Rashida Tlaib denounces Iron Dome funding bill for ‘apartheid’ Israel

Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan is the first lawmaker speaking on the US House floor to say she’ll vote against the Iron Dome Supplemental Appropriations Act.

“I will not support an effort to enable war crimes and human rights abuses and violence. We cannot be talking only about Israelis need for safety at a time when Palestinians are living under a violent apartheid system, and are dying from what Human Rights Watch has said are war crimes,” the Palestinian-American lawmaker says.

“The bill claims to be, quote, a ‘replenishment’ for weapons apartheid Israel used in a crisis it manufactured when it attacked worshippers at one of the most holiest Islamic locations, the al-Aqsa Mosque, committing again numerous war crimes,” she claims.

“Israel is an apartheid regime — [these are] not my words, but the words of Human Rights Watch and the words of Israel’s own human rights organization B’Tselem,” she adds. “I urge my colleagues to please stand with me in supporting human rights for all.”

After her remarks, Republican Representative Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee and Democrat Ted Deutch of Florida rise after another to accuse Tlaib of antisemitism.

“To advocate for the dismantling of the one Jewish state in the world, when there’s no place on the map for one Jewish state, that’s antisemitism and I reject that,” Deutch says in a fiery address.