This week, President-elect Joe Biden named Reema Dodin as a deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs. Dodin, who currently serves as the deputy chief of staff and floor director for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) will be the first ever Palestinian-American senior White House staffer.
Right-wing attacks against Dodin began as soon as the pick was announced, with specific focus on her past pro-Palestine activism. Fox News dredged up a speech from 2002 where she declared that Palestinian suicide bombers “were the last resort of a desperate people.” Fox also linked Dodin to pro-Palestine protests, “including the occupation of a university building to demand the University of California divest from Israel in 2000.”
The infamous anti-Muslim activist Pam Geller tweeted that Dodin represents “Jihad in the White House.”
“Smearing Reema Dodin is part of greater effort to silence and delegitimize anyone who at some point in their life voiced strong criticism of Israel or engaged in activism in support of Palestinian human right,” tweeted the ACLU’s Jamil Dakwar. “It is particularly troubling when such smears target women of color.”
“Reema is the first to tell you she has grown from her youth in her approach to pushing for change, but her core values of fighting to expand opportunity to building a stronger middle class remain her driving force,” a Biden official told Fox News. “She harnessed her activism into action, becoming a well-respected and trusted leader in the U.S. Senate.”
The attacks on Dodin came shortly after Rep. Rashida Tlaib was criticized for bringing up BDS in the wake of Biden’s selection of Tony Blinken as Secretary of State. “So long as he doesn’t suppress my First Amendment right to speak out against Netanyahu’s racist and inhumane policies,” tweeted Tlaib, “The Palestinian people deserve equality and justice.”
Last week, Mike Pompeo became the first Secretary of State to visit an illegal settlement. At the event, he condemned the BDS movement and declared that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
“These bigots attacking Rashida Tlaib, Reema Dodin, and others, might as well just come out & say it: they don’t believe that Palestinians have the right to speak, to act, or really to exist in American public life, at all, as Palestinians,” tweeted Director of B’Tselem USA Simone Zimmerman. “We should not normalize this in any way.”
Further confirmation that Zionists are deathly afraid of a well informed, educated, accomplished and eloquent Palestinian gaining access to America’s corridors of power. Mabruk Rema Dodin!! You represent the future!!
Also, guaranteed to further enrage Zionists, this just released video:
Nov. 23/20
Dr. Rashid Khalidi, “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” – YouTube
“Dr. Rashid Khalidi, ‘The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine'”
“In this video, Peter Larson, Chair of the Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine interviews Dr. Rashid Khalidi about his most recent book ‘The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine’. Dr. Khalidi is the Edward Said Chair of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University in New York. He was born in New York in 1948 just after his father was forced out of Palestine. He has a D. Phil from Oxford University and is the co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies.”
Small as it is, this is still a victory for us. There was a time, not long ago, when heavy attacks by Zionists on someone like Reema would have led to her immediate dismissal. The fact that the Biden team came to her defense offers some promise of advocates for Palestinian justice having a voice in the Biden administration.
“Reema is the first to tell you she has grown from her youth in her approach to pushing for change, but her core values of fighting to expand opportunity to building a stronger middle class remain her driving force,” a Biden official told Fox News. “She harnessed her activism into action, becoming a well-respected and trusted leader in the U.S. Senate.”
This seems less than a ringing endorsement. As I read it, the Bidenites are saying that Reema’s grown up and cast off her childish commitment to human rights for Palestinians and has now been absorbed into the feckless 2SS consensus, the one that’s delivered Palestine to Israel almost in toto, while tools like Biden utter the semiannual tsk-tsk about those pesky settlements and continue to sign the checks while offering folks like Reema as window dressing for progressives, whose interests he will ignore.
Am I wrong to insist that, once someone rises to the inner circle of the leadership of either political party, they have necessarily shed any scrap of healthy progressivism on this issue?
Sure, the Dems haven’t clutched their pearls and fired her b/c some Zionist creep accused her of antisemitism, but how long do we congratulate ourselves over scraps like this?
By the time you get to the upper ranks of, say, the NYT, you’ve been stripped of any strong, non-consensus voice you may once have had. Similarly for the US gov’t or any elite locus of power. Sites like this one will be the agents of change, never the NYT. And no presidential aide will ever effect a significant change in the dominant discourse re Palestine/Israel, even if she herself is Palestinian.
Speaking of, don’t get me started on the rise of identity politics on the Left…
Americans should realize by now that ONLY those who show unwavering support for Israel will be accepted, and given jobs in all levels of our government. Anyone having an opposing view, or contradicting zionists talking points, will automatically be viewed as hostile, and will be attacked in the most vicious ways zionist sympathizers are well known for.
Must watch!!
From Britain.
Meet The Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn’t Want You To Know Exists | Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi – YouTube
Video, filmed on November 25/20:
“Meet The Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn’t Want You To Know Exists” – Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi