Tlaib defends using Palestinian chant
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s defense of a phrase used by Palestinians in connection with the war between Israel and Hamas is drawing condemnation from critics, including a prominent fellow Democrat — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.
On Friday, Tlaib posted a video on the social platform X in which she said President Joe Biden’s support of Israel would cost him re-election in 2024, accused him in a lettered overlay of supporting “the genocide of the Palestinian people” and showed protesters in Michigan yelling the slogan “from the river to the sea!”
The Detroit Democrat called for Biden to support an immediate cease-fire. Tlaib, the lone Palestinian-American in Congress, linked that tweet to another one that explained what she said she meant by “from the river to the sea” — which refers to from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, or the land between the bodies of water that includes Israel.
“From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate,” she tweeted Friday. “My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.”
The tweet prompted 29,000 responses, many of them condemning the phrase as antisemitic because it is also used by Hamas, the ruling party in Gaza that launched an Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel in which more than 200 people were taken hostage and hundreds more civilians, including women and children, were killed.
Among the most prominent critics was Nessel, who is Jewish.
“RashidaTlaib, I have supported and defended you countless times, even when you have said the indefensible, because I believed you to be a good person whose heart was in the right place,” she tweeted.
“But this is so hurtful to so many. Please retract this cruel and hateful remark.”
State Sen. Jeremy Moss, a Democrat, whose comment Nessel retweeted and added a statement, was more blunt.
“This is not how Jews view the phrase ‘from the river to the sea,’ ” wrote Moss, who is Jewish. “This is not how Hamas views the phrase ‘from the river to the sea.’
“Hamas uses it as a rallying cry. And they don’t simply want to displace Jews in Israel. They want Jews dead.”
Tlaib’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
