Trump on Tlaib remarks: Horrible and highly insensitive
“She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people,” the president tweeted on Monday.
By OMRI NAHMIASDemocratic U.S. congressional candidate Rashida Tlaib reacts after appearing at her midterm election night (photo credit: REUTERS/REBECCA COOK)
WASHINGTON – US President Donald Trump criticized the recent remarks by Rep. Rashida Tlaib about “Jewish safe havens,” and called it a “horrible and highly insensitive statement on the Holocaust.”“She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people,” the president tweeted on Monday. “Can you imagine what would happen if I ever said what she said, and says?”Tlaib responded on Twitter yesterday to the storm that her last comments caused, and wrote: “Policing my words, twisting and turning them to ignite vile attacks on me will not work. All of you who are trying to silence me will fail miserably. I will never allow you to take my words out of context to push your racist and hateful agenda. The truth will always win.”Rep. Ilhan Omar shared Tlaib’s tweet and added: “Those who seek hatred will never win. We stand together and will not be fazed by contrived attempts to sow division.”Omar went on to defend her peer and attacked Trump’s tweet.“You praised people at a neo-Nazi rally,” she tweeted. “We don’t have to imagine [what would happen if the president said those things]. This is another transparent attempt to sow division between minority communities and distract from your own criminal behavior by smearing a Muslim woman. No one should fall for it this time.”Rep. Lee Zeldin attacked Tlaib on Monday and said that her words are a “heart filled with darkness, and how the Holocaust began in the first place.”Tlaib’s interview featured on a Skullduggery podcast last Saturday.“There’s always kind of a calming feeling when I think of the tragedy of the Holocaust, that it was my ancestors – Palestinians – who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, and their existence, in many ways, has been wiped out… in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-Holocaust, post-tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time. And I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that in many ways,” Tlaib said.Tlaib also attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“We can smell it from far away that, no, you don’t want to look at my grandmother in the eye, Netanyahu, and say ‘You are equal to me. You are as human as I am to you.’”When asked about the two-state solution, Tlaib criticized Netanyahu and said she does not believe a two-state solution is currently possible because Netanyahu’s doctrine prevents it. She added that the only way for a two-state solution to be possible today would be if Netanyahu “gets up tomorrow morning and decides: ‘I’m going to take down the walls, I’m not going to expand settlements, enough is enough.’”
