Canary Mission has doubled down on Rashida Tlaib. Will the American media establishment double down on silence?

Two weeks ago, the independent non-profit Canary Mission issued a report connecting the House Democrat to three Hamas fundraisers. Not a single major American media outlet picked up on allegations that a sitting member of Congress had ties to a terrorist organization that had just killed over 30 Americans in Israel, not to mention had a dozen or so more as hostages. A week after that, the number of media outlets reporting on those allegations was still zero.

On Wednesday, Canary Mission issued an updated report on Tlaib’s connections to Hamas. This time, they have linked six Hamas-connected activists who raised money for her first term in the House:

Canary Mission can confirm that at least 6 Hamas-linked activists fundraised for Tlaib during her 2018 Congressional campaign: Mwafaq Jbara, Sheikh Muhammad Qatanani, Huwaida Arraf, Salah Sarsour, Rafeeq Jaber and Abdelbaset Hamayel. …

Other Key Findings:

• PFLP Connections: The Black4Palestine activist group that Tlaib co-founded in 2015 worked publicly with terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) no less than 8 times from 2016 to 2020.
  
  
• Guest of Honor Linked to Terror Group: One of Rashida Tlaib’s guests for her January 2019 swearing-in was Fatah activist Mazen Dola. He is the cousin of a terrorist who lured an Israeli teenager online for a date and then murdered him in cold blood, in 2001. Two and a half years before attending Tlaib’s swearing-in, he attended the release of his cousin from an Israeli jail along with armed members of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.
• Hamas-Linked Fundraiser Host: One of Tlaib’s 2018 fundraiser hosts, Mwafaq Jbara, met with a Hamas co-founder while in a maximum security Israeli jail. He called for the death of Jews and praised the terrorist who killed U.S. Army veteran Taylor Force.

This time, Free Beacon reported on the new report fairly quickly:

Anti-Israel representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) is connected to at least “six terror-linked activists who all served as cohosts for fundraisers for her 2018 congressional campaign,” according to a report from a watchdog group.

Just a day after the “Squad” member was censured by the House for promoting anti-Semitism, Canary Mission—an organization that monitors Jew hatred across the country—says it has identified three new Tlaib fundraisers who are connected to terrorism.

This includes one Tlaib fundraiser who “met with a Hamas co-founder while in a maximum-security Israeli jail” and another said to be allied “with multiple terror groups, including Hamas,” according to the findings provided by Canary Mission to the Washington Free Beacon. A third Tlaib fundraiser was allegedly convicted “by an Israeli military court for providing material support to Hamas,” according to the findings.

When I first read this yesterday, I had assumed it was about the first Canary Mission report. When I discovered that CM had discovered more connections between Tlaib and Hamas activists and associates, I decided to wait until this morning to see which American media outlets would actually report this as news. Now that they’ve had 48 hours to investigate these new allegations, how many outlets have reported on them? Let’s use the search phrase Tlaib Canary at each of these outlets, without quotes:

• New York Times: Zero, although two older and unrelated links come up. The search term Tlaib Hamas produces 22 links from the past month, but none of them about her potential links to Hamas as detailed by Canary Mission.
• Washington Post: Zero. The search term Tlaib Hamas only produces two links, neither of them pertinent.
• Detroit Free Press: Zero.
• Associated Press: Almost 800 returns, but nothing on either Canary Mission report. An attempt to drill down with the search term Tlaib “Canary Mission” narrowed it down to 253 non-pertinent returns.
• Reuters: Zero.
• CNN: One hit on a link to a video of Tlaib ‘tear[ing] up’ during her defense against the censure motion, but nothing on the Canary Mission reports. CNN’s search functions are terrible and rudimentary, but a search on Tlaib Hamas doesn’t seem to generate any link to coverage of Canary Mission’s reports … although it does produce a link to CAIR’s claims of ‘unprecedented’ Islamophobic bias complaints. Priorities, priorities.
• NBC News: Zero. Again, Tlaib Hamas also doesn’t return any story covering the Canary Mission reports, but it does return a lot of non-pertinent coverage.
• ABC News. Zero pertinent returns.
• CBS News: Zero pertinent returns. (CBS’ search feature does not return a unique URL.)
• Fox News: Good luck using their search feature. It’s worse than CNN’s. I’ll just give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they mention the Canary Mission report.
• New York Post: Zero? Zero. Maybe we shouldn’t give Fox News (same parent company) the benefit of doubt after all. For that matter, News Corp’s Wall Street Journal hasn’t covered it either.
• Al Jazeera? Zero. (I expected nothing more, of course.)

In other words, we have a well-known group that routinely exposes anti-Semitic figures in Academia that has documentary evidence of links between a sitting member of Congress and a listed terror group …. and no American media outlet is interested in that story, not even to debunk it. Why? If the SPLC claimed that a House Republican had ties to the Klan, that would be headline news at all of these outlets (and should be!). More than two weeks after the first report on these alleged links between Tlaib and Hamas-linked fundraisers and activists, and a month after Hamas killed 30-plus Americans and still hold more as hostages, though, not a single major American news outlet will pick it up, not even to “fact check” or debunk it.

This is an outright scandal. What happened to holding those in power accountable? What happened to democracy dying in darkness? For crying out loud, what happened to basic journalism?

And for that matter, what happened to the House Republicans? Rather than censure Tlaib for her genocidal sloganeering (or at least along with it), when will they demand an Ethics inquiry into this report? If this report is accurate, Tlaib shouldn’t be censured — she should be expelled and then investigated for material support of a terrorist group.

Addendum: Once again, this demonstrates why supporting truly independent media is so critical to our nation’s future. Become a HotAir VIP member today and use promo code SAVEAMERICA to receive a 50% discount on your membership.