US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) issued a statement in defense of the state’s Jewish Attorney General Dana Nessel over what she called “antisemitic” suggestions by US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) that Nessel’s office harbored “biases” against pro-Palestinian activists. 

“The suggestion that Attorney General Nessel would make charging decisions based on her religion as opposed to the rule of law is antisemitic,” Whitmer wrote on Monday. “Attorney General Nessel has always conducted her work with integrity and followed the rule of law. We must all use our platform and voices to call out hateful rhetoric and racist tropes.”

The statement came one day after Whitmer, during an interview with CNN anchor Jake Tapper, initially refused to weigh in on the quarrel between Nessel and Tlaib, who suggested that the attorney general has not treated anti-Israel protesters impartially because of her Jewish faith. 

“Do you think Attorney General Nessel is not doing her job? Because Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she shouldn’t be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law, and that she’s only doing it because she’s Jewish, and the protesters are not,” Tapper asked.

“I’m not going to get in the middle of this argument that they’re having,” Whitmer said. “I can just say this: We do want to make sure that students are safe on our campuses, and we recognize that every person has the right to make their statement about how they feel about an issue, a right to speak out. And I’m going to use every lever of mine to ensure that both are true.”

Whitmer’s unwillingness to defend Nessel drew backlash. 

“Rashida Tlaib DID make an anti-Semitic [sic] smear against Michigan’s [attorney general].  She said [Nessel] only prosecuted the pro-Palestinian protesters [because] she’s Jewish,” former US Congressman Joe Walsh wrote on X/Twitter. 

“Not only could she not call it antisemitism, she refused to even defend her AG,” American Ben, national director of Maccabee Task Force, said of Whitmer on X/Twitter. 

Earlier this month, in an interview with the Detroit Metro Times, Tlaib torched Nessel over her decision to press charges against nine protesters at the University of Michigan for trespassing and resisting or obstructing a police officer after they refused police commands to leave anti-Israel encampments and another two demonstrators for attempted ethnic intimidation and malicious destruction of personal property at a separate anti-Israel protest. Tlaib claimed that Nessel had unfair “biases” against pro-Palestinian activists. 

“We’ve had the right to dissent, the right to protest,” Tlaib told the Metro Times. “We’ve done it for climate, the immigrant rights movement, for Black lives, and even around issues of injustice among water shutoffs. But it seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”

Last week, while defending Tlaib from a racially-charged cartoon in the National Review depicting her as a target of the recent Hezbollah pager attacks in Lebanon, Nessel condemned the congresswoman for making “antisemitic” comments to the Metro Times.

“Rashida’s religion should not be used in a cartoon to imply that she’s a terrorist. It’s Islamophobic and wrong,” Nessel wrote on X/Twitter before adding, “Rashida Tlaib should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as Attorney General. It’s anti-Semitic [sic] and wrong.”

Tlaib, the only Palestinian American woman in Congress, has been a staunch defender of nationwide anti-Israel campus protests. She has praised student protesters for “exercising their constitutional right” to demand their universities cut ties with the Jewish state. Tlaib has often accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza and of orchestrating a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” and erecting an “apartheid” regime in the West Bank.

The US intelligence community has confirmed that Iran, the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism, has encouraged and even provided financial support to many of the anti-Israel demonstrations on American campuses. The Iranian regime’s so-called “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly heaped praise on anti-Israel protesters on college campuses, referring to the demonstrations as a “courageous, humane resistance movement.”

US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told Congress that individuals in anti-Israel protests “may not be aware that they are interacting with or receiving support from a foreign government.”