Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a progressive member of the anti-Israel “squad” in Congress, accused Israel of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” in Lebanon and said there should be a total U.S. arms embargo on the Jewish state.
“As we approach the celebration of Eid al-Fitr, thousands of our families with strong ties to Lebanon are struggling right now,” she stated. “This year’s Eid feels different for us. I know many have lost loved ones, watched their grandparents’ homes be bombed and seen relatives uprooted from their neighborhoods.”
The statement came just days after a gunman rammed a truck into a Michigan synagogue with a school and shot at security guards, and after the New York Times and others were criticized for appearing to justify the attacks by explaining that the attacker lost relatives in strikes in Lebanon. It later emerged that those relatives were members of the Hezbollah terror organization.
Tlaib said that the attacks on the terror organization amounted to “ethnic cleansing” that “has already killed nearly 1,000 people, including over 100 children.”
“One million people—one fifth of Lebanon’s entire population—have been forcibly displaced and told by the Israeli military that they will not be allowed to return home,” she wrote. “This is all being supported and enabled by our tax dollars.”
“We are witnessing the same genocidal playbook used against Palestinians in Gaza, now in Lebanon,” she stated.
“You have to wonder why she defends the invasion and mass slaughter by Hamas that started this on Oct. 7, and the thousands of rockets by Hezbollah against Israelis that resumed on Oct. 8,” stated Jeff Robbins, an attorney, former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts and former board member at several Jewish groups.
“You wonder what she thinks Israel is supposed to do about it,” he said. “Always the same stuff from her.”
