Democrat Tlaib defended over Holocaust comments
US Democratic leaders on Monday rallied behind a newly appointed congresswoman after President Donald Trump and other Republicans attacked her over comments about the Holocaust and Palestinians.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer each issued statements on Twitter saying Mr Trump and other Republicans should apologise to Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American from Michigan and one of two Muslim women in Congress. Presidential candidate and senator Bernie Sanders also weighed in.
On the Yahoo News podcast Skullduggery on Friday, Ms Tlaib was asked about her support for a one-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
She said: “There’s kind of a calming feeling I always tell folks when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, have been wiped out, and some people’s passports.
“I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post the Holocaust, post the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time, and I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away, right, and it was forced on them,” she said.
Congressional Republicans attacked Ms Tlaib at the weekend, with House Republican Whip Steve Scalise labelling her comments anti-Semitic. “More than six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust; there is nothing ‘calming’ about that fact,” Mr Scalise said.
Mr Trump joined them on Monday with a tweet calling Ms Tlaib’s remarks “horrible and highly insensitive”.
“She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people,” he said.
Ms Pelosi and Mr Hoyer said Mr Trump and House Republicans had taken Ms Tlaib’s words out of context. They “should apologise to Tlaib and the American people for their gross misrepresentations,” Ms Pelosi wrote on Twitter.
Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, on Monday called Ms Tlaib’s words “grossly anti-Semitic and ignorant”.
“You should take some time to learn the history before trying to rewrite it,” he said on Twitter.