Oppose the censure of Rashida Tlaib for speaking out about Gaza

Oppose the censure of Rashida Tlaib for speaking out about Gaza

Emanuel Pastreich

Independent Candidate for President

When the House of Representatives voted to formally censure Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib on November 7 for her criticism of the wanton massacre of civilians by the Israeli military, something died in that awesome chamber of government.

For the first time in history, an American politician was censured not for corruption or for illegal actions, but for the expression of an opinion, and in this case an opinion that an enormous number of people around the world agree with—because that opinion is based on facts that are undisputable.  

When Rashida Tlaib stated,

“There are millions of people across our country who oppose Netanyahu’s extremism and are done watching our government support collective punishment and the use of white phosphorous bombs that melt flesh to the bone.”

What part of her statement was factually incorrect?

The claims that the Israeli military had bombed a hospital in Gaza are well supported by multiple reports. Tlaib was doing the American people a favor by speaking this truth.

Her use of the expression “from the river to the sea” to describe the hopes of the Palestinian people was not a call for the elimination of the Jewish people in any sense. It can be interpreted as a call for the end of a “Jewish state” that is to say a nation in which one ethnic group is awarded special rights by the government. There is amble evidence that this discrimination is a reality in practice, and is affirmed in Israeli law, and that Palestinians are entirely justified to oppose such hypocrisy.

The censure movement passed condemned Tlaib’s overly mild comments on the ongoing massacre for “dangerously promoting false narratives regarding a brutal, large-scale terrorist attack.”

That statement itself should be subject to censure as a “false narrative.”

Coming back to that sad moment, what exactly died on Tuesday with the passing of the censure for Ms. Tlaib? The right of a member of Congress to articulate an independent opinion died at that moment. Of course, it was but the end of a slow death, a spreading silence concerning the Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma bombings, the 9.11 incident, and operation COVID 19, and Ms. Tlaib was involved in that cloying, sickly horrible silence herself as a Democrat.

But as disappointed as we are with every single member of Congress, nevertheless we must also defend Ms. Tlaib because what is being done to her today, now that the silence of oppressive convention and social pressure has morphed into the silence of state repression, will certainly be done to us tomorrow. What is done to Gaza today, will be done to Greensboro and Glendale next week.

Let us be frank. Ms. Tlaib is not permitted as a Congresswoman to talk about the massacre taking place with the full and open support of the United States.

Nor is this repression of democratic opposition to dangerous and immoral policy limited to the United States. In Germany, the display of Palestinian flags has been banned. In India, protests against the Gaza campaign in Kashmir have been outlawed.

Let us not forget that National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stated repeatedly that the United States “has no red lines” in terms of what Israel can do to Palestinians. The only red line is for speaking the truth, be it about 9.11, COVID 19, or Gaza.

There is another example of censure in the House of Representatives that dates back to 1842 and that has ominous parallels with the current action.

Joshua Giddings, representative from Ohio, was censured because he ignored the “gag rule” imposed by the Democrats in House of Representatives on all anti-slavery petitions.

Giddings submitted resolutions in support of slaves who had revolted on the slave ship Creole and forced the crew to sail to the Bahamas where slavery had been abolished. He opposed the demands of the President that those individuals be rendered to the United States as slaves.

Then, as now, the Congress immediately voted to censure him for introducing such forbidden ideas.

But the flood of opposition to slavery could not be stopped by such machinations. So also, the opposition to the massacre of civilians in Gaza will only grow in the months ahead.

This attitude towards the Palestinian people adopted in Jerusalem and Washington is akin to the attitude of those who upheld slavery in the 1840s and 1850s. The authorities then, and now, employed the gaudy spectacle of law and political process to make it appear as if certain people were not human, were not entitled to the same basic rights because they were animals, because they were somehow irredeemable.

That threat to reduce people to sub-human social status, to slavery, is as real today as it was back then. We must stand with the people of Gaza, and similar places around the world, not only because it is right, not only because we uphold justice, but also because, without any doubt, we will be next.