By Last week, the House of Representatives voted to censure Rashida Tlaib for her outspoken support of her people in the context of the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, has been clear that she is against the Israeli government and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s unrestrained attacks on innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip as a response to the actions by Hamas on October 7 of this year. She has been accused of anti-Semitism.
Tlaib’s response was eloquent, and she reiterated both her support of the Palestinian people and her opposition to all forms of race-hate including Islamophobia and antisemitism.
Censure is the highest form of rebuke for a member of the House before outright expulsion. It sends a clear message that other members of the House disagree with the actions of the member being censured. Historically it was used to disapprove of things like fraud, embezzlement, or other illegal actions, and it is only recently that it has been a response to free speech. Representative Ilhan Omar was also recently censured for her criticism of the Israeli government and has been outspoken in her support of Tlaib.
Omar’s response has gone viral on YouTube. She stated, “Rashida will stand strong.”
The bill to censure Tlaib
The actual bill to censure Tlaib passed with overwhelming support in the House.
The bill’s text reads:
Whereas, on November 3, 2023, Representative Tlaib published on social media a video containing the phrase ‘‘from the river to the sea’’, which is widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea;
Whereas Representative Tlaib doubled down on this call to violence by falsely describing ‘‘from the river to the sea’’ as ‘‘an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence’’ despite it clearly entailing Israel’s destruction and denial of its fundamental right to exist.
There are a lot of problems with the idea that the phrase “from the river to the sea” is hostile to the state of Israel, but one of the major ones is that the call for a unified Israel without apartheid should not be a threat to anyone. Israel claims to be a democratic state. Then let them live up to that claim and end apartheid and unify all the people that live there with equal rights.
The idea that Palestinians should not have rights and freedom in their traditional land is not a call for the destruction of Israel or a denial of its right to exist. It is a call for an end to the brutal crimes of the Israeli government against Palestinians.
Until we — as a country — are willing to value Palestinian lives, we are falling far short of our rhetoric about freedom.
Why should it threaten Israel to say that all the people who live in that land should be equal citizens? The true solution to apartheid is not a two-state solution at this point, but a unified Israel/Palestine with Jewish and Palestinian people all living together with equal rights under the rule of law. That is the meaning of “from the river to the sea.” 1
The ongoing refusal of the U.S. government to stand up for a viable solution that ends apartheid in Israel is unacceptable. It goes against our values of human rights and democracy. Until we — as a country — are willing to value Palestinian lives, we are falling far short of our rhetoric about freedom.
Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism
There are many disturbing features of the decision to censure Tlaib, but one of them is connected to a greater movement to silence criticism of the genocide being committed right now by the Israeli government. Multiple bills have been introduced by the House to rebuke people for their support of the Palestinian people.
One, shockingly, targets college campuses, long a bastion of free speech in the United States and many other places around the world.
One disturbing resolution, which was passed 396–23, restricts any activity on college campuses that “Condemning the support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations at institutions of higher education, which may lead to the creation of a hostile environment for Jewish students, faculty, and staff.” While I cannot be more firmly in support of the prohibition against anti-Semitism, the context of these bills has nothing to do with anti-Semitism at all.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has a clear stance on the fact that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are two totally different problems and that, in fact, it is pro-Jewish and respectful to the discrimination that Jewish people face criticizing the Israeli government for the ongoing occupation and the Israeli government’s policies of apartheid.
JVP states:
Zionist interpretations of history taught us that Jewish people are alone, that to remedy the harms of antisemitism, we must think of ourselves as always under attack, and that we cannot trust others. It teaches us fear and that the best response to fear is a bigger gun, a taller wall, and a more humiliating checkpoint.
Rather than accept the inevitability of occupation and dispossession, we choose a different path. We learn from the anti-Zionist Jews who came before us and know that as long as Zionism has existed, so has Jewish dissent to it. Especially as we face the violent antisemitism fueled by white nationalism in the United States today, we choose solidarity. We choose collective liberation. We choose a future where everyone, including Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, can live their lives freely in vibrant, safe, equitable communities, with basic human needs fulfilled.
In light of these attacks on free speech, it is all the more critical that we are continuously vocal in our support of those brave members of Congress who are doing their duty and following their conscience to resist the murderous genocidal actions of the Israeli government.
In a New York Times op-ed., Goldberg states:
The conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is a bit of rhetorical sleight-of-hand that depends on treating Israel as the embodiment of the Jewish people everywhere. Certainly, some criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, but it’s entirely possible to oppose Jewish ethno-nationalism without being a bigot. Indeed, it’s increasingly absurd to treat the Israeli state as a stand-in for Jews writ large, given the way the current Israeli government has aligned itself with far-right European movements that have anti-Semitic roots.
The dangerous and violent rhetoric about people standing up for the rights of children being murdered, hospitals being attacked, and civilians being targeted is a disturbing statement about the rights of the U.S. public to speak freely.
There is an ongoing commentary about the state of our freedoms in this country in light of Islamophobia and the Forever War on Terror (read War on Islam). In light of these attacks on free speech, it is all the more critical that we are continuously vocal in our support of those brave members of Congress who are doing their duty and following their conscience to resist the murderous genocidal actions of the Israeli government.
Islamophobia and hate speech
A disturbing flip side to the entire narrative about censuring Tlaib is brought up by Omar in her speech in Tlaib’s defense. Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian bias seem to have no comparable reaction as a problematic discourse. The ongoing rhetoric of dehumanizing Palestinians, including calling them “animals” and calls to “wipe them out” is being widely accepted both in the press and in our communities.
These types of rhetoric lead to increasing Islamophobic attacks on Muslims. The Islamophobia that people are facing has led to an increase in mental health problems for Muslims, has led to outright violence, and in some cases has even been fatal. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has seen a dramatic rise in reports of Islamophobia.
CAIR has received 1,283 requests for help and reports of bias in the month since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. In 2022, it received reports of an average of 406 complaints per 29-day period. This new surge, CAIR states, reflects a 216% increase in requests for help and reported bias incidents compared to the previous year.
The mental health impact of Islamophobia goes beyond hate crimes and harassment. There is an ongoing problem that all Muslims, whether or not they have been targeted experience the current atmosphere of Islamophobia as psychologically unsafe. Dr. Rania Awad in an op-ed for Times Magazine states: The unpredictability of the time, place, and circumstances of Islamophobic incidents puts many Muslims in a nearly continuous state of hypervigilance. This insecurity can directly translate into deleterious mental health implications for Muslim Americans.
It is important that we all speak out and take care of ourselves and each other. Supporting our Congresspeople who are brave enough to speak out to defend the innocent civilians under attack in Gaza is a critical first step in this fight.
- Writer’s note: I want to clarify that this is my understanding from reading prominent Palestinian activists like Dr. Hatem Bazian who advocate for a one-state solution and an end to apartheid and that I am not an isolated white woman attempting to hijack the narrative. ↩︎