Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) slammed the “dozens of members” of his party who have engaged in antisemitism and said Democrats “don’t get a pass” when it comes to bigotry against Jews.
“I’ve been angry, and I think the Jewish community should be angry,” the Florida rep said in a forceful speech while accepting the “Ray of Light in Darkness” award from the Israel advocacy org EMET at DC’s Grand Hyatt Hotel on Tuesday evening.
Moskowitz has personally dealt with antisemitism. Earlier this month, he revealed that an armed maniac with a manifesto containing “antisemitic rhetoric” and the 43-year-old’s name on a “target list” was arrested near his home.
Moreover, his grandmother is a Holocaust survivor whose parents were killed in Auschwitz.
“She’s one of those children you read about. She told me about things that seemed unbelievable … never did I think that we would see some of those same currents and themes,” Moskowitz lamented during his speech.
Since Hamas’ barbaric Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that saw 1,200 people murdered, 254 taken captive and thousands injured, the US has seen a surge in antisemitic hate crimes and Jewish students have been harassed and intimidated on college campuses by their anti-Israel classmates.
The Florida congressman bashed his left-wing colleagues for turning a blind eye to the plight of the Jewish community.
He ripped in particular his “progressive colleagues who’ve fought for every endangered species but when it came to Jews they were silent.”
Moskowitz urged Jews from across the ideological spectrum to unite in demanding that both Republicans and Democrats root out antisemitism within their own ranks.
“I want to see Republicans call out Tucker Carlson when he has a Holocaust denier on his program, and Democrats call out the dozens of people in our party, and the people in the streets and the people on Twitter treating us like second-class and third-class citizens,” Moskowitz stressed.
In September, “historian” Dale Cooper appeared on Carlson’s podcast and claimed Winston Churchill was the “chief villain” of World War II and that the Holocaust was an unintended consequence of poor German war planning.
Moskowitz has stood up to his own party in the past. In April, he blasted “Squad” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) after she accused Jewish college students of being either “pro-genocide or anti-genocide.”
“I got 10-year-old and 7-year-old Jewish children,” he said at the time. “I don’t know if they’re pro-genocide or anti-genocide. I guess I’ll talk to them about that.”
Omar’s history of antisemitic remarks, which include a 2012 tweet in which she accused Israel of having “hypnotized the world” and prayed for “Allah [to] awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel,” led to her being booted from the House Foreign Affairs Committee in April 2023.
Moskowitz told The Post that it is yet to be seen if the Democrats will need to take further steps to combat antisemitism from Omar or other progressive reps.
The Florida pol accused Democrats of having a double standard when it comes to discrimination against Jews as opposed to other minority groups.
“Students who are walking to class, nobody knows if they support the war or support Netanyahu, but they have a Jewish star around their neck and are assaulted. Does anyone actually believe if that wasn’t a Jewish student but it was a minority student that any of this stuff would have gone past lunch on the first day?” he asked.
“If that was a minority student or an LGBTQ student, my party would have led the effort — and we didn’t.”
Moskowitz went on to say that despite the antisemitism within his party, he would remain a Democrat, warning that American Jews would not benefit if antisemitism or Israel support became a “partisan issue.”
“We do not want people fighting antisemitism in my party to leave,” he added. “You don’t want that. Jews in this country need to come together. Because we’re the target.”
The Florida pol, who once worked as an aide to the late Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent, lamented that while Jews had fought for other persecuted minority groups, they had been “abandoned” in their hour of need.
“We’ve been at the forefront of every movement in this country when other minority groups needed help, we were the ones who stood up. And when we needed them, they abandoned us, period.”