U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib on Wednesday ripped the White House for admonishing Rep. Cori Bush's vow to fight the American Israel Public Affairs Committee after the powerful lobby group spent millions of dollars to unseat the Missouri Democrat for opposing Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza.
AIPAC's dark money arm, United Democracy Project (UDP), spent $8 million in support of Bush's opponent, St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, in the second-most expensive House race ever. UDP
spent $15 million to defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), another "Squad" member who has criticized Israel's war on Gaza. AIPAC has vowed to spend $100 million to unseat progressive lawmakers—many of them Black and brown—who it deems insufficiently supportive of Israel.
In a defiant
concession speech on Tuesday night, Bush declared, "AIPAC, I'm coming to tear your kingdom down!"
"All they did was radicalize me, so now they need to be afraid," she added.
Asked Wednesday if President Joe Biden had any opinion regarding Bush's remarks, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre—who in 2019, before her current job,
called AIPAC "severely racist"—linked the congresswoman's speech to last month's attempt to kill former President Donald Trump.
"The president has always been very clear—and very recently, after the assassination attempt of the last president—about lowering rhetoric, right?" Jean-Pierre
said. "It is important... that we be very mindful of what we say. This kind of rhetoric is inflammatory and divisive and incredibly unhelpful."
Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress,
responded on social media: "You know what's not helpful? Sending bombs to be used for war crimes and killing thousands of children. You know what's not helpful? Attacking a sitting U.S. congressmember, while the org you are defending is funding anti-abortion and insurrectionists (sic) candidates."
Despite Israeli forces killing nearly 40,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—wounding more than 90,000 others, forcibly displacing around 90% of Gaza's population, and starving children to death with a crippling siege, the Biden administration continues give Israel billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic support including multiple United Nations Security Council vetoes.
On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running against Trump, was
interrupted by pro-Palestine protesters during a campaign rally in Detroit, home to one of the nation's largest Muslim communities.
They chanted: "Kamala, Kamala, you can't hide! We won't vote for genocide!"
Harris, staring down the hecklers,
replied: "You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I'm speaking."
According to AIPAC Tracker, Harris, has taken nearly $5.4 million in campaign contributions from AIPAC as either an individual candidate or Biden's running mate.
Leaders of the Uncommitted National Movement—a coalition of pro-Palestine, peace, and progressive groups that urged people to vote "uncommitted" in U.S. Democratic presidential primaries in a bid to pressure the Biden administration to push Israel for a Gaza cease-fire—said they met briefly with Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, at the Detroit rally.
"The vice president shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting with Uncommitted leaders to discuss an arms embargo," the group said.
However, Harris' national security adviser, Phil Gordon, said on social media Thursday that the vice president "does not support an arms embargo on Israel" and "will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups."
Early in the war, Bush introduced a cease-fire resolution supported by 18 other House Democrats. This and other pro-Palestine advocacy, including support for an arms embargo, drew the ire of AIPAC and others supporting a war for which Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the World Court. Dozens of other lawmakers have also called for a Gaza cease-fire.
Such opposition to Israeli policies and practices was once all but unimaginable.
"Over the last two decades, we have seen quite a remarkable shift in opinion on this issue among Democrats in particular," Palestinian American author and political analyst Yousef Munayyer wrote for The Guardian on Wednesday. "Numerous public opinion polls all provide evidence of the same trend. Democrats especially, but also Independents, have grown less sympathetic to Israel over time. A Pew poll from March 2023 found that for the first time, Democrats had more sympathy for Palestinians than Israelis."
Munayyer continued:
The support for Israel once enjoyed in the U.S., when people took it to be as normal as the sun rising every day, is gone. Maintaining what support is left will require persuasion—which isn't easy given they are trying to persuade audiences to support war crimes—and increasingly coercion. That era of coercion and repression is what we are quickly transitioning to and will shape the years to come, but that too comes with reputational costs for pro-Israel forces and will eventually collapse as well.
"When it does," he added, "voices like Cori Bush's will be commonplace in our political class and she will be remembered for valiantly standing up for the rights of Palestinians when too many still did not have the political courage to do so."
