After Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) blocked Rashida Tlaib’s (D., Mich.) attempt to host an anti-Israel event at the Capitol, the progressive lawmaker decided to move the event to a Senate hearing room.
“Let the headlines read ‘McCarthy tries to erase Palestine but fails,'” Tlaib said.
Tlaib condemned the speaker’s move on Wednesday, calling it an attempt to “erase the existence and truth of the Palestinian people.”
“This event is planned to bring awareness about the Nakba and create space for Palestinian Americans who experienced the Nakba firsthand to tell their stories of trauma and survival,” Tlaib stated in a press release before the event was held on Wednesday night in the Dirksen Senate building.
“Nakba” is an Arabic word used to describe the founding of Israel as a “catastrophe.”
McCarthy plans to “host a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the U.S.-Israel relationship” in the House on Sunday.
“It’s wrong for members of Congress to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes about Israel,” McCarthy said in a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, which first broke the story. “As long as I’m Speaker, we are going to support Israel’s right to self-determination and self-defense, unequivocally and in a bipartisan fashion.”
The event, entitled “Nakba 75” included several groups that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement against Israel, whose members and policies, some have argued, are antisemitic.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), applauded McCarthy’s move on Twitter saying he was “grateful.”
“In previous years, many Nakba Day events have devolved into hateful, anti-Israel and even antisemitic language,” Greenblatt wrote.
Tlaib has repeatedly engaged in antisemitic conduct throughout her tenure. In August 2019, she retweeted a cartoon by Carlos Latuff, a Brazilian artist who placed second in Iran’s International Holocaust Cartoon Contest in 2006.
Oof. Looks like both Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib shared this awful Carlos Latuff cartoon in Instagram stories yesterday. In 2006, Latuff came in second in Iran's International Holocaust Cartoon Contest, which is a thing that exists, in case you thought the TL couldn't get any worse. pic.twitter.com/uwyBPAsz7T
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) August 18, 2019
The following year, Tlaib shared a tweet including the phrase “From the River to the Sea,” a slogan used by Palestinian activists advocating the dismantling of Israel.
The quarrel comes on the heels of McCarthy’s recent trip to Israel, during which he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the country remains mired in contentious discussions surrounding its judicial reform bill.
https://twitter.com/AdamAlbilya/status/1653023544618414081
“I am delighted to welcome to Jerusalem, to the Knesset, an old friend of mine, and an old friend and a trusted friend of the state of Israel, Kevin McCarthy. He has been a champion of the Israeli-American alliance and I think we have no better friend,” Netanyahu said during a joint press conference in early May.
“The bonds between our countries have only grown each and every year since Israel‘s declaration of independence, and I look to the next 75 years,” McCarthy told reporters during the meeting.