As for Rashida, the Americans were not accustomed to hearing the voice that defends the rights of the Palestinians from within the US Congress, but she did so, especially during the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, as she tried to humanize the cause of the Palestinian people. She spoke about the Palestinian mother, who said that she sleeps with Her children because she wants to die with them, and about a mother who watches her child being buried alive.
She says that she has been subjected to many harassments from parties trying to silence her, as "everyone wants to silence me, but I will not be silenced", but she will continue her struggle because she works out of support for human rights and support for equality and justice.
And she confronted - as I spoke - a president (Donald Trump) who is biased towards Israel and hates immigrants, but she hates her personally, and he has previously described her as crazy, reckless and evil, and in return she responded to him by describing him as a curse and a scoundrel, and led a campaign to topple him.
And it came to her being threatened with death by Trump's supporters after she won the congressional elections, especially after she became at the forefront of those who want to remove him from power.
The guest of an episode (14/09/2022) of the "The Other Side" program confirms that she was met with intense hatred by Trump supporters as well as by those who view her as a Muslim and someone who believes in a free Palestine, expressing her wish that the former Republican president will not return again. To power during the 2024 elections, because "this person promotes white supremacy and fights American democracy," she said.
However, the member of the US House of Representatives from Michigan acknowledges that there are Americans who talk about Israeli violations and condemn them from within Congress, and it is not true that there is no new election for those who raise their voice for Palestinian human rights and condemn the violations of the Israeli government and demand that Israel's assistance be conditional.
And "a large number of people come to Parliament to announce their refusal to fund Iron Dome."
Rashida Tlaib, who studied law, was born in Detroit, Michigan, USA. She comes from a Palestinian family of 13 members, 7 boys and 6 girls, and is the daughter of a driver affiliated with the Drivers Syndicate.
She says she heard from her grandfather and grandmother about the suffering of Palestinians in the occupied territories, and so she fought to defend the African Americans in her city, because they had suffered the same.
In 2008, she entered the Michigan Local House of Representatives, and fought until she won a seat in the House of Representatives for the 13th district in Michigan, and voters in the state chose her during the 2018 midterm elections to represent them in Congress, becoming the first Arab Muslim woman to be elected as a representative from a state and then at the level the state.
She chose to belong to the Democratic Party on the advice of her father, who loves this party because it defends labor unions and opens the door to the poor and immigrants, but she does not share the party's position on the Palestinian issue. The apartheid regime remained in Israel, and in return it supported the one-state solution.
Free as a free bird
Rashida is proud of her Palestinianness, and talks about her roots and her family and grandmother in Palestine, and says that she chose to wear the traditional Palestinian dress during the swearing-in in Congress to present herself as she is, and to prove that her mother was born in Palestine and not in Jordan, as it is written in her American passport.
Her wish was to visit her grandmother after she, accompanied by a number of members of Congress, received an invitation from an organization to visit the occupied territories, but her family in Palestine advised her not to come after the Israeli occupation authorities retreated and allowed her to visit, and she said to her, "You are free as a free bird and you are a manifested dream... Why do you come here to lock you up in a cage? Don't come because they want you to be silent."
Rasheeda did not hold back her tears as she told her about her grandmother, who told her, "It's okay, my city, I will be waiting for you," and hopes to see her grandmother before she takes her last breath.
In her talk to the "The Other Side" program, she also returned to memories of the past, to her marriage at the age of 21, her stay in Palestine for 6 months, the birth of two children Adam (16 years) and Youssef (10 years), and her story with olive picking, accompanied by her aunts and the women of the neighborhood in which she lived.