Leading Republicans and Democrats alike have laid out the red carpet for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week, but the only Palestinian-American in Congress—Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan—is determined to crash their party.
Shaming the White House as well as House and Senate leaders, Tlaib said in a statement Tuesday that it was “utterly disgraceful that leaders from both parties” invited Netanyahu to address Congress. She dismissed his visit as “a celebration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”
Tlaib denounced Netanyahu as a war criminal, pointing to the 39,000 Palestinians killed in Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza, 15,000 of whom were children. She said the Israeli leader should be arrested and turned over to the International Criminal Court to stand trial for his crimes.
Her tough words came as politicians and movement leaders alike reorient in the wake of President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race for president and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor on the Democratic ticket.
Tlaib said Sunday that she welcomed the “opportunity to engage” Harris in the work that has to be done to “inspire” the Democratic base in her 12th Congressional District. The way to do that, she made clear, was to embrace a pro-peace, pro-people platform.
“They want to see a permanent ceasefire and an end to the funding of genocide in Gaza,” Tlaib told Harris. “They want to see immigration policies that support a fair and humane system, not one that vilifies immigrants.” Ending fossil fuel subsidies for big energy companies is another priority, she said, along with a building a humane healthcare system and blocking attempts to privatize education.
To cement the unity of the anti-MAGA coalition, Tlaib said voters need to see Democrats “fight against corporate greed that wants to eliminate unions and keep our families in the cycle of poverty.”
Above all, though, looms the issue of Palestine. To start winning back voters in swing-state Michigan who have been turned off by Biden’s backing for Netanyahu, Tlaib told Harris there should be a vote at the Democratic National Convention next month on a resolution “that calls for an arms embargo to stop the Israeli government’s war crimes.”
The Detroit lawmaker’s laser-focus on the continuing flow of U.S. weapons to Israel puts the new Democratic nominee’s stance on the war in Gaza front and center in the campaign. Biden’s unrelenting support for Netanyahu instigated a voter revolt in the Democratic primaries, sparked mass student encampments at universities around the country, and brought millions into the streets to demand a ceasefire over the last several months.
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Michigan, where over 100,000 Democratic voters cast “uncommitted” ballots against Biden in February, is a key swing state in the struggle to prevent a Trump comeback. Arab-Americans are a significant voting bloc there, and they are still angry about the Democratic Party’s Israel policy. Harris can’t afford to lose in places like Michigan, and her campaign is surely aware of that reality.
She is not expected to appear publicly with Netanyahu during his visit to D.C., and she will reportedly skip his address to Congress. She will likely meet with him one-on-one, though, according to news reports.
The visit has left many questioning why Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries went along with the invitation in the first place, given that Netanyahu has openly campaigned for Republicans on multiple occasions and clearly signaled his desire for another Trump presidency.
As for Harris, her moves up to now suggest that she may chart a different rhetorical path on U.S.-Israeli relations, though it is not clear how distinct her practical actions would be from those of her boss.
While her role as vice president largely restricted Harris from breaking publicly with the administration even if she had wanted to, reports have suggested that behind closed doors she urged Biden to take a “stronger stance” against Netanyahu as the civilian death toll in Gaza spiraled.
Josh Paul, the State Department official who resigned in protest over U.S. policy last October, said he had felt “cautious and limited optimism” that Harris would not be so “fixed and intransigent” as Biden had been on the issue of giving Israel weapons with no conditions.
As the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and the damage it was doing to Biden’s candidacy became undeniable, Harris was the first public voice to call for a ceasefire in March. While they were clearly a calculated political move on the part of the Biden campaign, Harris’s remarks broke the dam on what had up to that point been a total stonewalling of criticism of Netanyahu or the war crimes of the IDF.
“The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses,” Harris said in March, “and given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire” for at least six weeks.
Harris told The Nation magazine earlier this month that she would take a different “tone” on Gaza in comparison to Biden. Since becoming the presumptive nominee, however, she has neither spoken publicly on the war nor suggested any changes to U.S. policy.
Peace and ceasefire activists think now is the time when Harris could signal a more significant break from her predecessor, even if she has no direct power over foreign policy unless and until she becomes president. Combined with a progressive domestic agenda, it could help further electrify a groundswell of support for her campaign.
Tlaib, as well as the thousands of trade unionists protesting Netanyahu’s visit in Washington, say that break should take the form of an immediate and total cut of all military aid to Israel.
Over $141 billion worth of weapons have been supplied to the Israeli government by the U.S. since 1948. A staggering $17.9 billion of that has been sent in just the last eight months. Tlaib highlighted the human targets that are on the receiving end of U.S. bombs and ammunition in her Tuesday letter.
“Netanyahu’s apartheid regime has already slaughtered” thousands, she said, “yet my colleagues and the Biden administration continue to approve more funding and send more weapons—even as innocent children like Hind Rajab are targeted with 355 bullets, shot in the head by Israeli snipers, burned to death in their tents with U.S.-made weapons, bombed while playing at school, deliberately starved to death, …bombed in refugee camps and discovered in mass graves.”
She called it a “sad day for democracy” when “hypocritical” U.S. politicians “smile for a photo op with a man who is actively committing genocide” while they claim to be “concerned about the massive death toll.”
While it is too early to predict which direction Harris will go on the issue of weapons shipments and subsidies to the Israeli war machine, leaders like Tlaib are determined to push the next Democratic administration off the path of complicity followed by Biden.
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