In the aftermath of the Saturday shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) took issue on Monday with CNN host Jake Tapper in that Palestinian rhetoric is similar to US President Donald Trump's when it comes to intolerance of the other.
Tlaib argued that Palestinians were not responsible for terrorism or vitriol, even as she has lambasted the president's use of words and called Israel a white-supremacist nation.
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"Comparing Palestinian human rights advocates to terrorist white nationalists is fundamentally a lie. Palestinians want equality, human dignity & to stop the imprisonment of children," she tweeted. "White supremacy is calling for the *domination* of one race w/ the use of violence."
Comparing Palestinian human rights advocates to terrorist white nationalists is fundamentally a lie. Palestinians want equality, human dignity & to stop the imprisonment of children ⬇️.
White supremacy is calling for the *domination* of one race w/ the use of violence. https://t.co/vSPTxIZBTq pic.twitter.com/zHQbn1hmEr
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) August 5, 2019
Tlaib's comments were in response to Tapper saying on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday program that "either tone matters or it doesn't."
"You hear conservatives all the time rightly so, in my opinion, talk about the tone set by people in the Arab world. Palestinian leaders talk about … and the way they talk about Israelis, justifying in the same way you're doing," Tapper said. "No direct link necessarily between what the leader says and the violence against some important Israeli girl in a pizzeria," apparently a reference to the 2001 bombing at a Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, where 15 civilians, including a pregnant woman, were killed.
"The idea you're validating hatred and yet … you can't compare the ideology of Hamas with anything else," continued Tapper. "But at the same time, either tone matters or it doesn't."
Patrick Crusius, 21, has been charged with opening fire in a crowded Walmart in the Texas border town of El Paso on Saturday, killing 22 people and wounding dozens more. Crusius published a manifesto prior to the attack decrying the "Hispanic invasion of Texas."
The El Paso attack was followed just hours later by another mass shooting outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio. Police identified the shooter as 24-year-old Connor Betts. Nine people were killed, including the gunman's sister, and 26 wounded in that attack before the shooter was killed by police. His motive is still unclear.
On Monday, Trump condemned the hatred behind the El Paso shooting.
"In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy," he said, adding that "the perils of the internet and social media cannot be ignored, and they will not be ignored."
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
