Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Rep. Rashida Tlaib can call a war criminal what he is and by juxtaposition, expose those applauding him as the useful idiots for genocide that they are.
When I heard that several Democrats (and a Republican) would boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a Joint Session of Congress, I was curious what Tlaib – the first Palestinian-American elected to either chamber – would do.
Would she disrupt Netanyahu and be sent to the Congress jail that Speaker Mike Johnson threatened as the fate of any congresspeople who interrupted the Israeli?
By holding up a sign saying “War Criminal” on one side and “Guilty of Genocide” on the other, Tlaib did much more damage.
She created an image for the history books–an unprecedented and vociferous challenge within one of the three branches of power in the U.S. to the leader of a country accustomed to bipartisan and unquestioning support.
Photo: Anna Moneymaker/AP
And at a time when we are debating once again if the U.S. is ready to catch up to the 28 other countries around the world currently led by a woman, Tlaib is both a reminder why identity politics matter and the rejoinder to those who insist that Vice President Kamala Harris’ identities alone are enough to win her the support of those who share those identities.
Tlaib’s identities matter because of how she uses them to speak truth to power.
"I will never back down in speaking truth to power,” Tlaib wrote on Twitter after her Congress protest. “The apartheid government of Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. Palestinians will not be erased. Solidarity with all those outside of these walls in the streets protesting and exercising their right to dissent."
It matters that Tlaib is the first Palestinian-American woman in Congress.
“This is so personal for me. I am a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist; that we are human; that we are allowed to dream. We are mothers, daughters, granddaughters. We are justice-seekers, and are unapologetically about our fight against oppressions of all forms,” she said in a personal and powerful May 2021 speech from the House floor about the humanity of Palestinians and the urgent need to dismantle Israeli apartheid. She was speaking during Israeli bombardment of Gaza at the time..
She was born in the United States but her extended family live in the Palestinian village of Beit Ur Al-Fauqa in the occupied West Bank.
“If there’s one thing Detroit instilled in this Palestinian girl from Southwest, it’s that you always speak truth to power, even if your voice shakes. The freedom of Palestinians is connected to the fight against oppression all over the world,” she has said.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib is both a reminder why identity politics matter and the rejoinder to those who insist that Vice President Kamala Harris’ identities alone are enough to win her the support of those who share those identities.
It matters that Tlaib, from Michigan’s 13th District, has proudly vaunted her Palestinian heritage.
She took her oath using a Quran that was a gift from a best friend of 25 years and wore a Palestinian thob, a traditional dress with elaborate embroidery. The aesthetic choice inspired novelist Susan Muaddi Darraj to launch #TweetYourThob as a call for Palestinian American women to post pictures wearing their thob.
It matters that a few hours after she took her oath, in January 2019, Tlaib was filmed at a private gathering with friends and supporters celebrating the importance of being true to oneself.
“I didn’t change or try to run away from being Arabeyya, Muslimah, Falestenyya (Arab, Muslim, Palestinian) and… it’s such an addition on top of that to being a badass organizer. Don’t ever let anyone take away your roots, culture, who you are because when you (don’t change) people love you and you win.”
Tlaib is no stranger to being the only one who refuses to join a sea of approval.
Unlike many of her fellow progressives who expressed their support for President Joe Biden before he decided to halt his campaign for re-election and endorse Harris in his place, Tlaib refused to throw her weight behind a man who is complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the primary enabler of Netanyahu’s barbarism.
There is an image for that too.
President Biden speaks with Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib, left, and Rep. Debbie Dingell, both of Michigan, on his arrival at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on May 18, 2021. (Evan Vucci/AP)
In May 2021, Tlaib confronted Biden on the tarmac in her home state Michigan.
"Palestinian human rights are not a bargaining chip and must be protected, not negotiated," an aide said Tlaib told Biden. "The U.S. cannot continue to give the right-wing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians. Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with U.S.-supplied weapons."
It was an unprecedented move because Tlaib is unprecedented.
She did not instantly support Harris when Biden endorsed the vice president as his successor, but instead said she welcomed the “opportunity to work with Vice President Harris” on issues that Tlaib’s constituents cared about: e.g. permanent ceasefire, end funding of genocide in Gaza; humane immigration system; path to end fossil fuel subsidies; fight corporate greed.
Tlaib, who is running uncontested in the primary on August 6,, is bipartisan in her insistence on calling out fascism and all who enable it.
She ended that celebratory speech in 2019 with friends and supporters with her now famous statement of intent targeting Trump: “We’re gonna go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.”
It is not enough to vote for a woman simply because she’s a woman, or Palestinian, or Muslim. What will that woman, Palestinian, Muslim do to fight the powers that oppress those who share those identities?
It matters that a Palestinian-American, Muslim woman disrupts and disturbs the white men of the U.S. political patriarchy, on both sides of the aisle. Long before she called Trump a “motherfucker,” Tlaib was telling him to fuck off.
In August, 2016, along with 12 other women, Tlaib famously disrupted a speech Trump was giving in Detroit. It matters that, as Tlaib did during her election victory remarks, she highlighted her identities as fueling her determination to disrupt Trump.
“American, parent, Muslim, Arab-American, and woman. As I thought about my identities, I felt more and more that confronting Trump was the most patriotic and courageous act I could pursue,” she later said.
Tlaib knows the price she pays for using her identities to confront the powerful.
In August 2019, just six months after she vowed to impeach the motherfucker and at the behest of that motherfucker, Netanyahu blocked entry to Israel for Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar, the only Muslim-American women elected to Congress. It was the first time a U.S. president urged another country to bar entry to representatives of any of the three branches of the U.S. government.
Whether Israel barred them entry because of their support for BDS or because Trump pushed for them to be barred, it matters that they so disturbed these two fascist fucks who appeal to a racist, misogynist, and bigoted base for support.
Tlaib and Omar’s support for Palestinians is an expression of their identities–Muslim, Palestinian, Black, refugee– and also their progressive politics. from which they formulated rare and unprecedented questioning of U.S. support for Israel.
From disrupting Trump to confronting Biden, from disrupting the sacrosanct to confronting the smug, it is thrilling to see Tlaib model the power of identity politics for the win.
And while being the first is certainly lonely, it is also an opportunity to break with the unquestioning, and a chance to speak the unheard of. Tlaib is a disruptor who signals that if there was a way to do things before she arrived, that way was not her destination.
Since their election to Congress, Tlaib and Omar have challenged the sacrosanct U.S. support for Israel, creating a “tectonic” shift among Democrats towards a country accustomed to unquestioned bipartisan support.
In 2019 when she made comments that suggested American support for Israel was fueled by political donations from the pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Foreign Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Omar apologized. It mattered that she insisted that Americans reexamine the role of lobbyists in their politics, including in the role of American foreign policy on Israel.
She caused a firestorm. She forced the most forthright examination of that policy which I have seen since moving to the U.S. in 2000.. And that mattered.
It has certainly mattered to AIPAC, which has used Islamophobic and racist incitement against Omar, a Black, Muslim woman.
In 2020, an AIPAC ad said that Omar and Tlaib were more “sinister” than ISIS.
Since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, AIPAC’s impact on U.S. politics has come under more scrutiny than I have ever seen..
In May, enough Democrats joined with Republicans to censure Tlaib, a punishment one step below expulsion from the House, for remarks she made about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Last week, enough Democrats to notice refused to attend Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Nearly half of congressional Democrats declined to attend the speech, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Something has changed.
Inside those chambers, Tlaib has forced those other Democrats into a moral reckoning.
Tlaib knows the importance and power of her identities and more importantly, she knows how to use them to disturb and disrupt the powerful.
It is not enough to vote for a woman simply because she’s a woman, or Palestinian, or Muslim. What will that woman, Palestinian, Muslim do to fight the powers that oppress those who share those identities?
From disrupting Trump to confronting Biden, from disrupting the sacrosanct to confronting the smug, it is thrilling to see Tlaib model the power of identity politics for the win.
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Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
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