House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has blocked Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) from hosting a May 10 event on Capitol Hill to commemorate the Nakba, which is how Palestinians label Israel’s Independence Day.
“It’s wrong for members of Congress to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes about Israel. Not only do I condemn Rep. Tlaib’s anti-Israel event on May 10, I am hosting in its place a bipartisan discussion in the U.S. Capitol on the importance of the special relationship between Israel and America,” McCarthy told The Epoch Times in a statement on May 10.
“As long as I’m Speaker, we are going to support Israel’s right to self-determination and self-defense, unequivocally and in a bipartisan fashion,” he continued.
The Epoch Times has reached out to Tlaib’s office for comment.
The event was scheduled to be in the Capitol Visitor Center, where spaces can only be reserved by members of Congress.
Tlaib’s blocked event was meant to commemorate what Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of Israel’s founding.
“May 15th marks 75 years since the beginning of the Nakba, which means ‘catastrophe.’. Seventy-five years ago, Zionist militias and the new Israeli military violently expelled approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland in what became the state of Israel,” stated the invitation.
“To uplift the experiences of Palestinians who underwent the Nakba, and educate Members of Congress and their staff about this history and the ongoing Nakba to which Israel continues to subject Palestinians, we’ve partnered together to host this congressional and community educational event, to be followed immediately afterward by dinner.”
Jewish and pro-Israel groups condemned the event.
“Bigoted @RepRashida Tlaib has once again chosen anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hate by hosting a congressional event to ’mourn Israel’s founding.’
Ahead of McCarthy canceling the event, Klein said that the event “promotes the sick, twisted, hateful, genocidal concept that it is a “catastrophe” that Israel has managed to survive, and that the Arabs failed to totally annihilate Israel’s Jewish population and homeland in 1948 or in the 75 years since then.”