We’ve written before about how unlike some of her Hamas Caucus colleagues, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has doubled and tripled down on the claim that Israel “bombed” a Gaza hospital despite the fact that all available evidence including photos and video shows that what likely happened was the Palestinian Islamic Jihad misfired a rocket and it exploded in a nearby parking lot.
Not only is the tweet she posted on October 17 (shown below) uncritically accepting the allegation against Israel still up but during a speech she gave Wednesday during a Jews for Hamas rally just steps away from the Capitol complex, she continued to push the claim, stating without evidence that “people think it’s okay to bomb a hospital where children [were].”
Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that.
@POTUS this is what happens when you refuse to facilitate a ceasefire & help de-escalate. Your war and destruction only approach has opened my eyes and many Palestinian Americans and Muslims Americans like me. We will remember where you stood.
Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that. @POTUS this is what happens when you refuse to facilitate a ceasefire & help de-escalate.
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) October 17, 2023
Your war and destruction only approach has opened my eyes and many… https://t.co/mZYoifT7bj
In an update to this story, nearly a week after the alleged “bombing” took place and well after U.S. and Israeli assessments concluded that in no way could the “bomb” have been fired by the IDF, Tlaib has issued a new statement. In it, she quadruples down and says there should be an “independent investigation,” and that she can’t accept the word of Israel or the United States considering they’ve “misled” people in the past during times of war:
“Media outlets and third-party analysts have raised doubts about claims and evidence offered by both Israel and the Gaza Ministry of Health, and I agree with the United Nations that an independent investigation is necessary. I cannot uncritically accept Israel’s denials of responsibility as fact, especially in light of confirmation from the World Health Organization that Israel has bombed numerous medical facilities in Gaza and reports from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society of ongoing threats from the Israeli military to evacuate hospitals.
“Both the Israeli and United States governments have long, documented histories of misleading the public about wars and war crimes—like last year’s Israeli military assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh and the false claims of weapons of mass destruction that led our country into the Iraq War—and cannot clear themselves of responsibility without an independent international investigation. This debate should not distract us from the urgent need for a ceasefire to save innocent civilian lives.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib *still* doesn’t believe that Israel didn’t bomb the hospital in Gaza — doubling down on her misinformation in interview today. pic.twitter.com/sURiyCUqB6
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) October 23, 2023
There is of course a whole lot wrong with what she said, but I want to focus on what she said about how “the Israeli and United States governments have long, documented histories of misleading the public about wars and war crimes.”
This is the big tell here for her, because when it comes to “misleading claims” during war and other times when there has been violence, injury, and/or loss of life between two warring factions, Hamas belongs in the Hall of Shame for their propaganda, which doesn’t just borderline on the misleading and obscene; it leapfrogs over that border to the head of the pack and doesn’t look back.
And yet Tlaib, a Palestinian-American who says she can’t take the words of two countries who have “misled” during war before, accepted without question the word of terrorist-run organizations like the Palestinian “health ministry,” who were releasing allegedly high death toll numbers (later shown to be vastly overestimated) almost immediately after the so-called “bombing” that wasn’t.
If misleading the public was truly a concern for her then she wouldn’t have uncritically accepted initial reports of what happened at the hospital. Period.
The truth of the matter is that there is nothing and no one, not even the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad himself, who would be able to convince her that it was a misfired rocket. Tlaib has been conditioned since birth to believe that Israel is an “oppressor” and is a country whose people don’t deserve to exist, and she will be an antisemitic True Believer on this issue for the rest of her life.
Her statement in my opinion is not that much different than Rep. Ilhan Omar’s attempted walkback of her own tweet about the “hospital bombing.” In the walkback, she, too, called for a “fully independent investigation” so it could be conclusively determined who committed the “war crime.”
But if it was a misfired rocket, it wouldn’t be considered a “war crime.” It’d be more like a “friendly fire” incident of sorts. But Omar truly believes Israel was behind what happened, hence her continuing to call what happened a “war crime.”
I sure hope all the wokesters in the media and on the left who gleefully ushered these women into office in a woke blaze of glory, and the Squad’s apologists in the House are proud of themselves because these two have turned out to be much worse than their critics said they’d be.
