MSNBC: Tlaib Was Censured for 'Criticism of Israel'

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Last Word,” host Lawrence O’Donnell characterized the House’s bipartisan censure of Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) for falsely blaming Israel for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza that U.S. intelligence has assessed was likely caused by a rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, her promotion of and defense of the phrase “From the river to the sea,” and her blaming Israel and U.S. support for the nation for violence in the wake of the October 7 attack as a censure “for her criticism of Israel after the Hamas attack on October 7.”

O’Donnell said, “We have breaking news from Washington at this hour, where the House of Representatives has just voted to censure Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib for her criticism of Israel after the Hamas attack on October 7. The vote count for censure was 234 to 188. 22 Democrats voted in support of that censure.”

While O’Donnell gave the report, the graphic underneath said, “House Votes to Censure Rep. Tlaib over Israel Criticism.”

The resolution, introduced by Rep. Richard McCormick (R-GA), specifically says that “Tlaib continued to knowingly spread the false narrative that Israel intentionally bombed the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17 after United States intelligence, Israeli intelligence, and President Biden assessed with high confidence that Israel did not cause the explosion” and that she “published on social media a video containing the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’, which is widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea” before she “doubled down on this call to violence by falsely describing ‘from the river to the sea’ as ‘an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence’ despite it clearly entailing Israel’s destruction and denial of its fundamental right to exist” and also points to Tlaib referring to “resistance” to the “apartheid” state of Israel and characterizing U.S. support for Israel as a cause of violence.

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett