In the wake of a renewed crisis between Israel and Palestinians in occupied Gaza, where more than 248 people—mostly Palestinian—were killed during 11 days of fighting, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is using the opportunity to target Palestinians and the Democrats who support them.
Greene, a controversial far-right congresswoman and peddler of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories who represents Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, took to social media to show her support for Israel following a fragile ceasefire between the Jewish state and Hamas, the militant group that is the de facto authority in the Gaza Strip. The congresswoman also appeared to refer to Palestinians as terrorists in the same post.
“The #JihadSquad stand with the Hamas-supporting terrorists. I stand with our friends in Israel,” Greene wrote on Telegram Sunday.
The latest Israel-Palestine crisis began on May 6, 2021, when Palestinians in East Jerusalem protested the planned eviction of six Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrah, a prominent Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. As tensions continued to rise, Israeli forces stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque compound—a holy site—on May 7 and violently attacked protestors with tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades. Approximately 300 people were injured, mostly Palestinians, while at least 72,000 others were displaced.
In response to Israel’s aggression, Hamas began firing rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel on May 10, which caused Israel to retaliate with a campaign of airstrikes against Gaza, destroying 18 buildings, 40 schools, and four hospitals. The offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera were also destroyed on May 15. In total, Israel demolished 94 buildings in Gaza, according to the United Nations. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect on May 21, ending 11 days of fighting.
Several Republican lawmakers, including Greene and Sen. Ted Cruz, have used the latest Israel-Palestine crisis to target Democrats, whom they accused of supporting “radical Islamic terrorism.” Cruz even claimed that the “far-left” traffic in “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric.”
Earlier this past week, Greene took aim at fellow congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom she accused of anti-Semitism (despite Ocasio-Cortez publicly condemning anti-Semitic attacks in the U.S.), before suggesting that the Democratic lawmaker was herself a “terrorist.”
“You’re responsible for attacks on Jewish people [because] of your hate-Israel stance against Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorists Hamas, calling Israel an apartheid state, & supporting terrorist groups,” Greene said in a typo-filled tweet Saturday in response to Ocasio-Cortez’s calls to condemn Israel’s violent actions in the Gaza Strip. “Aligning yourself with terrorists means you’re a terrorist.”
It is worth noting that Greene’s accusations of anti-Semitism and newfound support for Israel stand in stark contrast to her own anti-Semitic belief that the 2018 California wildfires were caused by Jewish space lasers operated by the Rothschild family. She also claimed that “Zionist supremacists” were secretly masterminding Muslim immigration to Europe as part of a longstanding plan to outbreed Caucasians.
Greene has also previously shown support for the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement, which thrives off anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and is, at its root, a modern version of blood libel. She has called Jewish progressive philanthropist George Soros, whose family escaped the Nazis during World War II, a “Nazi.” Many QAnon conspiracy followers see Soros, a favorite boogeyman of the right, as a member of the evil cabal controlling the world.
During a recent interview on Real America's Voice television show "The Water Cooler," Greene compared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s mask mandate within Congress to Nazi control of the Jewish population during the Holocaust.
"We can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany," Greene said. "And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about."
Greene’s comments have since been denounced by her fellow Republicans, including Rep. Peter Meijer, who called her comments “beyond reprehensible,” and Rep. Liz Cheney, who called it “evil lunacy.”
