Congresswoman De La Cruz's District Office Vandalized by Antisemites
Antisemitic phrases were splattered in red paint on Congresswoman de la Cruz's district office building, multiple times in the same week
Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz announced Nov 9, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, that her district office was vandalized by pro-Hamas sympathizers multiple times that week.
“This week, my office was targeted twice with vandalism by pro-Hamas activists,” De La Cruz wrote on her Facebook page.
“They're attacking me because even though South Texas has a small but vibrant Jewish community, I have been a vocal ally of our Jewish brothers and sisters in light of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
“Let me be crystal clear: These acts of vandalism will never intimidate me, silence me, or stop me from opposing anti-semitism and supporting Israel's right to defend itself. My office is in contact with local authorities and I have personally contacted rabbis in our community to offer them my full support. Aquí todos somos familia.
“South Texans stand against hate and violence in all its forms and we remain committed to the safety and well-being of all our residents.”
These attacks come a short time after Food Not Bombs RGV, in coalition with a shady group that calls itself Red Star Tx, held pro-Hamas public demonstrations. They incited vandalism against Congresswoman De La Cruz, as well as Congressmen Vicente Gonzalez of district 34 and Henry Cuellar of district 28, at Archer Park Oct 29. They repeated their hateful invective against De La Cruz at a “vigil” held at Bill Schupp Park this past Sunday, Nov 5.
The messages left by the vandals are a blood libel against the Congresswoman and Jewish people. Blood libels, falsely blaming Jews of shedding blood to incite anti-Jewish sentiment, are old antisemitic devices, going back to the falsity claiming that the Jewish people killed the supposed Jesus of Nazareth, “Christ-killers”. Today, war crimes that should be blamed on Hamas are blamed on Jewish people, leading to the rising antisemitism that’s been skyrocketing since Oct 7.
The groups biked along Main St. Nov 5, from Archer to Bill Schupp, cutting through heavily Jewish neighborhoods and businesses, including the old location of our local synagogue. Many Jewish families live near and around Bill Schupp, where they held a “vigil” which did not include Israelis but did call for Israel’s destruction. I describe in more detail the antisemitism I witnessed and experienced in this article.
At both events, goons organized by the event hosts harassed and stalked me and a Jewish friend who joined me.
De La Cruz also voted to censure Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for her endorsement and use of the genocidal, antisemitic chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The congresswoman swiftly condemned the remarks.
Nationally and internationally as well, vandalism and violence by supposed “pro-Palestinian” thugs is running rampant across major cities on all corners of the globe. Also on Nov 5, an elderly Jewish man was killed by pro-Hamas thugs in Thousand Oaks, California. There is little doubt that the vandals who defiled Congresswoman De La Cruz’s district office are part of the Food Not Bombs RGV/Red Star Tx coalition. Such tactics are in line with the Maoist ideology unabashedly expressed by both groups and echoes public statements made by them.
On October 29, Jack Delaplane-Nieto (who represented himself as “co-director” of Red Star Tx on Nov 5 at Archer Park) said:
“There is no excuse for genocide! There is no excuse for Israel’s apartheid state! We are here to declare to our government, to our representatives and the world, that we as Americans stand with Palestine and stand against the oppression our government perpetuates and the weapons our government sends, our tax dollars! We are here to declare loudly, and clearly, that we are not okay with this!
“We are not okay with genocide! We are not okay with even one more child in Gaza being a victim of a bomb! We are here to stand against the United States’ censorship of our efforts to resist in solidarity with Palestine! From New York, where police brutally attacked protestors, to Turkey, we stand with not just Palestine but Palestinians across the world and the diaspora facing oppression and violence!
“So, thank you for coming out today, to let our representatives know, to let Monica de la Cruz, to let Vicente Gonzalez, to let Joe Biden know that we will not stay silent as they perpetuate the genocide. We will not stay silent as he lies about the number of deaths coming out. I see the Palestinian Health Ministry numbers when it comes to the dead. Trust the Palestinian Health Ministry and the count of their loss!”
Mr. Nieto’s comments were echoed by Ms. El Haj of Food Not Bombs RGV, and were re-stated Nov 5 at Bill Schupp, where they continued focusing on pressuring De La Cruz to drop her support for Israel. Both groups actually organized a phone-campaign in recent days, urging supporters to call De La Cruz’s office in opposition to Israel.
This attack on De La Cruz also came on the anniversary of Kristallnacht — one of the Nazi regime’s first pogroms against Germany’s Jews in 1939.
A Stalinist brand of antisemitism survives today. Although Stalin supported the creation of Israel, alongside a contiguous Arab state, initially supporting the Jewish state during its first independence war in 1948, he switched sides during the Arab-Israeli war and initiated a thinly veiled antisemitic witch hunt in the Soviet Union sometimes referred to as “Stalin’s war against rootless cosmopolitanism.” Before his death in 1953, Soviet police had organized the arrests and hangings of Jewish doctors and other prominent Jews. Everything, including barracks were set, but then Stalin died, and it never happened.
Video shows woman on UTRGV-Edinburg’s Bronc Trail, holding placard of Palestinian flag.
But much harm was still done. Stalin revamped Goebbels’ canard of the “Zionist conspiracy.” Many of the Jews persecuted by Stalin after the first Holocaust were, like the first Moscow Trials, forced to confess to outrageous crimes, in this case, many Russian communist Jews “confessed” to being part of a “Zionist conspiracy” against the Party and against Stalin. A parody of this purge was captured most well by George Orwell in 1984, which received its title by the switching of the last two numbers of the year that the book was written: 1948.
Even after Stalin’s death, throughout the 1970s, the Soviet Union would bring forth UN General Assembly resolutions condemning “Zionism” as racism, particularly UN Resolution 3379, which was revoked in December 1991, upon the dissolution of the Stalinist Soviet Union.
The Stalinist resolution took note of the “Declaration of Mexico on the Equality of Women and Their Contribution to Development and Peace 1975”, proclaimed by the “World Conference of the International Women's Year”, held at Mexico City from 19 June to 2 July 1975, which “promulgated” the principle that "international co-operation and peace require the achievement of national liberation and independence, the elimination of colonialism and neo-colonialism, foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid and racial discrimination in all its forms, as well as the recognition of the dignity of peoples and their right to self-determination…”
Before the Bolshevik revolution, which ended the first World War by overthrowing the Russian Czar and his dynasty, Czarist Russia was home and originator of the Pogrom. See Golda Meir’s interviews, for example, wherein she discusses witnessing her father’s friends warning him of upcoming Pogroms and being relieved at the occasional false alarm.
“They were just normal,” said the first, and most recent, female Israeli Prime Minister. The wickedest legacy of the Czars is the wretched Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabrication written by Czarist secret police, which described a secret world government ran by treacherous Jews.
The Protocols survives to date, cited in Hamas’ founding charter, which has also never been repudiated (it’s only been reinforced), as well as enjoying “must-have” status in every Stalinist/Maoist library. The well-known, longtime Chicana activist, Yolanda Garza-Birdwell, with whom I used to be friends, once showed me her copy of The Protocols and recommended it highly.
That was the last time I saw Yolanda, who I hear is now an avid supporter of Russia’s second annexation of Ukraine. Her main political concern when I knew her was always “opposing Zionism.” Ukraine, led by a Jewish President (an amazing fact considering what happened to Ukraine’s Jews during the holocaust), attracted the scorn of antisemites of all stripes. Antisemitism, under the guise of “opposing Zionism,” is the organizing principle of all these groups.
The coalition between antisemitic Muslims and antisemitic leftists (Stalinists and Maoists) is what’s driving the movement to delegitimize Israel and the vandalism they incite.
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