Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) over the weekend compared the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border to that of Gaza and Israel.
“Do you know what I saw at the border? I saw Gaza,” said Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman in Congress, during her keynote address on Saturday at the American Muslims for Palestine conference in Chicago. “When you think about the border, you have to got to understand how interconnected the oppression in Palestine is with the oppression taking place at the border.”
She also said that she’s advocating for clean water in her Michigan district and “fighting for clean water in Gaza.”
Another speaker, Linda Sarsour, a surrogate for the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and a former leader of the Women’s March, equated the State of Israel to white supremacy.
“Ask them this: How can you be against white supremacy in the United States of America and the idea of living in a supremacist state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is built on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else?” she said on Friday at the conference.
“Ask those who call themselves progressive Zionists to explain to you how can they be against the separation of children on the U.S.-Mexican border? How can they be against building a wall between us and Mexico? How can they be against agencies like ICE–Immigration Customs Enforcement? But then you tell me … ‘you can’t push me out of the movement because I’m also against white supremacy.’”
Sarsour, who supports the anti-Israel BDS movement, has praised Nation of Islam leader and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.