Leading Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler (N.Y.) publicly called out Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) this week, accusing the leading Republican of abject failures to meaningfully confront alleged anti-Semitism among conservatives.
“Today, @SpeakerJohnson will visit @Columbia University under the guise of combatting antisemitism,” Nadler, who’s Jewish, wrote on X. “But just last week, he met with John Hagee, who has claimed that Iran’s attack on Israel was the prophetic start of the “Gog and Magog” war that he believes will end with Jewish people in Israel being killed or converted to Christianity. […] If the Speaker wants to actually combat antisemitism and not just score cheap political points, he must stop ignoring the antisemitism in his own party.”
That Iranian attack on Israel was relatively recent, and most of the larger country’s barrage against the Middle Eastern ally to the U.S. evidently was taken out before it did much damage. But the confrontation came amid an ongoing war being waged by Israel in the Gaza strip against Hamas, a terror organization that spurred the current conflict with a wave of violence against Israelis last October.
Just recently, after months of languishing, the House finally approved foreign aid that includes assistance for Israel amid that conflict, but before that point, Johnson himself accused Democrats of harboring anti-Israel sentiments, or at least a stance too neutral on Israel. He was complaining about Democratic rejections of House GOP pushes for aid for Israel, glossing over that Dems and some Republicans came up with their own agenda setting up Israel aid that didn’t also leave behind Ukraine. Notably, even new assistance for Ukraine — despite loud opposition from MAGA Republicans — passed the House, and with the House having been the main hurdle, it all quickly moved to a presidential signature from President Joe Biden.
