Moolenaar Votes to Censure Tlaib

Today, Congressman John Moolenaar voted to censure Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

"Today’s factual resolution details why Congresswoman Tlaib is deserving of censure. Her use of an anti-Semitic phrase that calls for eliminating Israel is wrong. Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East and no member of Congress should use words that call for it to be wiped off the map,” said Moolenaar. “It was also wrong for her to accuse Israel of genocide, when we know Israel works to protect innocent life, and it is the terrorists who use civilians as human shields.”

The resolution was introduced by Congressman Rich McCormick (R-GA). The resolution passed the House of Representatives 234 to 188 with four members voting present. The resolution can be found below.

RESOLUTION

Censuring Representative Rashida Tlaib for promoting false narratives regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and for calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.

Whereas Israel has existed on its lands for millennia and the United States played a critical role in returning Israel to those lands in 1948 immediately following the Holocaust in recognition of its right to exist and as an indelible signal of our solidarity with the Jewish people;

Whereas Israel is a critical ally to the American people and to our strategic national security interests in the Middle East;

Whereas the people of Israel—including American citizens—were brutally attacked on October 7, 2023, by Hamas;

Whereas Representative Rashida Tlaib, within 24 hours of the October 7 barbaric attack on Jewish citizens of the State of Israel, representing the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, defended the brutal rapes, murders, be-headings, and kidnapping—including of Americans—by Hamas as justified “resistance” to the “apartheid state”;

Whereas Representative Tlaib’s October 8 statement claimed that Hamas’ October 7 attack on the Jewish people was partly attributable to United States security aid provided to Israel, which ignores the fact that the Iron Dome, a co-developed air defense system, saved lives that day by intercepting rockets launched from the Gaza Strip against Israeli civilian targets;

Whereas, on October 18, 2023, Representative Tlaib continued to knowingly spread the false narrative that Israel intentionally bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17 after United States intelligence, Israeli intelligence, and President Biden assessed with high confidence that Israel did not cause the explosion;

Whereas, on November 3, 2023, Representative Tlaib published on social media a video containing the phrase “from the river to the sea”, which is widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea;

Whereas Representative Tlaib doubled down on this call to violence by falsely describing “from the river to the sea” as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence” despite it clearly entailing Israel’s destruction and denial of its fundamental right to exist; and

Whereas Representative Tlaib has repeatedly displayed conduct entirely unbecoming of a Member of the House of Representatives by calling for the destruction of the state of Israel and dangerously promoting false narratives regarding a brutal, large-scale terrorist attack against civilian targets inside the sovereign territory of a major non-NATO ally while hundreds of Israeli and American hostages remain in terrorist captivity: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That Representative Rashida Tlaib be censured.