ADL Head Hits Gretchen Whitmer For Dodging On Rep. Tlaib’s Comments About MI AG: ‘Speak Out Unequivocally’
AP Photo/Carlos Osorio
Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt called on Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to stand against anti-Semitism on Sunday after she declined to address comments Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib made about her state’s attorney general.
Tlaib, who is Palestinian, implied Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel had intentionally targeted pro-Palestinian activists who were disruptive during recent campus protests. Tlaib said Friday of Nessel, who is Jewish:
We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest. We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.
On Sunday’s State of the Union on CNN, host Jake Tapper confronted Whitmer about Tlaib’s comments but the governor dodged his questions.
Tapper asked Whitmer: “Do you think that Tlaib’s suggestion that Nessel’s office is biased was anti-Semitic?”
Whitmer offered a meandering response in which she at one point stated, “All I can say is that I know that our Jewish community is in pain, as is our Palestinian and Muslim and Arab communities in Michigan.”
In a Sunday post on X (formerly Twitter), Greenblatt directed a call at Whitmer to stand up for Jews.
“@GovWhitmer, when your attorney general prosecutes people for violating the law, harassing Jews, and attacking police officers, it’s in the interest of public safety. When a congresswoman accuses the attorney general of prosecuting protestors simply because she’s Jewish, it’s bias,” he wrote.
Greenblatt concluded, “Saying you want to “make sure that students are safe on our campuses” is just words if you are not willing to use your bully pulpit to speak out unequivocally on antisemitism and support holding people accountable for violating the law when it affects Jews.”
