The Moral Inversion of Rashida Tlaib—and the Smearing of Dana Nessel

It wasn’t that long ago that if a progressive lesbian claimed she heard a bigoted dog whistle, most Democrats would take her seriously. But such deference to “lived experience” does not extend to Jews, if the unfolding skirmish between Michigan elected officials is any indication.

The trouble began for Attorney General Dana Nessel (she’s the progressive lesbian) when she had the gall to do her job: namely, to prosecute criminals. The criminals in question were mainly anti-Israel protesters at the University of Michigan who resisted arrest and refused to leave an encampment on the Ann Arbor campus.

Unlike so many other state attorneys general, who have lacked the political will to indict politically inconvenient criminals, Nessel did. Two of the protesters were prosecuted for trespassing, another seven were charged with trespassing and resisting arrest, and two more pro-Israel demonstrators were prosecuted for separate incidents involving a counterprotest at last spring’s encampment.

“A campus should not be lawless,” Nessel said in a statement announcing the indictments. “What is a crime anywhere else in the city remains a crime on university property. Our laws everywhere are designed to make safe communities and encourage respectful coexistence, no matter our personal disagreements or conflicting beliefs.”

That is not how Michigan Democratic congresswoman Rashida Tlaib saw it. A day after Nessel announced the indictments, she gave an interview to the Detroit Metro Times in which she said, “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.” 

So let’s get this straight. Nessel prosecutes 11 people according to the letter of the law, and she is guilty of differential treatment and bias? What, we wonder, would be the reason for that bias?

We heard the dog whistle loud and clear. So did Nessel.

“I don’t think you have to be Angela Lansbury to figure this out. Clearly, she’s referencing my religion,” Nessel told Jake Tapper of CNN earlier this week. “She also mischaracterized the charges and I think quite intentionally. She talked about these being peaceful protesters. No peaceful protesters were charged.”

The attorney general added: “In 2022 when my opponent accused me of being a groomer and a pedophile everyone understood that those were homophobic remarks because I happen to be gay. I didn’t have to explain it to people.”

In normal times the outrage would have been directed in one direction: at Tlaib. The congresswoman would have issued a statement apologizing for her remarks and everyone would have moved on. But we no longer live in normal times. We live in a post–October 7 America where antisemitism is kosher when it comes from progressives pontificating on Palestine. 

Indeed, when CNN anchor Tapper asked Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer for a comment on the incident, Whitmer demurred and said, “I’m not going to get in the middle of this argument that they’re having.” The next day, Whitmer offered mild criticism of the remarks without mentioning Tlaib by name. The governor, who is often held up as the great hope of moderate Democrats, appears frightened of offending the wing of her party that protests in solidarity with terrorists. 

Check out any of your favorite progressive publications—The Intercept, The New Republic, Zeteo—and the story is the inverse of reality. They argue that Nessel is the bigot for smearing Tlaib with the stain of antisemitism. It becomes Nessel who has defamed Tlaib—and who must be held to account. This is extraordinary considering that Nessel appointed the first Arab American state solicitor general in American history, Fadwa Hammoud. 

This fake umbrage is best captured in a post, retweeted by Tlaib, from Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders. He complains that Tapper, Anti-Defamation League Director Jonathan Greenblatt, and others “can engage in a multi-day defamation campaign against @RashidaTlaib by blatantly misquoting her and face zero repercussions for it is a great example of the institutional anti-Palestinian bias she called out in the first place.” 

This kind of gaslighting has become an unfortunate pattern for progressives since October 7. A couple of examples: After a horrific pogrom where Jewish Israeli parents were murdered in front of their children, it was Israel that was the aggressor. Israel’s defensive war, according to this warped logic, is a genocide. Meanwhile Hamas, the perpetrators of the genocidal act, are the noble resistance. 

We see it as well when it comes to this alleged right of dissent that Tlaib spoke to the Detroit Metro News about. When asked about her visit to the University of Michigan encampment that displayed banners praising the “intifada,” Tlaib was starstruck. “It was very inclusive. It was diverse, very loving,” she said. She then said she wished the university’s president “could see his students as people that just want to save lives, no matter their faith or ethnicity.”

In other words, Tlaib is claiming a movement that makes Jewish students feel the need to hide their stars of David on campus is actually a human rights organization. 

To call this gaslighting is too charitable. It is a moral inversion. 

There is a single scandal out of Michigan this week and it is simple: The congresswoman implied that the attorney general could not do her job because of her Judaism.

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