Rep. Rashida Tlaib last week made clear that she supports the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state and, therefore, a second Holocaust.
On Friday, the Michigan Democrat published a video on X (formerly Twitter) accusing President Joe Biden of supporting genocide against the Palestinian people by supporting Israel in its conflict against Hamas.
The Michigan lawmaker’s accusation is entirely projection. Israel has taken every step possible to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties as it defends its own citizens from the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists who massacred 1,400 Israelis—mostly civilians—on Oct. 7, and continues to hold about 240 hostages, including several American citizens, as it launches volley after volley of rockets at Israeli population centers.
Israel has created a corridor for Palestinian civilians to flee to safety in southern Gaza and sends warnings via leaflets and phone calls to civilians near military targets.
These are not the actions of a genocidal regime. By contrast, Hamas is trying to maximize civilian casualties on both sides of the conflict to further its political goals, even using Palestinians as human shields (a war crime under the Geneva Conventions) and hiding its military installations in hospitals, mosques, and schools, and using ambulances to transport its militants.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh recently declared that Hamas needs “the blood of [Palestinian] women, children, and elderly … so that it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit, so it awakens within us resolve.”
That’s why Hamas is blocking Palestinians from fleeing to southern Gaza or from leaving Gaza entirely. Dead Palestinians serve Hamas’ interests as much as dead Jews do.
Meanwhile, Tlaib’s 90-second video openly calls for the elimination of Israel. The video features the genocidal chant “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea,” a reference to Israel’s western and eastern borders, the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.
Of course, as Tlaib well knows, the elimination of the Jewish state could only happen with—God forbid—the elimination of the Jews living there.
Indeed, that’s the stated goal of Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel and its replacement with Palestine. That is still its goal.
Last month, Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ political bureau and the group’s former deputy foreign minister, declared that Hamas would repeat the Oct. 7 massacre over and over until Israel is destroyed.
“We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again,” Hamad said, according to an Oct. 24 interview on Lebanese television translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“The Al-Aqsa Flood [the name Hamas has given to the Oct. 7 massacre] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight.”
“Israel is a country that has no place on our land,” the Hamas leader said, adding:
We must remove that country, because it constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and Islamic nations, and must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force.
That’s what “from the river to the sea” means, as Tlaib well knows. Even Tlaib’s fellow Michigan Democrat, state Attorney General Dana Nessel, called Tlaib’s use of “from the river to the sea” a “cruel and hateful remark.”
After receiving fierce pushback, Tlaib tried to deflect, absurdly claiming that “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.”
That’s ludicrous on its face. As The Heritage Foundation’s Mario Loyola replied, “Yeah, and ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ [‘Work sets you free,’ a phrase used by the Nazis] was an uplifting exhortation to self-actualization. Heck, it was probably even anti-racist and inclusive.”
At the end of her video—which fails to even mention Hamas, let alone its attacks on Israel or the hostages it is holding—Tlaib calls on Biden to support a cease-fire. But the video makes clear that Tlaib only wants Israel to cease firing—tantamount to unilateral surrender.
The same video features the chant “no peace on stolen land”—in other words, Tlaib is calling for a continuation of violence against Jews until Israel has been destroyed. (Never mind that Jews have been continuously living in their homeland for more than 3,500 years, long before Muhammad was born and Arab colonizers arrived.)
Tlaib, who is rightly mocked as the leader of a “Congressional Hamas Caucus,” is still promoting Hamas propaganda that Israel bombed a Christian hospital in Gaza, long after it was demonstrated that the hospital parking lot was struck by Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s misfired rocket. Tlaib’s dangerous lies about Israel amount to a modern blood libel.
Congress recently failed to censure Tlaib for her comments during the Israel-Hamas conflict, as well as for “leading an insurrection at the United States Capitol complex.” The measure failed for technical reasons, not substantive ones.
Now that Tlaib is openly calling for the destruction of Israel and genocide against the Jews, a new and more sound censure motion is being filed.
Congress must censure Tlaib to make clear that “Never Again” means something.
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