Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press
Updated Fri, October 13, 2023
With Israel signaling a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in response to last weekend's deadly attacks by Hamas, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, on Friday criticized President Joe Biden and his administration for not doing more to restrain Israel or show concern for ordinary Palestinians living in the war-torn region.
"Millions of people in Gaza — half of them children — have been given an impossible 24-hour evacuation order, but they have nowhere to go," Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, said, referring to Israel's order to evacuate the northern section of the strip of land between that country and Egypt. "The collective punishment of Palestinian civilians is a war crime ... (but) President Biden has not expressed one bit of empathy for the millions of Palestinian civilians facing brutal airstrikes and the threat of a ground invasion of Gaza."
Tlaib's statement on Friday reiterated one she gave exclusively to the Free Press earlier this week that she considers both the deadly, surprise attack on Israeli civilians orchestrated by Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and which the U.S. has labeled a terrorist organization, and Israel's overwhelming response to be "war crimes" in that civilians, including children, are being killed.
"I am calling for immediate de-escalation and cease-fire to save countless civilian lives, no matter their faith or ethnicity," she said Friday. "Our government must lead with compassion for all civilians. I believe in my heart that the majority of Americans want the killing and violence to stop. War crimes cannot be answered with war crimes."
More: Rep. Rashida Tlaib, facing censure motion, calls Hamas actions 'war crimes'
More: IRS grants tax relief, extensions to those affected by latest violence in Middle East
After the attacks last weekend that led to some 1,200 deaths, Tlaib, long a critic of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, including a blockade of Gaza in place since 2007, put out an equivocal statement in part blaming Israel and American support for that ally for the attack. She said she has received numerous death threats since then and one Michigan colleague, U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Watersmeet, introduced a resolution to censure her.
But many people who have been critical of Israel have said it is possible both to denounce Hamas' actions, as Tlaib has done, while also urging Israel show restraint in its response. Since the attacks, Israel has been firing rockets into the Gaza Strip and cutting fuel, electricity and other services to the region, as well as massing troops on the border, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising to exact an "unprecedented price" on Hamas.
The United Nations, meanwhile, is bracing for a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, saying that Israel's evacuation order is "impossible," given that there is no way out of the region. Israel has imposed a blockade of Gaza since 2007, after Hamas — which was founded on a desire to end Israel's existence — took political control there, tightly controlling the flow of goods, services and people to such a degree that it has impacted Palestinians' access to food, jobs and health care. The country has been entirely locked down since last weekend.
Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as well as most western leaders, have expressed unequivocal support for Israel to defend itself, though Blinken has said he has urged Israel to take all possible steps to avoid loss of civilian lives. Hamas had told people living in Gaza to disregard the order but on Friday it appeared massive numbers of Palestinians were heading south.
Tlaib said the Biden administration must do more.
“American Muslims and Arab Americans do not feel represented by our government right now," she said. "Many families in the U.S. seeking help to get their loved ones out of Gaza feel that Secretary Blinken is not making their safety a priority. The Biden administration is failing in its duty to protect all civilian and American lives in Gaza. I cannot believe I have to beg our country to value every human life, no matter their faith or ethnicity. We cannot lose sight of the humanity in each other.”
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Rep. Rashida Tlaib calls on Biden to show 'empathy' toward Palestinians
Rashida Tlaib, the Only Palestinian Member of Congress, Says Critics Distorted Her Israel Statement
Kylie Cheung
Thu, October 12, 2023
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the lone Palestinian American member of Congress, on Wednesday spoke to the Detroit Free Press about her colleagues’ motion to censure her, following a statement she made over the weekend mourning lives lost in the conflict between Israel and Palestine and calling for an end to “apartheid” in the region. A fellow member from Michigan, Rep. Jack Bergman (R), filed the motion against her on Wednesday.
After the Hamas attacks on Saturday—which left more than 1,200 dead and included the kidnapping of roughly 150 people—Tlaib said that Israel’s “apartheid system” is what “creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance” in Palestine. She continued: “The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer. ... As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said on CNN that “it shouldn’t be hard to condemn terrorists and terrorism.”
But Tlaib’s comments “should not have been remotely controversial,” Beth Miller, political director of the Jewish Voice for Peace Action, told The Intercept. She continued, “There have been almost no members of Congress who have so much as acknowledged... there have been Palestinian civilians who have been killed by the Israeli military and by Israeli settlers.”
As of Thursday morning, the death toll of Palestinians in Gaza has climbed above 1,400, including almost 500 children, per the Palestinian Health Ministry, and these numbers are rapidly rising. Journalists in Gaza, seven of whom have been killed in Israeli attacks over the last few days, report mass casualties; lack of shelter; and dead bodies of women and children in the streets.
In her interview with the Free Press, Tlaib cautioned that it’s “dangerous” to call criticism of the Israeli government antisemitic, and said she’ll continue to call for it “to be held accountable for some of its atrocities,” even as she recognizes that’s “going to be incredibly difficult.”
“I’m going to remind them that a Palestinian life is just as important as an Israeli life,” Tlaib said.
Anders Hagstrom
Updated Tue, October 10, 2023
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., attacked Israel's response to an unprecedented assault by Hamas in an extensive thread on social media Monday.
Omar, a longtime critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinians, seemed to equate the Israeli victims killed by Hamas terrorists this weekend and Palestinians killed in the ongoing Israeli response.
"Just as we honor the humanity of the hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians and 9 Americans who were killed this weekend, we must honor the humanity of the innocent Palestinian civilians who have been killed and whose lives are upended," she wrote.
Omar went on to highlight the hardships of living in Gaza, accusing Israel of operating an "apartheid" state in an attempt to explain violence by Hamas.
"Palestinian residents of the West Bank have scarcely better lives than Gazans — with the routine destruction of their ancestral homes, destruction of their crops, and violent attacks by Israeli settlers," Omar wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., attacked Israel's response to an unprecedented assault by Hamas in an extensive thread on social media Monday.
"Palestinians have few recourses for justice and accountability. Attacks by the IDF and settlers against Palestinians are regularly met with impunity. Efforts to seek justice in international courts are stonewalled by the Israeli government, with U.S. support," she added. "As the world is condemning Hamas’s attacks, we must also oppose an Israeli military response that has already taken the lives of hundreds of Palestinians, including nearly two dozen children."
Omar's office did not respond to questions from Fox News Digital asking her to elaborate on the thread.
The congresswoman did not clarify how she believed Israel should have responded to Saturday's attack, which has since left at least 1,000 Israelis dead and 2,700 more wounded. The Minnesota Democrat's only suggestion for a "solution to this horror" was "a negotiated peace — with Israelis and Palestinians enjoying equal rights and security guarantees."
Later in the thread, Omar said that Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had called all Palestinians "human animals" in comments earlier this week, though his full statement made clear that he was referring only to Hamas terrorists.
"We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. There will be no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything will be closed," Gallant said. "We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly."
Israeli forces have deployed tens of thousands of troops to the area around Gaza City, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested a ground invasion may be imminent.
Other statements from Omar have sparked controversy in the past.
When she took office in 2019, she soon had to answer for a now-deleted 2012 tweet in which she wrote, "Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel." She later expressed regret, saying the "unfortunate words were the only words" she could "think about expressing at that moment" in reference to Israel's 2012 operation against Hamas in Gaza.
Also in 2019, speaking at a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) fundraiser, Omar said: "CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties." Critics accused her of trying to downplay the actions of terrorists by describing it as "some people did something." She later clarified, "Many Americans found themselves now having their civil rights stripped from them, and so what I was speaking to was the fact that as a Muslim, not only was I suffering as an American who was attacked on that day, but the next day I woke up as my fellow Americans were now treating me as a suspect."
Also, in January 2023, Omar responded to the outrage over a 2019 tweet in which she described America's relationship with Israel as "all about the Benjamins," a tweet for which she later apologized.
"I certainly did not or was not aware that the word ‘hypnotized’ was a trope. I wasn’t aware of the fact that there are tropes about Jews and money. That has been very enlightening part of this journey," she told CNN.
Fox News' Yael Halon and Houston Keene contributed to this report.
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