Bush, Tlaib vote against bill barring Oct. 7 attackers from the U.S.
Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) broke with the rest of the House on Wednesday evening to vote against a bill barring participants in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel from entering the United States. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) voted present on the bill, while 422 other lawmakers voted in favor.
The “No Immigration Benefits for Hamas Terrorists Act” would designate any members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and any other individuals involved in perpetrating, planning, funding or supporting the Oct. 7 attack on Israel as barred from the U.S. and from seeking any immigration relief from the U.S.
It would also expand existing immigration restrictions barring some representatives of the Palestinian Liberation Organization from the U.S. to include all PLO members.
Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) described the bill as “widely duplicative of current law” in a memo to House Democrats. Hamas and PIJ members are already barred from the U.S., given that both are designated terror organizations, and any individual who provides material support to terrorism is also banned from the country.
In a statement, Tlaib said that the bill “is unnecessary because it is redundant with already existing federal law.”
“It’s just another GOP messaging bill being used to incite anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim hatred that makes communities like ours unsafe,” Tlaib said.
Bush offered a similar explanation, calling it “a redundant, empty messaging bill Republicans are using to target immigrants and incite anti-Palestinian hate.”
Wesley Bell, Bush’s primary opponent, condemned her vote in a statement to JI.
“Rep. Cori Bush’s vote today is shameful and reprehensible. She was one of only two people in the entire Congress to vote in favor of allowing terrorists who participated in the horrific October 7th attack on Israel to enter the United States,” Bell said. “Rep. Bush’s vote is offensive and embarrassing to our community. We will never be a safe haven for terrorists, and we need a Congressperson who knows better.”
Ramirez also called the bill “unnecessary” and a “waste of resources and time.”
“I voted PRESENT because I am done with political games. The majority is wasting time bringing a bill that is already current law. There are ALREADY no immigration benefits for Hamas terrorists,” she said in a statement. “After participating for 15 hours of a sham impeachment, I could not stomach another bill only introduced to score cheap political points, politicize immigration, and divide our communities. Like the Republican’s sham impeachment, this bill does not meaningfully address border security nor further protect our communities.”
In change from past, pro-Israel groups rally to oust left-wing lawmakers
As far-left House members face primary competition over their polarizing stances on Israel’s war with Hamas, newly emboldened pro-Israel groups are indicating that they are now preparing to invest significantly in the upcoming election cycle.
In one notable development, a major Democratic fundraiser with ties to a moderate political action committee that backs pro-Israel candidates is signaling that top donors are eager to fund credible primary challenges to Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Cori Bush (D-MO) — who have drawn backlash for equivocating over Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack.
Their reactions to the brutal massacre have created “a lot of energy among donors and activists in the center,” Dmitri Mehlhorn, a political advisor to the billionaire entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, who largely funds the Mainstream Democrats PAC, confirmed in an interview with Jewish Insider on Thursday.
“One of the very, very small silver linings of this horrible moment is that it does modestly increase the likelihood that we can remove some of these members of Congress,” Mehlhorn said. “We believe that there is a winning electoral coalition, a large governing majority of Americans who want their leaders to be able to condemn violent atrocities and mass rape.”
In another salvo aimed at Tlaib on Thursday, Democratic Majority for Israel’s political arm released a six-figure TV ad in Detroit hitting the Squad member over her calls for a cease-fire and vote last week against a resolution standing with Israel in the wake of Hamas’ assault, among other things.
The target of the ad — as well as its messaging — was noteworthy for DMFI, which has traditionally avoided going after anti-Israel incumbents. The group’s advertising has also not typically mentioned Israel or foreign policy, despite its focus on electing pro-Israel candidates. But Mark Mellman, the president of DMFI, suggested that the escalating conflict has contributed to a new sense of urgency on issues relating to Israel.
“Normally foreign policy is not an important electoral issue unless American troops are fighting a war,” Mellman told JI on Thursday. “But Israel is the number one news story in the world right now and polls demonstrate it is a salient issue for a large majority of Americans.”
On Monday, Bush drew her first challenger: Wesley Bell, the prosecuting attorney of St. Louis County, who cited Bush’s positions on the conflict between Israel and Hamas as a reason for entering the race. “Hamas is a terrorist organization,” he told JI, “and I will not waver in my support for Israel.”
Meanwhile, Tlaib, who represents a large population of Arab American voters in Dearborn, has yet to face opposition in her primary — despite ongoing efforts to recruit a credible challenger.
Political activists in Detroit have been working behind the scenes to convince Adam Hollier, a former state senator who launched a rematch against freshman Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) last month, to switch races and challenge Tlaib instead, according to a Democratic source familiar with the effort.
Hollier, however, said in a text message to JI on Thursday that he is “not considering any other district,” adding, “I’m running in MI-13, my home district, because our communities deserve real, serious representation in Congress and they just aren’t getting it with Rep. Thanedar.”
Speaking with JI, Mehlhorn said he had already heard from several unnamed donors in the tech and finance worlds who reached out to him after he went public with his plans in an interview with CNBC on Thursday — which he characterized as an opening signal to spur “credible candidates to run.”
Mehlhorn had indicated in an interview with The Intercept last May that he believed Mainstream Democrats PAC had succeeded in neutralizing the far left in 2022 — and would not need to spend as aggressively this cycle. But he suggested that his thinking had since changed as the Israel-Hamas conflict has underscored the growing extremism of the far left ahead of a presidential election year.
“We believe the winning strategy is for Democrats to present themselves as capable and able to police their own extremists,” Mehlhorn told JI.
Mehlhorn explained that he and his allies would for now be focusing exclusively on unseating Tlaib and Bush — even as other Squad members who have staked out polarizing positions on the ongoing war in Gaza are also poised to face primary opponents next cycle. “If you try to police your own side too aggressively,” he said, “it actually breaks things.”
The Bush and Tlaib campaigns did not respond to messages seeking comment on Thursday evening.
In addition to Bush, Reps. Summer Lee (D-PA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) are preparing to defend their seats from new challengers who are drawing sharp contrasts on Middle East policy.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who has faced mounting criticism from Jewish and pro-Israel constituents over his approach to the war, also appears poised for a competitive primary as George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, weighs a challenge — which could come as soon as next week, according to sources informed of his thinking.
AIPAC, the bipartisan pro-Israel group, has privately indicated that it is ready to back Latimer’s campaign.
Reps. Tlaib, Bush face condemnation from several congressional Democrats — and the Israeli ambassador to the U.S.
Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Cori Bush (D-MO) blamed U.S. military aid to Israel for contributing to the massive Hamas terror attack on Israel yesterday, which has left more than 700 Israelis dead. Tlaib also described Hamas’ actions as “resistance” to Israeli “apartheid.”
The comments come as most U.S. lawmakers have offered strong support to Israel in the conflict, without many of the typical calls for cease-fires and de-escalation by both sides in the hours following the onset of the attack. The exception to this has been members of the far-left Squad and a handful of other lawmakers aligned with them.
“I am determined as ever to fight for a just future where everyone can live in peace, without fear and with true freedom, equal rights, and human dignity,” Tlaib said in a statement on Sunday. “The path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance.”
Tlaib added that “as long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”
Bush, in a similar statement on Saturday, said she was “heartbroken” by the violence and loss of life, “following attacks by Hamas militants on Israeli border towns and Israeli military bombardment of Gaza.”
“As part of achieving a just and lasting peace, we must do our part to stop this violence and trauma by ending U.S. government support for Israeli military occupation and apartheid,” Bush continued.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) condemned the comments by his colleagues.
“U.S. aid to Israel is and should be unconditional, and never more so than in this moment of critical need,” Torres told Jewish Insider in a statement. “Shame on anyone who glorifies as ‘resistance’ the largest single-day mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. It is reprehensible and repulsive.”
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) highlighted the barbarism committed by Hamas terrorists in his own response.
“Two of my colleagues called for America to end assistance to Israel, despite the countless images of Israeli children, women, men, and elderly, including Americans, murdered by radical Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists,” Gottheimer told JI. “It sickens me that while Israelis clean the blood of their family members shot in their homes, they believe Congress should strip U.S. funding to our democratic ally and allow innocent civilians to suffer.”
Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), who serves in the Michigan delegation with Tlaib, distanced herself from Tlaib’s comments in a statement to JI.
“We must continue to come together as a Congress and a country to disavow terrorism and support the Jewish state, our democratic ally, Israel,” Stevens said. “Israel has a right to exist and defend herself.”
None of the other Democratic members of Michigan’s House delegation responded to requests for comment.
Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog responded directly to Tlaib, in an impassioned statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“How much more blood needs to be spilled for you to overcome your prejudice and unequivocally condemn Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror organization?” Herzog wrote. “Hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians massacred in cold blood on a holy day. Babies kidnapped from their mother’s arms and taken to Gaza. An 85-year-old woman in a wheelchair and a Holocaust survivor taken hostage. Is that not enough, @RashidaTlaib?”
At the same time, a number of New York Democrats condemned a Democratic Socialists of America rally on Sunday in New York’s Times Square expressing “solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to resist 75 years of occupation and apartheid.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called the rally “ill-timed” and “cold-hearted.”
“We’ve seen unprecedented viciousness coming from Hamas aimed at innocent families and children,” Schumer said. “Everyone — no matter your views — should condemn this brutal act.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said, “The NYC-DSA is revealing itself for what it truly is — a deep rot of antisemitism.”
He added, “There is a special place in hell for those who glorify the cold blooded murder of civilians and children… The DSA should be universally condemned for its genocidal celebration of Israel’s destruction.”
Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) called the rally “an absolute disgrace” and “blatant antisemitism.”
“These actions are an insult to the memories of the innocent men, women, and children brutally murdered,” Ryan continued.
Through a spokesperson, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) also condemned the rally.
“Leader Hakeem Jeffries strongly and unequivocally condemns the hate-filled rally held by the DSA in [NYC] and any effort to support the barbaric, inhumane and despicable terrorist attack by Hamas on the State of Israel and its citizens,” spokesperson Andy Eichar said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said the rally was “abhorrent and morally repugnant.”
Former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), who is currently running for a House seat in the New York City suburbs, said that “no one should support terrorist attacks against Israel” and that “today’s rally by the NYC DSA is despicable.” He added that “Hamas alone is responsible for this heinous violence.”
Brad Lander, the left-wing NYC comptroller who has in the past called for conditioning U.S. aid to Israel — and is affiliated with the DSA — disavowed the group’s rally.
“Today’s DSA rally — which effectively celebrated Hamas’ murder & kidnapping of hundreds of Israeli civilians, including children & grandparents — was abominable,” Lander said. “There is no place for glorifying terror, left, center, or right.”
Tlaib, Squad push resolution labeling Palestinian Arabs the ‘indigenous inhabitants’ of Israel
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and a handful of progressive Democrats introduced a resolution on Monday referring to Palestinian Arabs as the “indigenous inhabitants” of Israel and endorsing Palestinian right of return, one of the most sensitive issues in Israeli-Palestinian relations.
The resolution seeks to set as U.S. policy recognition of the “Nakba” — the term, translating to “catastrophe,” that Palestinians use to refer to the mass Palestinian exodus that accompanied the foundation of Israel — and accept as a settled issue Palestinian refugees’ right of return to inside Israel’s borders. It also refers to Palestinians as the “indigenous population” of the region, but does not acknowledge Jewish history in the region.
The legislation accuses Israel of having “depopulated more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities” during its 1948 War of Independence and characterizes ongoing Israeli “expropriation of Palestinian land and… dispossession of the Palestinian people,” including Israeli settlements, as part of an ongoing Nakba. In a statement announcing the legislation, Tlaib accused Israel of “ongoing ethnic cleansing.”
Tlaib’s resolution has been cosponsored by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Marie Newman (D-IL), Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).
Neither Tlaib nor any of the cosponsors responded to a question from Jewish Insider about whether they viewed Jews as also being “indigenous” to the region.
Newman is currently facing a primary challenger, Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL), who is backed by various pro-Israel groups, including J Street, which had endorsed Newman in 2020. Bowman has faced criticism from the Democratic Socialists of America over his positions on Israel, including voting for supplemental Iron Dome funding and traveling to the Jewish state last year. He has since removed himself as a cosponsor of legislation supporting the Abraham Accords.
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) blasted Tlaib’s resolution as “predicated on a demonstrably false historical narrative… predictably failing to mention the hundreds of attacks on Jewish communities in the British mandate of Palestine by Palestinian militias.”
Sherman noted that the resolution “omits” that Israel was attacked by eight Arab states in 1948, that the 1948 war began with attacks by Arab forces seeking “a war of annihilation” against Jewish militants and civilians, that “not a single Jew was left alive in the portion of the British mandate controlled by Arab armies, that no Jews lived in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem for two decades and that 800,000 Jews were expelled from neighboring Arab countries.”
“Thankfully, the vast majority of my colleagues in Congress and in the House Foreign Affairs Committee understand that the historical narrative in Congresswoman Tlaib’s resolution is an outrageous falsehood and thus this bill isn’t likely to be passed or even considered,” Sherman added.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) agreed that the resolution has no “hope of moving forward,” claiming the resolution seeks to “rewrite history and question Israel’s right to exist.”
“It’s unfortunate that this histrionic and invidious resolution was introduced now, particularly, as we see continued progress in efforts to normalize relations between Israel and its neighbors in the region,” Gottheimer added. “Divisive efforts like this only set back our fight against terror and the advancement of democracy in the region.”
Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who advised multiple secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations, said that the legislation asks Congress to “wade into the intricacies and volatility of some of the most combustible issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and essentially recognize a narrative.”
“This legislation is packed with landmines and traps,” Miller continued. “The whole issue of right of return is an issue that for years in negotiations we realized was the most combustible, most complicated, and the one which we had the least chance of resolving…. That’s the third rail of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.”
Miller emphasized that the legislation has no prospect of seeing widespread support in “any Congress that I can imagine.”
He described the legislation as “designed basically to support what the framers regard as an unrecognized, underreported and unacknowledged narrative in the American political scene of the Palestinians.” He added that the “Palestinian narrative has never been adequately explored or acknowledged” in U.S. politics and argued that “there was a way perhaps to go about this which would have recognized both Israeli independence and the Nakba being intertwined.”
Some Republicans seized on the legislation.
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) called it “the latest in a long line of antisemitic, anti-Israel statements, policies and actions by the most radical voiced in the Democratic Party.” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) called it “disgusting anti-Semitism.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said “the continued anti-Semitism from radical socialists in the House is horrific.” The three Republicans also sought to tie House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to the initiative, demanding that she condemn the move.
