Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib Censured

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The House voted late Tuesday to censure Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — the only Palestinian American in Congress — an extraordinary rebuke of her rhetoric about the Israel-Hamas war.

The 234-188 tally came after enough Democrats joined with Republicans to censure Tlaib, a punishment one step below expulsion from the House. The three-term congresswoman has long been a target of criticism for her views on the decades-long conflict in the Middle East.

The debate on the censure resolution on Tuesday afternoon was emotional and intense. Republican Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia pushed the censure measure in response to what he called Tlaib’s promotion of antisemitic rhetoric. He said she has “levied unbelievable falsehoods about our greatest ally, Israel, and the attack on October 7.”

With other Democrats standing by her side, Tlaib defended her stance, saying she “will not be silenced and I will not let you distort my words.”

Tlaib added that her criticism of the Jewish state has always been directed toward its government and its leadership under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“It is important to separate people and government,” she said. “The idea that criticizing the government of Israel is antisemitic sets a very dangerous precedent. And it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation.”

Democrats stood by Tlaib and helped defeat an initial censure resolution against her last week. But since then, many of her colleagues, including prominent Jewish members, have become more conflicted about her rhetoric about the war, especially because of a slogan she has used frequently that is widely seen as calling for the eradication of Israel.

The measure advanced earlier Tuesday and was rushed to the floor for a final vote.

Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill., the lone Democrat to vote with Republicans on Tuesday to advance the censure resolution, said he believed it was important to debate the slogan “from the river to the sea.”

“It is nothing else but the call for the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews,” the Jewish Democrat said. “I will always defend the right to free speech. Tlaib has the right to say whatever she wants.”

He added, “But it cannot go unanswered.” It was unclear if Schneider would support the resolution on final passage.

While the censure of a lawmaker carries no practical effect, it amounts to a severe reproach from colleagues, as lawmakers who are censured are asked to stand in the well of the House as the censure resolution against them is read aloud.

With the vote, Tlaib will become the second Muslim-American woman in Congress to be formally admonished this year for her criticism of the Jewish state. Rep. Ilhan Omar, R-Minn., was removed in February from the House Foreign Affairs Committee for similar comments she made about Israel.

The censure push resulted in a dramatic vote on the House floor amid political tensions over the ongoing, deadly Israel-Hamas war. While the majority of both parties have historically stood firmly on the side of Israel, divisions have emerged in the Democratic Party about the American response.

While the vote against Tlaib will take place against the extraordinary backdrop of the war, the push to censure her is part of a growing pattern in the House.

Censure had long been viewed as a punishment of last resort, just one step below expulsion and to be triggered only for the most egregious wrongdoing. But censure resolutions are quickly becoming routine in the chamber, often wielded in strikingly partisan ways.

Many Democrats and some Republicans who opposed censuring Tlaib cited free speech and warned of the precedent it would set.

“This resolution not only degrades our Constitution, but it cheapens the meaning of discipline in this body for people who actually commit wrongful actions like bribery, fraud, violent assault and so on,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who defended Tlaib against the resolution on the floor late Tuesday.

Palestine has a piece of land on the sea, and a piece of land along the Jordan River.

But they dont link up to form a contiguous piece of land.

So Palestine does not stretch from "river to sea" the way that the USA stretches from "sea to shining sea".

And actually neither does Israel (Israel sans the Occupied Territories). Though Israel is a contiguous piece of land the western banks of the Jordan River are mostly in...well..."the West Bank"(owned by Palestine).

Extremists on both sides (Zionist and Arab) both demand an "Israel/Palestine stretching from river to sea". Implying major ethnic cleansing either way...to achieve whichever dream they are espousing.

So if a US congresswoman spouts "river to sea" talk it implies some serious radicalism on the issue.

Not cancel culture; she said something genuinely offensive, in public, and was rebuked by her colleagues for it, totally normal stuff. This isn't a truck driver absently making an "OK" gesture and getting fired because a dumb liberal got the vapors, or some kid who had an ancient and at the time anodyne remark unearthed years later and used to damage their reputation.

Not cancel culture; she said something genuinely offensive, in public, and was rebuked by her colleagues for it, totally normal stuff. This isn't a truck driver absently making an "OK" gesture and getting fired because a dumb liberal got the vapors, or some kid who had an ancient and at the time anodyne remark unearthed years later and used to damage their reputation.

And I do believe in generally “From River to Sea - Palestine will be free” is a call for genocide.

Since I am not a mind reader I have no idea what Representative Tlaib means by it.

“So much is about ‘let’s choose a side,’” she continued, opining on the Israeli-Arab conflict. “I am for making sure that every single person there has every right to thrive.”

[...]

“One state,” she said in response to a question about whether she supports a one- or two-state solution. “It has to be one state. Separate but equal does not work. I’m only 42 years old but my teachers were of that generation that marched with Martin Luther King. This whole idea of a two-state solution, it doesn’t work.”

The important question is what the majority of people who chant that slogan actually mean.

As this Al Jazeera article points out, “From the River to the Sea - Palestine will be free” is an English-language slogan -- it rhymes in English, not Arabic. So it's primarily a slogan of Western Palestinian sympathizers who have given up on the idea of a two-state solution.

And, as far as I can tell, most people in this category see Israel as being similar to Apartheid-era South Africa, for which the eventual solution was a single state encompassing everyone, with equal rights. This would actually be the one solution that does NOT require ethnic cleansing of any kind, genocidal or otherwise, against either Jews or indigenous Palestinians.

More generally, "From river to sea" and similar expressions are used by a wide variety of people (including people in Israel/Palestine) who favor a single state, of whatever kind and from whatever point of view (including Likud's "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty").


Rashida Tlaib spells out her position here:

I find it hard to believe whomever popularized the phrase in recent years did not have a ethnic cleansing/genocidal intent. When you put it in the context of all else that has been going on is hard to come to any other conclusion.

Legal as it is I definitely put the poster ripping in the same category. When you rip down a poster of a hostage especially a child or baby you are saying symbolically that group should not exist

FWIW in the context of “creating facts on the ground” , Likud's "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty" is in that same ethnic cleansing/genocidal category.

Putting the correctness of my interpretation of the slogan aside when you spend years criticizing cancel culture, saying one must stop being being snowflakes, saying one needs to be deal with speech one finds offensive it is the height of hypocrisy to say this is so bad let’s make an exception. You make that one exception it becomes easier to make then next one, then even easier to make the next one after that. That is just human nature.

I have spent the last few years warning about the dangers of calling into question election results one does not like. Tlaib is a legitimately elected Congresswomen probably representing the views of her district. While censure is not expulsion it is the closest thing congress can do sans expulsion.

In conclusion in the context of climate of America in the last few years makes censuring Tlaib is both too easy and reckless.

Would a representative have been censured if something like that was said 30 years ago? Universally condemned, yes. Formally censored I doubt it.

What has changed? Situations like those you described above have made it more acceptable to try and silence all levels of offensive speech perceived or otherwise.

Kessler's death is likely to be upgraded to a hate crime, His killers seem to fled the scene when the cops turned up.