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Tlaib censure over Hamas support fails in Congress

All the Democrats present were joined by 23 Republicans to defeat the resolution, 222-186.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

An effort to censure anti-Israel congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) for her support of Hamas failed in the House of Representatives Wednesday, 222-186.

All the Democrats present were joined by 23 Republicans in motioning to table the resolution introduced by Georgian Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene instead of vote on it, while 13 Democrats and 11 Republicans were absent from the chamber.

Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) cheered the defeat of the motion.

“Tonight, we proved that standing up to bullies works. By not allowing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s repeated offenses to go uncatalogued or unchecked, we defeated a resolution riddled with lies and Islamophobia,” she said in a statement.

“I’m celebrating the fact that the truth prevailed about my friend and colleague Rep. Rashida Tlaib. We couldn’t let one of our own be censured for something that is completely fabricated and racist,” she added.

The resolution said in part that Tlaib deserved the denunciation for her “antisemitic activity, sympathizing with terrorist organizations, and leading an insurrection at the United States Capitol Complex.”

The Palestinian-American legislator has promoted falsehoods about Israel ever since being elected into office in 2019, such as calling it an “apartheid state” when Arab Israelis enjoy equal civil rights and work in all professions alongside Jewish Israelis.

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She has also long defended Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians as being justified due to Israel’s so-called “occupation” of its own historic homeland. She mentioned it but not Hamas atrocities, the day after its October 7 invasion in which the terrorists massacred 1,400 men, women, children and babies and took 242 hostages into Gaza, including infants and Holocaust survivors.

“The path to the future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance,” the resolution noted her as saying.

It also included her social media post that repeated the false Hamas claim two weeks ago that Israel had deliberately fired a missile at a hospital in Gaza City and killed hundreds of people. She did not apologize or remove the post after the IDF showed proof hours later that American intelligence corroborated that the hospital had been hit by a failed rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad from right behind the medical complex, and that the casualty count was wildly inflated.

In fact, she doubled down at the Capitol on October 18, when she addressed hundreds of pro-Palestinians protestors who had gathered in response to a Hamas call for a “day of rage.” More than 300 were arrested during an attempt to stampede into one of the House office buildings.

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Tlaib said that she wanted an “independent investigation” of the incident, since both Israel and the U.S. have “long, documented histories of misleading the public about wars and war crimes.”

Greene’s resolution countered that “Members of Congress who denounce the United States while praising terrorist organizations are unfit to hold office.”

Tlaib still faces investigation in the House Ethics and Foreign Affairs Committees for her actions. The Lawfare Project think tank also submitted a complaint against Tlaib with the Office of Congressional Ethics.