Rashida Tlaib, Maher Abdel-Qader, and Sub Rosa Postings on Facebook

Of course you are not surprised. Rashida Tlaib (D-Khan Yunis) turns out to belong to a little-known group — in fact, a group that has made great efforts to remain little-known — on Facebook. Its members are deep admirers of Hamas and all it has done to smite the Zionist enemy, and thereby give hope to the oppressed Palestinians. But they’d prefer that you not find out about their secret Facebook page. They know that not every one shares their view of Hamas. Some of us even think it’s a terrorist organization, guilty of the worst atrocities, beyond the pale. But not to Rashida Tlaib. More on Rashida Tlaib, and her good friend Maher Abdel-Qader, can be found here: “Rashida Tlaib member of secret Facebook group where Hamas terrorists glorified,” by Peter Hasson, Fox News, November 15, 2023:

Rashida Tlaib is part of a secret social media group in which its members have glamorized Hamas in its war battle with Israel after the terror group attacked and killed hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians last month, Fox News Digital has found.

The Michigan Democrat is a member of the Palestinian American Congress group on Facebook. The group is hidden from non-members and does not appear on the platform’s search engine, though Fox News Digital was able to gain access to it.

The group’s founder, Maher Abdel-Qader, who has extensive ties to Tlaib and has also been linked to other liberal [sic] politicians, has come under fire in the past for his antisemitic social media posts, including questioning if the Holocaust ever occurred.

The Palestinian American Congress group, of which Tlaib is a member, has featured pro-Hamas posts in the wake of the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

On Oct. 12, one group member posted: “We don’t want to throw you in the sea…we want you to ride it back from where you came.” The message was accompanied by a picture of an elderly Israeli woman and a Hamas fighter holding her captive.

On Oct. 19, another group member wrote about the “achievements” of the “resistance in Northern occupied Palestine,” including dozens of dead Israeli soldiers. The post included a picture of a Hamas fighter.

A pile of corpses, as long as they are dead Israelis, does a Palestinian heart good — if that heart belongs to Rashida Tlaib or to her friends and supporters, including the sinister Maher Abdel-Qader.

“Since yesterday I have been attached to the TV watching the news,” one group member posted on Oct. 10, addressing the “American Media” and saying, “You, and the people directing you, are the problem, you created it almost 100 years ago, made it official 75 years ago and you have been feeding its flam[sic] ever since.”

“You consider Hamas a terrorist organization and I am not going to argue with you at the same time you have been broadcasting that they have been killing women and children, guess that is what terrorists do at the same time no mention to [sic[the killing of Palestinian women, children and entire families killed on a daily basses (sic) by the [peace-loving] state of Israel using American gifts of weapons and jet fighters.”

Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization that deliberately targets Israeli civilians, including women and children. It also puts its own civilians in danger, by placing its weapons, its rocket launchers, its command-and-control centers, its combatants, in and around civilian structures. The IDF, by contrast, makes enormous efforts to avoid harming civilians; it is as eager to minimize harm to civilians as Hamas is to maximize the harm it causes to both Israeli and Palestinian civilians.

The IDF minimizes civilian casualties in three ways.

First, it has tried, with great success, to empty out northern Gaza of its civilian population, where most of the heavy fighting is taking place. It wants the people of northern Gaza to move to relative safety in the south; the IDF has secured, for their safety, two corridors running north-south: Salah al-Din Street runs right through the middle of Gaza, and Al-Rashid Street is a coastal road. In order to persuade Gazans to move to the south, the IDF dropped 1.5 million leaflets, warning them of the dangers of remaining in the north. More than 800,000 Gazans have now moved south, trusting the IDF’s advice, and ignoring Hamas, which has tried to keep them in the north, and has even killed some Gazans who were attempting to flee southward in order to discourage others from fleeing.

Second, whenever the IDF targets a building, such as a school, a hospital, a mosque, an apartment building, where civilians may be inside, it first warns the inhabitants of an impending strike, giving them precise instructions as to how long they have to leave, by messaging, telephoning, leafletting, and use of the “knock-on-the-roof” technique. Of course, in warning civilians, it also warns Hamas. operatives who may then escape. No other army in the world warns its enemies that an attack is imminent. This is why British Colonel Richard Kemp describes the IDF as “the most moral army in the world.”

Third, Israeli pilots will call off an airstrike, if they believe the potential harm to civilians, who may have been spotted at the last minute, is too great.

But let’s get back to the sub rosa postings on the Facebook page of the Palestinian American Congress:

Yesterday I didn’t see Hamas I saw the grand kids (sic) of the refugees that ethnically cleansed from their homeland attacking the grand kids (sic) of the colonists whom sent them to diaspora,” they later wrote.

Several members have also posted pro-Hamas messages and pictures this year before the attacks.

Tlaib became a member of the group six years ago and posted in it during her 2018 congressional campaign. The following year, she came under fire after a report in the Daily Caller News Foundation revealed her membership and the slew of antisemitic posts in the group.

Tlaib is the only Palestinian American in Congress and has faced scrutiny over her comments after Hamas’ bloody invasion and the ensuing war. In a largely symbolic gesture, the House of Representatives voted to censure her in a 234-188 vote last week as a formal public rebuke of her most recent anti-Israel comments made in the wake of the Jewish nation’s battle against the terror group. Her congressional office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Tlaib has a long history with Abdel-Qader, the founder of the Palestinian American Congress group, who has repeatedly promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories over the years. He previously shared a video that called Jews “satanic” and questioned whether 6 million of them had died in the Holocaust. He later walked back those comments.

If you repost a video that calls Jews “satanic,” you are endorsing such anitsemitism; if you question the existence, or the number of victims, of the Holocaust and then, when caught out, hem and haw and suggest that well, maybe there were some — but most assuredly not six million — victims of the Holocaust, but there is “still some disagreement” over its size, then you are a Holocaust denier. And if you befriend such a person, as Rashida Tlaib did with Maher Abdel-Qader, to whom she even gave an award — a “medal” — in recognition of his help in her campaign, then it is reasonable to assume that you, too, hold such views unless, of course, you make crystal clear that you do not share them. Tlaib has done no such thing; she has refused to denounce Hamas and continues to embrace Maher Abdel-Qader, her loyal supporter, who not only contributed to her campaign but raised other sums for her; she has given no hint that she disagrees either with his view of Jews as “satanic” or with his Holocaust denial.

Abdel-Qader has participated in several fundraising events with Tlaib over the years and has also appeared in several pictures with her posted to social media accounts.

The Palestinian activist has not only been a key fundraiser for Tlaib, including personally donating at least $6,500 to her campaign since 2018, but he was also the chairman of her finance committee during her 2018 congressional campaign….

For example, on Oct. 19, Abdel-Qader posted: “Israeli Nazis air strike (sic) on Ahli Arab Hospital killed more than 500 people stop the massacre now.”

In reality, a failed rocket launch from the Palestinian side was responsible for hitting the hospital. Despite this, Tlaib and others repeated the falsehood that Israelis struck it, even after reports had shown that was not the case.

Three corrections to the correction just above:

1. The “Palestinian side” responsible for launching the missile that misfired was Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
2. The missile that misfired did not hit the hospital, but the parking lot outside the hospital.
3. There were not “500 people” killed, but between “10 and 50.”

This is not Israel’s version of events. It has been confirmed, independently, by the American government.

Rashida Tlaib belongs to a group, the Palestinian American Congress, that maintains a secret Facebook account. One of her favorites at that Facebook page is Maher Abdel-Qader, the head of her fundraising campaign in 2018, her friend, adviser, and financial supporter. Her BFF has reposted a video in which Jews are described as “satanic” and the true extent of the Holocaust is denied. He admires, as does Rashida Tlaib, the terrorists of Hamas, not despite, but because of, their acts of “heroic resistance” on October 7. What more do you need to know about Rashida Tlaib in order to be convinced that she is the most sinister member of Congress since Senator Joseph McCarthy?

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