US Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib doubled down on their criticisms of the Israeli government for denying them entry to the country, with Omar hinting that Congress should reconsider the billions of dollars in annual military aid given to Israel in light of the move against the democratic representatives.
The two congresswomen held a press conference on Monday in St. Paul, Minnesota, Omar’s home state, to formally address the Israeli government’s decision, which sparked nationwide outcry last week.
“All of America should be deeply distrubed,” Tlaib said, directly referencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and US President Donald Trump, who vocally supported the barring of the congresswomen.
“The decision to ban me and my colleagues, the first two Muslim American women elected to congress is nothing more than an attempt by an ally of the United States to suppress our ability to do our jobs as elected officials,” Omar told a room of journalists and local Jewish and Palestinian-American activists.
During her remarks, Omar referenced the $3.8 billion dollars the US gives to Israel every year for military aid — something that some Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg have suggested leveraging against the Israeli government to pressure the latter to change its policies, specifically towards Palestinians.
“Fortunately, we the United States have a constructive role to play,” Omar said, as she went on to mention the military aid.
“This [aid] is predicated on their being an important ally in the region and the only democracy in the Middle East,” she continued, saying that denying visits to members of Congress “is not consistent with being an ally.”
“Any denying millions of people freedom of movement or expression or self-determination is not consistent with being a democracy.”
The issue was brought up again by Omar later in the conference, when she said:
“It is my belief that as legislators, we have an obligation to see the reality there for ourselves. We have a responsibility to conduct oversight over our government’s foreign policy and what happens with the millions of dollars we send in aid.”
Throughout their remarks and the subsequent testimonies of their Palestinian and Jewish constituents, both Tlaib and Omar were brought to tears, with the former sharing a more personal side of the issue, recounting stories of traveling to the occupied West Bank to visit family as a young girl.
“I watched as my mother had to go through dehumanizing checkpoints,” Tlaib told the crowd as her voice cracked, “even though she was a United States Citizen and proud American.”
“I remember shaking with fear when checkpoints appeared in our small village, tanks and guns everywhere,” she said.
When asked why Tlaib declined an offer by the Israeli government to visit her grandmother on a highly restrictive “humanitarian” trip, she told journalists she came to the decision after a long conversation with her family in the West Bank.
“My grandmother said, I am her dream manifested. I am her free bird,” Tlaib said fighting back tears. “So why would I go back to being caged?”
.@IlhanMN: "What I tell @RashidaTlaib all the time is, you don't ever allow people to enjoy your tears. There are so many people invested in our pain, in our struggle, in seeing us broken"… this is phenomenal pic.twitter.com/GrXy0eAAfd
— Michael Bueckert (@mbueckert) August 19, 2019
The pair also addressed the public attacks on MIFTAH, the Palestinian NGO that was sponsoring the trip, which pro-Israel and right-wing voices in the US have alleged is a “terror-linked group.”
Tlaib told reporters that herself and Omar that the decision to work with MIFTAH was based on the fact that other congressional members had taken trips, similar to the one they had planned, to the occupied West Bank under the sponsorship of MIFTAH.
“We were as taken aback as you are that people are now questioning that,” Tlaib told journalists, saying that the attacks on MIFTAH were “just distractions.”
“I think the focus is hiding the truth, hiding that the occupation is happening,” she continued. “Us setting foot there would basically bring attention to something many of us feel is very much against international human rights.”
“We cannot let Trump and Netanyahu succeed in hiding the cruel reality of the occupation from us,” Omar said.
“I call on all of you to go. The occupation is real. Barring members of Congress from seeing it does not make it go away.”
Michael Arria contributed to this report.
Next time, she could linger on the “only democracy” line and point out that according to The Economist Democracy Index, the USA is now listed as a Flawed Democracy…and Israel is ranked even lower.
As former Senator James Abourezk wrote,
“I can tell you from personal experience that, at least in the Congress, the support Israel has in that body is based completely on political fear — fear of defeat by anyone who does not do what Israel wants done. I can also tell you that very few members of Congress—at least when I served there—have any affection for Israel or for its Lobby. What they have is contempt, but it is silenced by fear of being found out exactly how they feel. I’ve heard too many cloakroom conversations in which members of the Senate will voice their bitter feelings about how they’re pushed around by the Lobby to think otherwise. In private one hears the dislike of Israel and the tactics of the Lobby, but not one of them is willing to risk the Lobby’s animosity by making their feelings public.”
http://ifamericaknew.org/us_ints/pg-abourezk.html
This story only gets better and better. MIFTAH helped other congresspeople and no-one objected? And now they object? Do they say that MIFTAH changed in the meantime? Or is it the usual hasbara?
Words of wisdom:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/israel-is-not-americas-ally/
“Israel Is Not America’s Ally” by Daniel Larison, The American Conservative, March 8/19
“Andrew Sullivan comments on the U.S.-Israel relationship and the role of ‘pro-Israel’ lobbying groups in our politics in a new essay. There are several things that I think Sullivan gets wrong, but perhaps the most significant and pervasive error in the piece is his repeated description of the relationship an ‘alliance.’ He notes that the U.S. gets nothing in return for the extensive military and diplomatic support that it provides, he acknowledges that the U.S. ‘suffers internationally’ on account of its close relationship with Israel, and he marvels at how badly its government under Netanyahu has behaved towards the U.S. Nonetheless, he writes, ‘I would defend the alliance despite this, because of my core belief in a Jewish state.’ The trouble with all this is that there is no alliance and Israel is not our ally. Its government does not behave as an ally does, it has never fought alongside U.S. forces in any of our foreign wars, and its interests are not aligned with ours as an ally’s should be. There is no formal treaty and no binding obligations that require our governments to do anything for the other.
“There are few words in U.S. foreign policy debates used more frequently and with less precision than ally and alliance. Our politicians and pundits use these terms to refer to almost every state with which the U.S. has some kind of security relationship, and it always grossly exaggerates the nature and extent of the ties between our governments. The exaggeration in Israel’s case is greatest of all because it is routinely called our ‘most important ally’ in the region, or even our ‘most cherished ally’ in all the world. These are ideological assertions that are not grounded in any observable reality. Dozens of other states all over the world are better allies to the United States than the ‘most cherished ally’ is, and they don’t preside over an illegal occupation that implicates the U.S. in decades of abuses and crimes against the Palestinian people living under that occupation, but none of them enjoys the lockstep, uncritical backing that this one state does. The effect of this constant repetition is to make the U.S.-Israel relationship seem extremely important to U.S. interests when it is not, and that serves to promote the ‘illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists.’ [From George Washington’s Farewell Address] It is this illusion as much as anything else that prevents a serious reassessment of the relationship.
“Israel is one of America’s regional clients, and it is the one that the U.S. indulges more than any other, but that is all that it is. As such, it receives far more support than it needs to and far more than makes sense for the U.S. to give, and the overwhelming political support that the relationship has is out of all proportion to the value of the relationship to the United States. In fact, like several other regional clients Israel has increasingly become a liability for the U.S., and the relationship should be changed accordingly.”
Trump’s comment that Rashida’s grandmother was lucky, because now she didn’t have to have a visit from her granddaughter – that struck me as reaching a new level of horribleness, even for Trump. Pure malice. I’d call it evil. Not just stupid, mendacious, narcissistic, etc. Evil.