrS078
THIS is Cori Bush:
— StopAntisemitism.org (@StopAntisemites) August 4, 2021
???? Linda Sarsour ally
???? Supporter of the antisemitic BDS movement
???? Blames the poverty of her home city on the world’s only Jewish nation
Vote her OUT in 2022! https://t.co/j9z2wytuiN pic.twitter.com/KuMNvYzAvO
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Missouri Democratic Rep. Cori Bush praised the Black Lives Matter activist who advocated "death" for police officers in 2014 and tweeted the BLM chant "pigs in a blanket fry 'em like bacon."
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Cell phone footage captured in a live stream on Oct. 8, 2014, showed a crowd of people surrounding police officers in St. Louis as one man yelled obscenities, the local FOX affiliate reported.
"Coward straight pig out here b---! You gotta go. Your life is in danger homie," one man yelled at a police officer. The man yelling was Masri, who then asked an officer, "What happens when we take your gun?"
Masri told police officers, "I’m praying for your death and your death and your death and your death," as he pointed at one after another.
Aaron Bandler's reporting on the viral tweet for Jewish Journal includes a statement from Rabbi Abraham Cooper about comments from not only Bush, but from Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), an equally if not more so vocally anti-Israel squad member:
Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center Rabbi Abraham Cooper told the Journal that Bush’s remarks as well as Tlaib’s “behind the curtain” comments on August 1 show that “the talking points are clear: they use the nonexistent points of intersectionality to create nonexistent connections between different events. The goal is to demonize Israel, is to demonize any politician or public figure who’s ever been to Israel, it’s to imply that ‘Jewish money’ is in control and look who made all the big bucks off the coronavirus while you lost your job, etc. This is quintessentially the 21st century update of Scapegoating the Jews 101, and we know what that scapegoating led to in the 20thcentury.”
He added that Tlaib and Bush “have no business being on committees. They should be called out for the hatred that they have for their pernicious bias against our communities and against Israel, the ally of the United States. They need to be called out from the top of the Democratic Party.”
In May, when Israel was defending itself against Hamas, the congresswoman also gained attention for her office refusing to grant an interview with St. Louis Jewish Light. An editorial from St. Louis Post-Dispatch also declared "Cori Bush needs to explain her stand on the anti-Israel boycott movement."
