Washington (AFP)
Daughter of Palestinian immigrants, former advocate of progressive ideas, the Democrat Rashida Tlaib has been sitting in the US Congress since January but has already made a name for controversy around Israel and its calls, sometimes thunderous, to to dismiss Donald Trump.
Describing herself as a "progressive warrior", she already accumulates, at age 43, several pioneering titles.
Born in Detroit into a Palestinian family, Rashida Tlaib is the first Palestinian-born US Congresswoman and one of the first two Muslim women to sit in the House of Representatives.
Already, in 2009, she was the first Muslim to sit in the Michigan State Assembly.
With the other Muslim Congressman, Democrat Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib made this week one of the international media when Israel refused to allow their visit to its territory.
Both have been accused by some of anti-Semitism, in part because of their support for the international campaign to boycott Israel.
Claiming that the boycott was "a right and part of our historic struggle for freedom and equality," Tlaib defended her support for the movement, rejecting accusations of anti-Semitism.
It also defends a one-state solution for Israel, which is also criticized.
"Separated while being equal does not work," she explained, citing the example of the fight against segregation in the United States, in an interview with the site In These Times in 2018.
- Virulent call to dismiss Trump -
After several reversals, Rashida Tlaib finally announced Friday that she was giving up visiting her grandmother, Muftia, in the occupied West Bank, denouncing the "oppressive conditions" imposed by Israel.
"My grandmother wanted to pick figs with me," she lamented.
The eldest of 14 children and a mother of two, Rashida Tlaib is fond and proud of her family, recounting her modest childhood in Detroit, the North American car stronghold where winters are dreadful.
"His two young sons are the source of his unwavering passion to help improve the lives of people," he wrote on his official website.
In 2018, when she was a lawyer for an organization working to defend the "poor and hard-working", she had campaigned on a progressive agenda by easily winning in her constituency, a Democratic stronghold where Republicans not submitted a candidate.
From her campaign and Washington, she has consistently called for the launching of an impeachment procedure against Donald Trump, sometimes in virulent terms.
She had thus scandalized just hours after taking an oath to Congress by letting go to relatives at a party celebrating his victory: "We will dismiss this son of a bitch!".
Largely relayed, the video of this moment had provoked the indignation of the republican camp, Donald Trump himself denouncing "shameful" remarks.
"She dishonored herself and (...) dishonored her family," the Republican had judged.
Already, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Rashida Tlaib had apostrophé Donald Trump in full conference in Detroit ... but in more polite terms, before being expelled from the room.
"I told Trump that + our kids deserve better than that and I asked him to give them a better example, and I begged him to read the US Constitution," she said in the Detroit Free Press.
Faced with critics who had judged this behavior "inappropriate", she replied: "I find it inappropriate that the Americans do not rise up against the speech and tactics full of hatred of Trump".
© 2019 AFP