The Nakba Never Ended

Floor Speech

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Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, Peter Beinart said: ``When you tell a people to forget its past, you are not proposing peace, you are proposing extinction.''

I introduced a resolution yesterday recognizing the 77 years of the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people and the need for refugee rights. We know that thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948, and nearly 800,000 were violently removed from over 400 villages, completely erased. Many of them carry their keys to this day, Mr. Speaker, hanging them on the wall of their new, temporary homes in hopes that one day they will be able to return to their villages.

We acknowledge their trauma and the painful loss of their connections to their family members, land, the beautiful olive groves, and the 400 Palestinian villages that they all grew up in. We, of course, see that the Israeli Government continues to illegally steal Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank where my family lives. They illegally evict Palestinian families, Mr. Speaker, demolish homes, and deny Palestinians basic human rights.

We honor those all around the world and want them to know that former Congresswoman Cori Bush and I see them. We know the suffering. We know that there are lasting harms of settler colonialism, as well as ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

There are days that I feel so alone in this Chamber as the only Palestinian American serving in Congress. The dehumanization and the anti-Palestinian racism here is painful, especially when my colleagues remain silent on the starvation of children and vote to send more bombs to the Israeli Government while they commit war crimes with impunity.

Today, we are witnessing a genocide in Gaza. Many human rights organizations, advocacy groups, NGOs, and folks on medical missions have confirmed, the campaign to erase Palestinians from existence is happening right now, live-streamed for all of us to see while the world sits and does nothing.

Palestinians were right. The Nakba never ended. Across Gaza, the medical system has been deliberately destroyed. The Israeli Government is using starvation as a weapon of war, which is a war crime. The thousands of trucks carrying food and lifesaving aid sit blocked at the border while Palestinian families starve.

Instead of agreeing to a cease-fire, war criminal Netanyahu is now preparing a full-scale assault to ethnically cleanse and forcibly expel the entire Palestinian population from Gaza and to flatten and 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 percent of them were women and children, babies who did not live to see their first birthday. There are thousands more who were dismembered, unrecognizable, burned alive, buried beneath the rubble, and presumed dead.

Mr. Speaker, nearly 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced once again. Each year, our country sends billions of dollars to maintain this apartheid state and support the ongoing cleansing of the Palestinian people. Our country is complicit, Mr. Speaker, because our Nation is funding this genocide.

The Israeli Government will not stop until we put in place an arms embargo. The majority of Americans support it. We must save lives. No matter faith or ethnicity, a child is a child.

Mr. Speaker, my ``grandma's''; ``sity's'' only crime in the eyes of the Israeli apartheid government was that she was born Palestinian. It killed me inside that she took her last breath without being truly free. I pray that the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinians will end and one day they will be free. Sneaking In Nonprofit Killer Bill

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Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about something that is happening right here in our backyard in regard to the Congressional Mamas Caucus.

As a mother, I am dismayed. We started Mamas for Medicaid, which is mothers across the Nation sharing their stories about what it means to cut Medicaid and how cruel it will be for their families, especially those with children with special needs.

What makes me even more angry is this so-called sneaking in of the nonprofit killer bill into the budget reconciliation package. We have to worry about that now.

This is dangerous and unconstitutional legislation that would give the Trump administration unchecked power to target any nonprofit organization as a political enemy and shut them down--no evidence, no charge, no trial, no due process.

This legislation is part of a broader assault on civil liberties, aiming to criminalize free speech, Mr. Speaker.

Trust me, it won't just be Palestinian human rights organizations. It will be those who are fighting against the Medicaid cuts. It will be those who are fighting for Black lives and those who are fighting for climate justice. It is wrong, and I hope my colleagues will vote against it.

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