Ahead of hearing on DC’s response to campus protests, questions arise about GOP chair’s role in enabling antisemitism
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) on May 1, 2024. Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
By Jacob Kornbluh May 7, 2024
Update 5/8/24: The House Oversight Committee canceled the hearing after D.C. police began clearing the encampment overnight.
As protests against the war in Gaza on campus have escalated, leading to clashes between demonstrators and police, a top Republican is scheduled to interrogate on Wednesday the D.C. mayor and her police chief over how they dealt with protests at George Washington University. Rep. James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky and chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, launched a probe into what he describes as “radical, antisemitic, and unlawful protesters” at an encampment on the school’s campus.
Democratic members of the committee highlighted Comer’s record of ignoring and sometimes promoting veiled antisemitism to point out the irony of him chairing the hearing.
“In the years under Trump, Republicans have indulged and excused antisemitism,” said Jamie Raskin, a Jewish Democrat from Maryland who is the ranking member of the oversight committee, citing the 2017 riot in Charlottesville and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Both events included the participation of neo-Nazis and contained antisemitic displays. “But now Republicans seek to weaponize the charge of antisemitism for partisan purposes.”
Comer, who has antagonized Democrats with his inquiries into President Joe Biden and his family, refused requests to condemn the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory and retweeted content from antisemitic QAnon accounts, In an interview on a right-wing radio show last month, Comer singled out three Democratic Jewish representatives — Raskin, Dan Goldman of New York and Jared Moskowitz of Florida — for being highly educated and wealthy. He also compared them to little dogs. Such smears have historically been used to target Jews and are considered a common form of coded antisemitism by the American Jewish Committee.
Last November, Goldman blasted Comer for issuing a subpoena to Elizabeth Naftali, a major Democratic donor who purchased art from Hunter Biden, and who lost several family members in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. The subpoena came as Naftali’s four-year-old niece, Abigail Idan, was being held hostage in Gaza. When Abigail was released later that month in a hostage deal, Comer appeared to suggest that Naftali’s Democratic affiliation played a role.
Comer has also repeatedly alleged that George Soros, the Jewish billionaire and Holocaust survivor who is often the target of antisemitic tropes, was controlling the Biden administration’s policies, particularly on energy and climate.
“The MAGA Party only seems to care about combatting antisemitism when they see a political benefit,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas. “House Republicans are using antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism as a prop, and disrespecting the victims of racial and religious hatred in the process. Republicans don’t get to claim to be champions against hatred and bigotry when they publicly peddle that same hatred and bigotry to excite their base.”
A spokesperson for Comer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Chaos on campus
Wednesday’s hearing comes three weeks after Columbia University’s president, Nemat Shafik, was questioned about antisemitism on her campus. Her testimony was followed by a police crackdown on students who had pitched tents in support of the Palestinians and sparked protests at universities and colleges nationwide.
At George Washington University, pro-Palestinian students have been occupying an encampment in the school’s yard for the past 13 days. Despite calls by the university’s president, Ellen Granberg, D.C. police have refused to intervene and disperse the protesters. Granberg said protesters overran barriers, vandalized a university statue and flag and intimidated GW students with antisemitic images and hateful rhetoric.
Law enforcement in Cook County, Illinois, and Philadelphia have refused similar requests to disband encampments at Northwestern and the University of Pennsylvania.
House Republicans have undertaken a series of moves to respond to the escalating protests, including expanding congressional oversight of universities that they allege are rife with antisemitism. On Monday, the Trump campaign sent a fundraising email highlighting the encampment at George Washington.
Comer and his Republican colleagues visited George Washington University last week and met with the school’s leadership.
Raskin said that if Republicans were truly committed to combating antisemitism, they’d back bipartisan legislation that would implement the Biden administration’s national strategy to counter antisemitism.
Behind closed doors
Meanwhile, in a closed-door briefing on Tuesday with members of the Oversight Committee on “the origins and implications of rising antisemitism in higher education,” Rep. Scott Perry, a Republican from Pennsylvania, defended the Great Replacement Theory, a nativist philosophy now associated with antisemitism.
“What’s happening now is we’re importing people into the country that want to be in America, be in America, but have no interest in being Americans, and that’s very different,” said Perry, according to a person who was in the briefing. “And to disparage the comments is to chill the conversation so that we can continue to bring in more people that are un-American.”
Rep. Goldman condemned Perry’s remarks, citing a pattern. “If Republicans want to have any credibility on antisemitism, I expect them to condemn antisemitism within their own party,” he said.
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