Representative Cori Bush spread the lie that police brutality in the U.S. is connected to Israel, a myth deemed a “blood libel” by those who have debunked the claim.
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel
On Friday, radical Democratic congresswoman Cori Bush from Missouri tried to connect the death of a Palestinian-American in her district, who died from a heart attack, to “militarized police occupation” that she said was exported from Israel.
Bush’s speech represents a disgusting rhetorical sleight of hand in light of the fact that the Hamas terror group is currently firing rockets at Israeli towns and cities, killing innocent civilians, including a five-year-old boy.
Amid Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s continued onslaught, Bush told Congress she stood in “solidarity with the Palestinian people” beside a picture supposedly of a member of her district, Bassem Masri, who apparently had a heart attack and died three years ago while taking the bus in St. Louis.
Bush said that Masri, whose family name literally means “Egyptian” in Arabic, “was with us on the front lines of our uprising for justice” in Ferguson, Missouri after the 2014 police killing of a black man there.
She said that “Bassem was one of us” in St. Louis, “ready to resist, to rebel, to rise up with us,” demanding an “end to the militarized police occupation of our communities.”
That’s right, St. Louis is now “occupied territory,” according to Bush.
“I remember learning that the same equipment that they use to brutalize us is the same equipment they send to the Israelis to brutalize the Palestinians,” Bush said, not mentioning the Hamas rockets that had been raining down on Israel all week.
“That harassment, that extortion, that brutalization by heavily armed militarized presence in our community, that’s what we fund when our government sends our tax dollars to the Israeli military,” Bush claimed.
Bush’s message feeds off of other anti-Israel propaganda connected to the Black Lives Matter movement (BLM), which accuses Israel of “apartheid” and “claims that the joint work between the [U.S. and Israeli] police forces negatively affects the African-American community,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
The New York Post reported on Bush’s Friday speech to Congress, noting that Masri had posted death wishes for police on social media.
“I’m praying for your death and your death and your death and your death,” Masri reportedly said in one viral clip, and tweeted “Pigs in a blanket, fry ’em like bacon.”
Furthermore, Bush’s claim that U.S. police brutality is somehow connected to Israel has been thoroughly debunked, and echoes BLM’s “claims that American police officers are learning from the Israelis how to kill black Americans,” which the Jerusalem Post reported on in 2016.
“Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN political commentator, has compared the US police policies with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. BLM demanded that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed terminate the city’s relationship with Israel Police,” added the Post report.
“According to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), whose ‘House of Lies—the Baseless Campaign to Smear Israeli Police Exchanges’ went live this week, groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace,” which supports BLM, “have spent years trying to end programs that take American police leaders to Israel to interact with counterparts there, claiming that these exchanges lead to the deaths of blacks in America,” Israel Hayom reported in October 2020.
The Israel Hayom report continued, “The IPT interviewed four American police chiefs—two active and two retired—who participated in exchanges with Israel and said that their experiences were the exact opposite of the narrative that the exchanges fostered police violence.”
The report concluded, “The chiefs say the exchanges included no tactical training, and emphasized the value of community policing and building relationships among diverse constituencies. They also learned how to best minimize terrorist threats and investigate in the aftermath of an attack.”
Robert Friedmann, director of the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange and Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice at Georgia State University, has promoted police exchange programs and deemed criticism of them a “modern day blood libel”
“In my mind, there’s no difference between claiming this and that Jews used the blood of Christian children to bake matza on Passover,” Friedmann told the Jerusalem Post.
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