‘A Child Is a Child!’ Rashida Tlaib Breaks Down in Tears During Speech Over Death of Young Gazan Girl
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress, broke down in tears on the House floor on Thursday as she called for an “arms embargo” on Israel and recounted the death of a young Gazan girl.
In a forceful speech during which she accused the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of carrying out “genocide” in Gaza and committing a “war crime” by “using starvation which is a weapon of war.”
The Israeli blockade of Gaza has entered its third month, with no deliveries of food, water, shelter, or medical supplies permitted since early March. Aid organizations are sounding the alarm over a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the besieged territory. The current military campaign by Israel has been ongoing since Hamas attacked on October 7th, 2023.
Recounting the case of one young Gazan girl, the congresswoman grew emotional down: “We must save lives. No matter faith or ethnicity. A child is a child. [Her] only crime in the eyes of the Israeli apartheid government was that she was born Palestinian. And, Mr. Speaker, it kills me inside that she took her last breath without being truly free. I pray that this will end. And one day they will be free.”
The congresswoman said: “Netanyahu is preparing a full scale assault and ethnically cleanse and expel the entire Palestinian population in Gaza and flatten permanently occupy the land. This was always their plan. He said it himself.”
“Israeli forces have killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, and nearly 70% of them were women and children, babies who did not live to see their first birthday,” she continued. “There are thousands more who are dismembered, unrecognizable, burned alive, buried beneath the rubble and presumed dead.”
Tlaib called for an end to U.S. arms supplies going to Israel, arguing that the move had the backing of a “majority of Americans.” She added that the U.S. “is funding this genocide.”
Watch above via C-SPAN.
