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[Sun Gazette Newspapersprovides content to, but otherwise is unaffiliated with, InsideNoVa or Rappahannock Media LLC.]
Editor: Last month, a Fairfax County School Board member tweeted criticism of a foreign government’s policies, echoing language used by Human Rights Watch, two of the most prominent human rights organizations in the country. country and at least 10 former officials. of this foreign government.
Unfortunately, however, the school board member has since become the target of a series of baseless accusations and calls for her resignation or impeachment.
It’s hard to ignore the fact that there has been such a backlash for often expressed human rights-based comments, especially since the school board member involved, Abrar Omeish, is Arab American. and that the foreign entity in question is the Israeli government. .
Targeting Arab Americans with accusations of bigotry or anti-Semitism simply because of political criticism of the Israeli government is a form of Arab baiting – a decades-old tactic used to exclude Arab-American voices from civic spaces and to make silence advocacy for Palestinian human rights.
Much of the criticism of Ms Omeish’s comments focuses on words she chose such as colonization and apartheid to describe the treatment of Palestinians by Israeli governments. But both the first and second Bush administrations and the Reagan administration used the term occupation, which differs from colonization only in the duration of activity.
The word apartheid has been used for decades to describe Israeli politics by politicians from Desmond Tutu to Yitzhak Rabin, from Jimmy Carter to Ehud Olmert. (And note that Ms. Omeishs’ reviews most often use loaded buzzwords without actually addressing the accuracy of her statement.)
Indeed, the bad faith outrage towards Ms Omeish is not because what she said is factually incorrect, but because of who she is.
The day before Ms Omeish’s tweet, US Representative Gerry Connolly (D-11th) also rightly criticized Israeli policies, using the word occupation in a letter condemning the same illegal land grab at Sheikh Jarrah that Ms Omeish denounced. . Since then, the Fairfax GOP has tweeted about Omeish three dozen times. They haven’t mentioned Rep Connolly at all yet.
Perhaps the worst result of these attacks on Abrar Omeish is not his victimization, but what it represents and the distraction of the grueling reality of Palestinians, and Palestinian children in particular.
Since 2006, the Israeli government has displaced an average of 370 Palestinian children each year due to ongoing house demolitions. The Israeli military also detains between 500 and 700 Palestinian children each year.
As a Fairfax County parent, I applaud any school board member who joins the choir against such injustice wherever it is found. Palestinian children deserve a future as much as our children, and any policy based on justice must not ignore their plight.
Ryan suo
Suto is a political advisor for the Arab American Institute.
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