Keith Ellison Met with the Iranian President and Louis Farrakhan. Where’s the Scandal?

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Keith Ellison—a prominent Minnesota congressman and now also the deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—attended a dinner in 2013 hosted by Hassan Rouhani, who had recently become Iran’s president. Also in attendance were the Nation of Islam’s leader Louis Farrakhan and two other congressmen. Sohrab Ahmari comments:

[The meeting] should be a major political scandal. It involves an anti-American government, a prominent member of Congress, and a far-right group that traffics in anti-Semitism, homophobia, and conspiracy theories. . . . Nearly a week later, [however], the prestige press is still giving the Journal exposé the chirping-crickets treatment. . . .

The episode raises serious questions about Ellison’s judgment and his real ideological convictions. Ellison has spent much of his political career running away from Farrakhan [and the Nation of Islam]. His ties to the group almost derailed his first congressional run, in 2006. After it emerged that he had worked with the Nation of Islam for at least eighteen months in the 1990s, Ellison wrote a letter to the Jewish community distancing himself from Farrakhan and denouncing his “anti-Semitic statements and actions.” Ellison reiterated his opposition to the group’s “anti-Semitism” and “homophobia” in 2016 when he contested the DNC leadership.

But revulsion at his former associates in the Nation of Islam didn’t stop Ellison from breaking bread with Farrakhan in 2013—bread that was provided by the Tehran regime. So which is the real Ellison: the one who drafts earnest letters of apology to Jewish groups? Or the one who, as recently as 2013, saw fit to dine with Farrakhan under Iranian auspices?

The Ellison-Farrakhan-Rouhani shindig is also a reminder that progressive Democrats had no compunction about hobnobbing with representatives of an anti-American terror state.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Democrats, Iran, Louis Farrakhan, Media, Politics & Current Affairs, U.S. Politics

Why South Africa Has Led the Legal War against Israel

South Africa filed suit with the International Court of Justice in December accusing Israel of genocide. More recently, it requested that the court order the Jewish state to allow humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip—something which, of course, Israel has been doing since the war began. Indeed, the country’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) has had a long history of support for the Palestinian cause, but Orde Kittrie suggests that the current government, which is plagued by massive corruption, has more sinister motives for its fixation on accusing Israel of imagined crimes:

ANC-led South Africa has . . . repeatedly supported Hamas. In 2015 and 2018, the ANC and Hamas signed memoranda of understanding pledging cooperation against Israel. The Daily Maverick, a South African newspaper that previously won an international award for exposing ANC corruption, has reported claims that Iran “essentially paid the ANC to litigate against Israel in the ICJ.”

The ANC-led government says it is motivated by humanitarian principle. That’s contradicted by its support for Russia, and by [President Cyril] Ramaphosa’s warmly welcoming a visit in January by Mohamed Dagalo, the leader of the Sudanese-Arab Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. Ramaphosa’s smiling, hand-holding welcome of Dagalo occurred two months after the RSF’s systematic massacre of hundreds of non-Arab Sudanese refugees in Darfur.

While the ANC has looted its own country and aided America’s enemies, the U.S. is insulating the party from the consequences of its corruption and mismanagement.

In Kittrie’s view, it is “time for Congress and the Biden administration to start helping South Africa’s people hold Ramaphosa accountable.”

Read more at The Hill

More about: International Law, Iran, South Africa