Rashida Tlaib Quotes

When freshman Democrat congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib endorsed Bernie Sanders, they were chastised in both traditional and social media for throwing their support behind “an old white guy” rather than a woman. How is it that so many white feminists still cannot grasp the many factors that shape the politics of women from such diverse backgrounds?

The 2018 election also saw victory for Palestinian American and Detroit native Rashida Tlaib. Like Omar, her election should not have come as such a surprise; she was well known and respected in her prior role as a state representative, regarded as someone who would vigorously fight for Detroit. She was a thorn in the side of big businesses that tried to exploit or neglect Detroit neighborhoods and an even bigger thorn in the side of Donald Trump. When Tlaib won her bid for Congress, representing Michigan’s Thirteenth District, she became the first Palestinian American to sit in Congress. She and Omar became the first two Muslim women elected to Congress.

Then there are the future leaders of the Socialist, I mean, Democrat, Party. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, or “the Squad,” as they’re commonly known, stand somewhere left of Chairman Mao. Their radical beliefs have real-world consequences.

Using South African apartheid–era rhetoric to defend the Israeli occupation remains alive to this day. During the 2019 Israeli election campaign, opposition leader Benny Gantz criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for banning US Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering Israel and the Palestinian territories. Instead, Gantz said, both women should have been allowed to see “with their own eyes” that “the best place to be an Arab in the Middle East is in Israel … and the second-best place to be an Arab in the Middle East is the West Bank.” This was reminiscent of South African apart-heid leader John Vorster statement to the New York Times in 1977 that “the standard of living of the South African Black is two to five times higher than that of any Black country in Africa.”14 One of the architects of apartheid in South Africa, former prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd, wrote in the Rand Daily Mail in 1961 that “Israel, like South Africa, is an apart-heid state” after taking Palestine from the Arabs who “had lived there for a thousand years.

Among them were Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, the first Muslim women ever elected to the House. Rashida’s and Ilhan’s victories were more than symbolic for me, as I counted both women as dear friends. Not only had I witnessed their trials and watched them triumph, but the fact that Ilhan wore a hijab while Rashida did not was, for me, a beautiful expression of the independence and diversity of Muslim women. African American women, Latina women, and Native American women also won big on election night, most of them running on progressive platforms calling for health care for all, tuition-free college education, environmental protections, gun law reforms, and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and refugees.

another Muslim woman took office alongside her. Rashida Tlaib, representative for Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, was the other first Muslim woman in Congress. Rashida boasted yet another first: She was first in her family to graduate from high school. The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, a single mother of two boys, and the oldest of fourteen children, Rashida had blasted through other people’s expectations of what it meant to be a Palestinian American woman. And at every step, she was taking all of her heritage with her, proudly representing Michigan and Palestine. At her congressional swearing-in ceremony, Rashida wore a floor-length, long-sleeved black and red thobe, the quintessentially Palestinian dress, which is typically hand-embroidered by women from Palestinian villages. The stitching and styles vary across Palestine, but thobes with lavish designs are worn to mark special occasions, such as puberty, motherhood, and now entry of a Palestinian American woman into the United States Congress. Rashida posted a close-up of her thobe on Instagram.