Keith Ellison: The Democrats Just Don't Get It
You might think that, having just suffered a shellacking for the ages, the DNC would moderate its stance, sense the pulse of the American electorate, and move to the center. No, no – not this hardy group of "progressive" ideologues. With their ship floundering to the port side, they double down and shift more weight to their party's left.
Welcome to Keith Ellison, considered to be the next chairman of the DNC and a man who epitomizes the slanders the far left falsely attribute to Steve Bannon and others in the Trump cabinet.
Since 2007, Ellison has been the U.S. representative from Minnesota's 5th Congressional District. Having taken his oath of office with one hand on the Koran, Ellison is the first Muslim to be elected to the U.S. Congress. A feel-good story so far, but it doesn't end here. By word and deed, Ellison is a virulent anti-Semite.
Deep into his 30s, this man, poised to head the Democratic Party, was a spokesman for the Nation of Islam. He publicly spewed anti-Semitism and later in life, as a congressional candidate, knowingly accepted $50,000 in campaign contributions given and raised by Islamic radicals who openly supported Islamic terrorism and were leaders of front groups for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. His controversial statements and actions date back to the '90s, when he served as a local spokesman for Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam movement and raised eyebrows when he publicly claimed in 1995 that Farrakhan "is not an anti-Semite."
In 1997, Joanne Jackson, executive director of the Minneapolis Initiative Against Racism (MIAR) – the acronym alone is a hint as to where his is going – said: "Jews are among the most racist white people." Ellison, at the time using his religious name, Mohammad, read a statement unequivocally supporting her on behalf of the The Minneapolis-St. Paul Study Group of the Nations of Islam: "We stand by Ms. Jackson."
As a congressman in 2012, Ellison voted against Israel on every proposition, resolution, and bill. Shy 11 other congressmen, no one has voted against Israel more than Ellison – five separate votes.
Despite this, Chuck Schumer, the new Senate minority leader and darling of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is an ardent supporter of Ellison for the DNC chair. Why would a supposed moderate's moderate like Schumer support Ellison? In an eye-opening interview this month, he said he's backing the Minnesota congressman to lead the Democratic National Committee for a simple reason: Bernie Sanders likes him. Sanders, ex-presidential candidate and a key liberal voice in the Senate, also earned a spot this past week on Schumer's new 10-senator leadership team.
In the immortal words of former New York Knicks star Michael J. Richardson, for the Democrats, "the ship be sinking."
In other words, Schumer, the supposed unflinching supporter of Israel, is corroborative with an unrepentant anti-Semite due to the approval of another who never misses an opportunity to disparage the Jewish State. You might wonder whom this speaks most to: Ellison, Schumer, or Sanders? But it gets better.
With a propensity of finding commonality with their enemies and not their friends, far too common among liberal Jews, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)'s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, characterized Ellison as an "important ally in the fight against Anti-semitism" and "on record in support of Israel." I only hope marijuana is legal wherever Mr. Greenblatt lives.
This past summer, Ellison (aka Keith X. Ellison, aka Keith Hakim, aka Keith Ellison Muhammed) worked to insert anti-Israel positions and language into the 2016 Democratic national platform and to keep pro-Israel planks out. He complained in a DemocracyNow! interview that the Israeli "occupation" was to blame for a "humanitarian crisis" and lack of sewage processing in Gaza. This past June, following a trip to Hebron, he tweeted the following sign and stated:
I saw this as I walked down a street in Hebron. While window opens to street, no Palestinian can walk/drive on it
Unfortunately, this purportedly "important ally in the fight against Anti-semitism" fails to mention that if it were not for homicide bombers, blown up buses and restaurants and weddings, stabbings, and all other mayhem the Palestinians can think of, walls and fences wouldn't be needed, and they could walk in peace down every street in Israel.
During the 2014 war with Hamas, Ellison was among eight representatives who voted against funding the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system, which Israel desperately needed due to incessant and indiscriminate incoming rockets from Gaza.
Likewise, in 2015, Ellison co-authored and spearheaded a letter (and obtained signatures on the letter of 23 Democrat members of Congress) demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress about the Iran deal be delayed until after the sanctions deadline, when the visit would have been useless.
This past month, the House of Representatives' Ethics Committee opened an investigation into the soon to be chairman of the DNC after Ellison failed to disclose that the Muslim American Society – a group that Muslim Brotherhood members founded to be the "overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S." – paid $13,350 for Ellison to visit Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 2008.
We could go on and on and on with this, but the wrap remains. To even consider Keith Ellison to head the party of Truman, Stevenson, and Kennedy is an affront to those great men. The once great Democratic Party that many of us grew up with in the '50s and '60s is long dead. The highly patriotic party that truly represented the hardworking class of the United States has now morphed into a far-left consortium of perverted liberalism that denounces this country at every twist and turn but is happy to take advantage of its largess.
Keith Ellison, head of the DNC. What will they think of next?