WASHINGTON: US lawmaker Rashida Tlaib has accused the Joe Biden administration of funding a “genocide” against Palestinians and put the onus on Israeli military for bombing a hospital in Gaza, Fox News reported.
Rep Tlaib, the sole Palestinian American in the US Congress while addressing a pro-Parlestine rally on Capitol Hill on Wednesday broke down into tears and called for a ceasefire in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
“That’s what’s been really painful — just continue to watch people think it’s okay to bomb a hospital where children. You know, what’s so hard sometimes is watching those videos and the people telling the kids, ‘Don’t cry.’ But like, let them cry! And they’re shaking, and somebody — you know this — they keep telling them not to cry in Arabic. They can cry, I can cry, we all can cry. If we’re not crying, something is wrong,” Tlaib said.
“I’m telling you right now President Biden, not all America is with you on this one. And you need to wake up and understand that,” she added. “We are literally watching people commit genocide and killing a vast majority… and we still stand by and say nothing. We will remember this.”
Still intermittently crying, she went on to tell protesters they were “on the right side of history.”Tlaib first repeated Hamas’ claim that Israel bombed the hospital in a Tuesday post on X after news of the explosion broke. Hamas continues to push the narrative despite video evidence and an assessment from the US National Security Council that a terrorist group’s own rockets caused the reported damage and deaths, Fox News reported.
“Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that,” Tlaib tweeted on X platform.
Rep Ilhan Omar also called for a ceasefire in a tweet on Tuesday and stated that “the IDF reportedly blowing up” the hospital is “horrific.”
She subsequently called for a “fully independent investigation to determine conclusively who is responsible for this war crime.”
The remarks by Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have shown the “continuing fault lines within the Democratic Party on Israel, with the two representatives standing out in criticizing Israel’s government as other Democrats have said they do not believe Israel was responsible for the explosion,” ABC News said.
Republican lawmakers have also called on the two lawmakers to apologize and retract their tweets.
Rep. Mike Lawler on Wednesday that Tlaib and others should apologize for their remarks about the hospital explosion.
“It is appalling and unacceptable that Democrats in Congress partook in Hamas’ misinformation campaign. … Rep. Tlaib and her radical colleagues helped spread this insidious lie far and wide, without remorse, and as of this morning have yet to take down their posts, issue an apology, or place blame on the actual perpetrators with the same conviction,” Lawler wrote as cited by ABC News.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin, on Wednesday morning called for strong GOP House leadership to push back on what he said was Tlaib’s “bias.”
Democratic lawmakers have also “criticized those who fault Israel for the blast without more information.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres without naming anybody slammed “critics” of Israel for jumping to conclusions on the hospital blast.
“Erroneous reports and some Members of Congress took the word of Hamas terrorists as truth following the horrific Al-Ahli Arab Hospital bombing. They should remove their posts, update their headlines, and remember not to trust terrorists who brutally murdered innocent civilians,” tweeted Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer.
United States President Joe Biden who arrived on Wednesday on an official visit to Tel Aviv backed Israel’s claim that the explosion on the Gaza hospital seemed to have been carried out by the “other team” in reference to Palestine terror group Hamas.
He also asserted that the US will make sure that Israel would get what it requires to defend itself from Hamas attacks.
Addressing a joint media briefing with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden said, “We have to also bear in mind that Hamas does not represent all the Palestinian people and it has brought them only suffering.”
On Tuesday’s attack on the Al-Ahli hospital, Biden said he was “deeply saddened” and “outraged” and emphasised that the preliminary data says that the explosion was done by Hamas.
The Biden administration’s “current assessment,” US National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson in a tweet said “is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday.” (ANI)