Change.org Admits to Burying a Petition Targeting Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib

RedState has covered Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib extensively over the past few months. Whether it’s their anti-Semitism, attacks on their own party, or accusing U.S. soldiers of being terrorists, there’s been plenty to write on.

Given all the controversy surrounding the two fresh faces of Congress, it’s not surprising that some Jewish groups would seek to oppose them. One of those groups is stopantisemitism.org, who recently put out a petition on Change.org for an investigation into the terror-tied group CAIR, along with its known relationship with Omar and Tlaib.

You can view the petition here. There’s nothing in it that’s all that groundbreaking or inflammatory. They include links to CAIR’s background and their associations with terrorist groups. Those are things that have been public for a long time, whether the media wants to cover them or not.

This seems to be the part of the petition that got the most people upset though.

While these two Congresswoman are challenging the dual loyalty of the members of the Jewish-American community, since Ilhan and Rashida don’t have dual loyalty, WHO ARE THEY LOYAL TO?

This led to Change.org admitting to burying the petition and putting a warning banner above it, per The Daily Caller.

Change.org is suppressing an inflammatory petition from a Jewish watchdog group demanding a federal investigation into the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

Though the petition didn’t violate Change.org’s terms, the platform took steps to restrict its “discovery on our platform,” Change.org told StopAntisemitism.org, the watchdog group, in an email shared with The Daily Caller News Foundation. The petition is hidden from users who search for it on the platform.

The petition, which had more than 32,000 signatures by Tuesday evening, accuses CAIR, a Muslim activist group, of being “an American front group for the Hamas terrorist organization.” The petition also challenges Omar and Tlaib’s loyalties to America. Both congresswomen previously leveled the same charge against supporters of Israel.

“There’s no doubt that Tlaib and Omar have close-knit ties with Hamas affiliated CAIR and we, as concerned citizens, call on Attorney General and U.S. Special Envoy for Anti-Semitism to investigate these ties,” the petition states.

Change.org goes on to try to justify their behavior with some rather unconvincing excuses.

“Since this petition itself does not violate our terms, we have not removed any specific language or phrase in the petition but taken steps to ensure users know we are aware of their concerns by adding a banner,” Barre added.

“We are not in a position to determine whether the content on our platform is true or false. In this case, as soon as we received a user claim, we let the petition starter know about the claim for their own protection and to give them the opportunity to amend or remove the petition. If/when we receive more information from the claimant substantiating their claims, we may be compelled to take further actions,” Barre said.

If this were really their policy, anybody could complain about any petition and it would lead to suppression and a warning banner. That’s clearly not what’s happening though on other petitions though. Given that, it’s pretty obvious that Change.org took action based on their own biases against the content of the petition, despite their assertions otherwise.

In other words, if they don’t like the politics of a petition, they’ll just erase it from their search results and insinuate it’s full of inaccuracies with a big yellow banner. All the while, they won’t actually point out what’s supposedly inaccurate.

While I understand questioning a politician’s loyalty is mostly taboo, can anyone doubt that Omar and Tlaib have done numerous things that would make any rational person stop and think?

It came out just this weekend that Omar once called U.S. troops in Mogadishu “satan” for simply trying to save the lives of Somalis just like her. Omar has also downplayed 9/11 and had multiple anti-Semitic outbursts. Tlaib has made several radical statements in speeches before CAIR, had bouts of anti-Semitism of her own, and has personally entertained terrorist supporters in her official capacity.

These things are not ok. They aren’t normal. They are the kinds of things that a Republican would be forced to resign over if they say, had dinner with Richard Spencer or called American troops terrorists.

At some point, it’s no longer the onlookers’ fault for questioning their loyalty. It’s their fault for doing so many crazy things in regards to anti-Americanism and Islamism. Change.org had no real justification for burying this petition and it’s another in the long list of examples of supposedly neutral platforms policing speech for political reasons.

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