Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) defended her support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), which is a Palestinian-led campaign promoting boycott against Israel.
Tlaib said, “It is criticizing the racist policies of Israel, and it is a boycott.”
She continued, “If there was an economic boycott around Saudi Arabia, I would be the first for it. They are all around college campuses. There are Jews and Muslims and backgrounds pushing back against racist policies in Israel because they see that the human rights violations of children being detained, the fact that my grandmother who lives in the west bank doesn’t have equality or freedom of travel. Someone right now under occupation is feeling less than. And I grew up in the most blackest beautiful city in the country where every corner in Detroit here you will see a reminiscence of the civil rights and labor rights movement, and we did it through economic boycott. It is a form of freedom of speech. But people want to dismiss it because they’re trying to say it is anti-Semitism. We know under Netanyahu’s regime human rights violations have gotten worse.”
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