Rashida Tlaib

Rashida Tlaib was born in 1976 and is currently serving as the U.S. Representative for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District.

Tlaib was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections. Prior to joining Congress, she served as a member of the Michigan House of Representatives. She was first elected there in 2008 and was reelected in 2010 and in 2012. In 2014 she ran unsuccessfully for the Michigan Senate. Tlaib is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

U.S. Representative Tlaib is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives who has repeatedly used anti-Semitic and anti-Israel language, and has expressed support for the anti-Israel BDS movement.

In August 2019, the Israeli government decided to deny her, along with Rep. Ilhan Omar, from entering the country because of their support of the BDS movement. Tlaib was then allowed by Israel to enter so she could see her family, but chose not to travel.

In a press conference with Rep. Ilhan Omar, after Israel’s decision not to allow them to enter the country, Rep. Tlaib drew an analogy between herself and former Rep. Charles Coles Diggs Jr. (D-Mich.), who was denied entry from apartheid South Africa in 1972, saying that “history does have a habit of repeating itself.”

In July 2019, Representative Tlaib called the anti-BDS House Resolution 246 “unconstitutional,” claiming it infringes on 1st Amendment right, and called Israel’s policies “blatantly racist.”

Tlaib has said that she opposes the two-state solution and supports a one-state solution that would eventually lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state. Representative Tlaib is a supporter of the discriminatory Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that singularly targets Israel and aims to delegitimize it. Congresswoman Tlaib has declared that she would vote against security assistance to Israel and has called it “an apartheid regime”.

In a tweet, Representative Tlaib implicitly accused supporters of Israel for dual loyalties, an anti-Semitic trope, when tweeting “they forgot which country they represent”. In the past, Rep. Tlaib wrote for “The Final Call”, a blog published by Louis Farrakhan, an anti-Semite that routinely accuses Jews of manipulating the U.S. government and levers of world power.

In May 2019, Representative Tlaib made misleading remarks about the Holocaust and misrepresented history by claiming Palestinians gave “safe heaven” to Jews fleeing Europe during the Holocaust.

In June 2019, Representative Tlaib cosponsored Rep. Betty McCollum’s House Bill 2407, which accuses Israel of detaining, interrogating, and ill-treating Palestinian minors, asking the State Department to withhold U.S. security assistance funds to Israel that are allegedly used for this purpose.