For all of the partisan battles going on in Congress, support for Israel is one of the bipartisan issues that we can still find. Not all members are willing to work with the opposite party on the matter. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has been trending throughout this week, mostly to do with his attacks against House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as she's looking to protect Jewish students from antisemitism -- especially as it occurs on college campuses. There's been a rise of antisemitism following October 7 Hamas attack perpetrated against Israel when the terrorists savagely killed 1,200 Israelis, Americans and others, as well as engaged in rape, kidnapping, and torture.
Last Tuesday, Harvard President Claudine Gay, then University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill, and MIT President Sally Kornbluth appeared before the House Committee on Education & the Workforce. They proceeded to give particularly lacking responses to Stefanik's questions asking if calls for genocide against Jews constitutes bullying and harassment. Magill resigned later that week.
It wasn't merely Stefanik and her fellow Republicans who expressed outrage about such abysmal responses. Last Friday, Stefanik was joined by Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and 72 other House members from both parties who wrote a letter calling for the removal of Magill, Gay, and Kornbluth.
Raskin wasn't among them. On Sunday, Raskin spoke to MSNBC's Ali Velshi to bash Stefanik, wondering where she "gets off" on trying to fight antisemitism since she supports former and potentially future President Donald Trump.
"Where does Elise Stefanik get off of lecturing anybody about anti-Semitism when she’s the hugest supporter of Donald Trump who traffics in anti-Semitism all the time? She didn’t utter a peep of protest when he had Kanye West and Nick Fuentes over for dinner. Nick Fuentes, who doubts whether October 7th even took place because he thinks it was some kind of suspicious propaganda move by the Israelis," Raskin said. "And the Republican Party is filled with people who are entangled with antisemitism like that. And yet somehow she gets on her high horse and lectures a Jewish college president from MIT," he went on to claim.
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As Mediaite highlighted about the exchange, "Raskin did not criticize the university presidents." He did speak to his role as a parent, pointing out that "well, I’m thinking about is a father, as a parent. I mean, my kids have been sent to college at great expense, like, you know, millions of people across the country. I want to know that if somebody is actually calling for the genocide of the Jews or anybody else on campus, that we’ve got a college president who will say, quickly get campus police over there, that person could be a danger to other people around them." He then went to bring up complaints about "lax Republican gun laws."
Further, Velshi has featured guests who spew pro-Hamas propagdana. "Velshi was also joined by a former Palestinian Authority spokesperson over the weekend who said that the United States has “aided and abetted genocide” by supporting Israel’s actions in response to the horrific October 7 terror attack, but who did not condemn or even mention that attack during the interview," the Mediaite report mentioned, referring to Former Palestinian Authority spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi.
Raskin took to his own official X account later in the week to rant further about Stefanik.
This included sharing a column of his that CNN published on Wednesday, "Five questions Elise Stefanik should answer," which was actually "adapted from Raskin’s posts on the social media site X," according to an editor's note before the column.
Dear @RepStefanik:
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) December 11, 2023
Last week you challenged Ivy League presidents to denounce antisemitism with “moral clarity” by answering yes/no questions. Dissatisfied by their answers, you agitated for their removal. What about tolerance for antisemitism among presidential candidates?
Rather than directly answering 5 simple questions about vicious antisemitism in America—the kind of yes/no questions you insist upon!—this impostor has changed the subject and dodged all 5 questions in just the way you warned the college presidents never to do!
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) December 12, 2023
Still waiting for a serious response from Rep. Stefanik. Will she denounce virulent antisemitism in the GOP, including calls for Jewish genocide from Trump’s dinner guest at Mar-a-Lago Nick Fuentes, leader of the America First Political Action Conference?https://t.co/KOf58lcheq
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) December 13, 2023
Most of those questions focused on her support for her Trump--which included misrepresenting his comments about "very fine people on both sides" at Charlottesville--as well as the great replacement theory.
Another social media post from Raskin was over how the House went with Stefanik's resolution over Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), which Stefanik herself has also addressed over her official X account.
Kathy—Thank you for your excellent letter and for calling out the shocking intellectual dishonesty and narcissistic preening of Elise Stefanik. She knows a lot more about plagiarism than she knows about antisemitism. https://t.co/0mMyFMtTko
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) December 13, 2023
🚨🚨🚨Desperate and deranged Democrats are now attacking us for uniting the country around calls for these university presidents to be fired.
— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) December 11, 2023
Here are the facts: Congresswoman Kathy Manning approached me on the House Floor with a rough draft for a joint letter to the boards of…
Stefanik's resolution was a bipartisan that she introduced along with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), as well as Moskowitz and Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ). It passed 303-126, with 3 Democrats voting "Present." Raskin joined with 124 other Democrats and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in voting against the resolution, though Manning voted for it. Multiple posts from Stefanik's X account have promised that the resolution is "just the first step."
The passage of my resolution marks a historic bipartisan effort to stand for moral truth. The world is watching as Members from both sides of the aisle stand resolutely with the Jewish people to condemn antisemitism on university campuses and the morally bankrupt testimony of the…
— Rep. Elise Stefanik (@RepStefanik) December 13, 2023
By making the issue more so about Stefanik rather than antisemitism on college campuses, Raskin joins the likes not just of "Saturday Night Live" and their unfunny "Cold Open" from last week's episode, but also the Harvard Board which insists on keeping Gay and was reportedly afraid to let Stefanik "force" an ouster. Harvard announced earlier this week that Gay would stay on.
This is only one example, though, of Raskin looking to fire back at Republicans in light of the rise of antisemitism following the October 7 terrorist attack.
Last week, the House voted on a resolution "[s]trongly condemning and denouncing the drastic rise of antisemitism in the United States and around the world" that was brought by Republican Reps. David Kustoff of Tennessee and Max Miller of Ohio. Raskin, along with Fellow Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler and Dan Goldman, both from New York, urged their colleagues to instead vote "present." In total, 105 Democrats refused to support it, with 92 voting "present" and 13 voting against it.
It's not just resolutions, though, either. Raskin led debate in defending Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) last month from the House floor as she faced censure for spreading anti-Israel narratives as well as defending the genocidal phrase of "from the river to the sea." The resolution from Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) was ultimately successful, with even Democrats joining in to censure their colleague.
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