If Rashida Tlaib isn’t the second coming of Adolf Hitler, she will do till one comes along. She has just joined a Palestinian boycott of a trip to the University of Haifa, Israel. The ironic part of the boycott is that over 41% of the students at the university are Muslims.
I wonder if she is smart enough to realize that or whether she is afraid to see Muslims being treated well in Israel. The trip was originally scheduled for Pitzer College in Claremont, California. Of all the planned school trips, this is the only one that has been canceled.
“U.S. Congress member @RashidaTlaib supports faculty at @pitzercollege who voted overwhelmingly to suspend a study abroad program with Haifa University over Israel’s discriminatory policies against Palestinians,” the campaign tweeted.
“The College Council must uphold the faculty vote. #SuspendPitzerHaifa,” the tweet said.
Both tweets were accompanied by a picture of Tlaib holding the informational pamphlet about the boycott effort.
The Intercept interviewed the newly elected Tlaib in early December, and she expressed her anti-Israel views, including supporting the BDS movement:
Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic representative-elect from Michigan, belongs to a cohort of incoming members of Congress who’ve vowed to upend the status quo — even on third-rail issues in Washington like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To that end, Tlaib is planning to lead a congressional delegation to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, she told The Intercept. Her planned trip is a swift rebuke of a decades-old tradition for newly elected members: a junket to Israel sponsored by the education arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, known as AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby group.
Tlaib’s challenge to AIPAC isn’t limited to leading a separate trip to the region. In her interview with The Intercept, she for the first time came out in support of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, the movement known as BDS that seeks to punish Israel over its human rights abuses.
“I personally support the BDS movement,” said Tlaib. She added that economic boycotts are a way to bring attention to “issues like the racism and the international human rights violations by Israel right now.”