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Hamas supporting Rashida Tlaib meets with fringe anti-Israel group

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JVP has long been criticized for allegedly celebrating and advocating terrorism.

By Jack Elbaum, The Algemeiner

US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) on Wednesday met with a group of activists representing a fringe anti-Israel organization that did not condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and has long celebrated terrorism against Israelis.

Tlaib posted a picture on social media with a group of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) activists who visited her office, writing, “I am so grateful for @JVPLive Rabbis on the Hill for standing with us in solidarity to demand a lasting ceasefire in Gaza. I am so inspired by their advocacy to save lives, no matter their faith or ethnicity, and their commitment to uplifting the human dignity of Palestinians.”

In response to Tlaib’s meeting, pro-Israel activist Hen Mazzig wrote on X/Twitter: “The Jewish community knows which viewpoints from our community are mainstream or fringe, when we’re correctly being represented or not.”

“Tokenizing Jews is never to heal your relationship with our community; it’s to play kosher to people who don’t know better,” he continued.

JVP has long been criticized for allegedly celebrating and advocating terrorism.

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On Oct. 7, it reposted a user who wrote, “Today’s events are more than just an operation, uprising, revolt, etc. Palestinian bulldozers tearing down the barrier that imprisoned them for more than 16 years is symbolic of Gaza’s defiance in the face of decades of siege, massacres, & occupation.”

Hamas terrorists launched a surprise invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, murdering 1,200 people, kidnapping 253 others as hostages, and launching the current war in Gaza.

Nonetheless, JVP wrote in an official statement on Oct. 7 that while it “grieve[s] the lives of those already lost,” Israel’s “war on Palestinians started over 75 years ago. Israeli apartheid and occupation — and United States complicity in that oppression — are the source of all this violence. Reality is shaped by when you start the clock.”

“Inevitably, oppressed people everywhere will seek — and gain — their freedom,” JVP added. “We all deserve liberation, safety, and equality. The only way to get there is by uprooting the sources of the violence, beginning with our own government’s complicity.”

JVP has also created and distributed flyers that read “L’Chaim Intifada.”

The flyer was created in 2003, at the height of the second intifada, which featured more than 130 suicide bombings against Israeli civilians and countless shooting and stabbing attacks.

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The flyer also included a celebratory picture of Leila Khaled, a Palestinian terrorist who hijacked a plane in 1969 and attempted to do it again a year later.

Reportedly, the poster was intended to commemorate the first intifada, which included the murder of almost 300 Israelis but was significantly less violent than the second intifada.

JVP also supports rallies calling to “globalize the intifada” and chants of “there is only one solution, intifada revolution,” which many take to mean an increase in suicide bombings and other terror attacks against Jews and Israelis.

This is not the first time Tlaib has met with fringe figures. In January, she participated in an event with a woman who defended Hamas, doubted that it used sexual and gender-based violence on Oct. 7, and compared Gaza to the infamous Auschwitz extermination camp used by the Nazis.

“Hamas members, like all Palestinians, just want freedom. They have always warmly welcomed people, irrespective of religion and nationality, including Jewish Israelis, who come in solidarity, not as occupiers,” the woman Tlaib appeared with wrote in November.

Additionally, in February, Tlaib was the only House member not to vote “yes” on a resolution that condemned Hamas’ use of sexual and gender-based violence on Oct. 7.

Tlaib explained she voted “present” because the resolution “completely ignores and erases any sexual violence and abuse committed by the Israeli forces, against Palestinians, especially children.”

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The vote caused significant backlash, with Michael Dickson, executive director of the pro-Israel group StandWithUs, saying, “Rashida Tlaib is so racist she cannot bring herself to condemn the brutal rape of women used by Hamas as a weapon of war … because the women that were raped were Jewish Israelis. A new low. Most American women — and men — will recoil in horror at her vote.”

After the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, Tlaib flew a Palestinian flag outside her home and seemingly blamed Israel for the attack, accusing the Jewish state of having an “apartheid system” that fosters “conditions that can lead to resistance.”

Tlaib and other members of the so-called “Squad” of far left progressive House members came under fire for slamming Israel without condemning Hamas by name.

Tlaib also accused US President Joe Biden of supporting a “genocide” against Palestinians by backing Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of the Hamas onslaught.

In November, Tlaib was censured by her colleagues in the US House of Representatives for her recent spate of anti-Israel comments amid the Jewish state’s war with Hamas.

The censure measure accused Tlaib of “promoting false narratives” regarding Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion and of “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.”