Speaker McCarthy has taken one of his colleagues to task over her attempt to commemorate the flight of the Arabs following the establishment of the state of Israel, instead opting to host a ceremony to honor the 75th anniversary of the Jewish state. 

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib — the first Palestinian-American member of Congress — was planning to host a “Nakba Day” remembrance next week before Mr. McCarthy stepped in. “It’s wrong for members of Congress to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes about Israel,” Mr. McCarthy said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon. “As long as I’m Speaker, we are going to support Israel’s right to self-determination and self-defense, unequivocally and in a bipartisan fashion.”

Ms. Tlaib’s event was billed as a remembrance for Palestinians who lost their lives, but Mr. McCarthy apparently feared that it would have likely devolved into a festival of hatred against Jews and Israel, at least if the list of attendees and co-sponsors was any indication. Ms. Tlaib was co-hosting the event alongside a number of groups that have defended terrorism in the past.

Jewish Voices for Peace is one of those groups, and has come under fire in the past after one of its leaders defended the First Intifada. Another is Emgage Action, which has accused Israel of being an apartheid state. Americans for Justice in Palestine Action — another co-host — has been labeled antisemitic for its claims that Jewish money controls American politics. 

The invitation to the event offered harsh rhetoric about the creation of the state of Israel, claiming, “seventy-five years ago, Zionist militias and the new Israeli military violently expelled approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland in what became the state of Israel.”

A number of Jewish groups thanked Mr. McCarthy for his swift action. The head of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, said on Twitter that “there is room to talk about the issues — but not at an event co-sponsored by people who traffic in anti-semitism and hate.”

Use of the word nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — in this context originated in 1948 with a Syrian academic, Konstantin Zoreik, after a future prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of the state of Israel and President Truman recognized it. Nakba Day is on May 15. 

In May 2022, Ms. Tlaib introduced a resolution in the House “Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian Refugees’ Rights,” which would officially commemorate the “catastrophe” and promote education about Palestine. It also decried the efforts of what it called “Nakba denialists” to “enlist the US government’s support for their deeply bigoted historical revisionism.”

That same year, Nakba Day remembrances across the country featured a host of what critics said were antisemitic statements and proclamations. In a letter sent to the speaker’s office by the ADL, Mr. Greenblatt described some of these events: 

“Just last year, in May 2022, speakers at Nakba Day events across the country variously referred to Israelis as the ‘stench of white European invaders,’ called for ‘death to Israel’ and stated that ‘everyone should fight within his means. They will fight with stones. Others will fight with guns. Others will fight with planes, drones. And others will fight with rockets.”

This year, she introduced a similar resolution, accusing Israel of committing “a pogrom” against Palestinians. “The United States is complicit in the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people by providing Israel with weapons and diplomatic support even as it advances plans to destroy more Palestinian homes,” the resolution asserts. 

Following Mr. McCarthy’s recent trip to the Jewish state to mark its 75th anniversary, Ms. Tlaib took to Twitter to lambast not only the speaker, but Israel itself. “Speaker McCarthy wants to rewrite history but the apartheid state of Israel was born out of violence and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” she wrote. “75 years later, the Nakba continues to this day.”