Kin cheer first Palestinian-american in US Congress
WEST BANK: Tuning into the news at dawn on Wednesday, the extended family of Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian-american woman to be elected to the US Congress, celebrated her victory in their home in the Israeli occupied West Bank.
Tlaib, a Democrat, ran virtually unopposed in Michigan’s 13th congressional district, which encompasses southwest Detroit and its suburbs west to the city of Dearborn. She previously served in Michigan’s state legislature.
She has become “a source of pride for Palestine and the entire Arab and Muslim world,” her uncle, Bassam Tlaib, said in the small village of Beit Ur Al-fauqa.
With her win, Tlaib, 44, will become the first Palestinian-american woman to serve in the US Congress. Alongside incoming Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, she will also be one of the first Muslim women to join the congressional ranks.
“I’m going to speak truth to power,” Tlaib told the Detroit Free Press on election night on Tuesday. “I obviously have a set agenda that’s not going to be a priority for the current president but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to push back.”
Tlaib’s district is home to one of the largest Arab-american populations in the US. Her win highlights a wave of Palestinian diaspora candidates and activists who have embraced the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.
In California’s 50th district, Ammar Campa-najjar, a Palestinianamerican who spent part of his childhood in Gaza and whose father served in the Palestinian Authority, was in a close race with incumbent Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter, early results showed.
“The success of (Tlaib and Campanajjar’s) progressive messaging on a wide range of issues, including Palestine, is reflective of a shifting public discourse that Palestine activists have played a role in shaping,” said Omar Baddar, deputy director of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.