Follow Margaret Hoover and Meghan McCain: Start asking real questions about Women’s March anti-Semitism – Washington Examiner

Margaret Hoover asked members of the Women’s March leadership the question that no journalist dared ask them for more than two years now: Does Israel have a right to exist?

Women’s March co-president Tamika Mallory, fresh off an appearance on “The View” in which she refused to condemn blatant anti-Semitism spewed by Louis Farrakhan, joined the “Firing Line” host on Thursday night. Naturally, the conversation turned to the scandal that has engulfed the Women’s March in recent weeks.

Hoover asked Mallory if Jews, who have had a presence in Israel for the past 3,000 years, are native to the region.

“I understand the history that there are people who have a number of sort of ideologies around why the Jewish people feel this should be their land,” Mallory said. “I’m not Jewish. So, for me to speak to that is not fair.”

The rest of the exchange is worth reading in full.

Every single reporter in the county ought to study this exchange and take note. This is journalistic bravery — running into a burning building to salvage the truth and bring it to light, so to speak. Just as reporters have nailed Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, with specific questions to prove his belief in white supremacy, journalists must use their power to expose anti-Semitism veiled under intersectionality. And that starts with the question of Israel’s existence.

To be clear, criticizing the policies, actions, or methods of the Israeli government is not racist or anti-Semitic. Supporting a two-state solution is not racist. Advocating for the humanity of Palestinians is not racist.

But the logical conclusion of a call for the eradication of Israel, the sole and historic state of nearly half of the world’s Jewish people, necessarily implies the genocide or ethnic cleansing of millions of Jews. Especially as Jews have been forced to flee the increasingly anti-Semitic Western world for their ancestral homeland, calls to eradicate Israel are a call to arms against its people.

Mallory’s devotions of Farrakhan and Jew-killing terrorist Rasmea Odeh were red flags enough, just as King’s continued dog-whistling toward neo-Confederates and white nationalists should have led to more conservative concern over the obvious. But with Hoover’s line of questioning, Mallory just lost whatever scraps of plausible deniability that remained.

Consider this: A sitting member of Congress, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is now openly embracing the eradication of Israel, while progressives tout her as the next best thing since Beto O’Rourke. In this context, it is incumbent upon journalists to ask an increasingly anti-Semitic faction of the progressive Left these sorts of questions.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., took to USA Today to excoriate the Women’s March, emphatically denouncing its leadership as “peddlers of hate.” It was the bold sort of declaration that should have accompanied the Democratic National Committee’s decision to withdraw from the March, and one that all Democrats who still claim to be liberal and stand up for Jews must emulate.

When Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., claimed total ignorance this week as to why Jewish-Americans would be offended by her classic anti-Semitic tropes, she faced zero pushback from reporters Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto. They should have followed Hoover’s lead to get the real story.

Furthermore, it’s telling that outside of a handful of reporters such as CNN’s Jake Tapper who have asked Women’s March leaders about their unsavory associations, the figures driving the push against this racism masked as progressivism haven’t been reporters at all. Why is Meghan McCain among the first to hold these haters accountable, when the reporters covering them have ample opportunity to ask questions?

For all that President Trump enjoys dunking on media coverage that he doesn’t like as “fake news,” the Fourth Estate is a vital organ in the body of democracy. The refusal to ask tough questions and bring bigotry into the national spotlight is an abdication of that responsibility, and one that should be condemned.