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For more than a month, the suburbs of Detroit have played host to vigils where victims of the war between Israel and Hamas are commemorated with prayers, candles and tearful speeches.
But those vigils have told starkly differing stories about the war, and also about Rashida Tlaib, who represents the area and is the only Palestinian American in Congress.
At a gathering in solidarity with Israeli hosts last week at Adat Shalom synagogue, Jeremy Moss, a Democratic state senator from Southfield, a suburb with a large Jewish population in Ms. Tlaib’s district, spoke with concerned constituents. “I had so many people coming up to me saying that they don’t feel seen, heard, represented,” he said.
The following night, in the majority Arab American enclave of Dearborn, at a memorial for Palestinian casualties of the Israeli invasion of Gaza, speakers denounced the censure of Ms. Tlaib in Congress for her statements on the conflict.
Khalid Turaani, a Palestinian-American activist, compared Ms. Tlaib’s censure to that of Joshua Reed Giddings, a congressman and abolitionist who was censured by his House colleagues in 1842 for introducing resolutions opposing the slave trade.
“I guess history is repeating itself,” Mr. Turaani, who leads the Michigan Task Force for Palestine, told the crowd.
Since Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, no American politician save for President Biden has featured more centrally in arguments over the Israel-Hamas war than Ms. Tlaib. Since her election in 2018, the congresswoman, who has family living in the West Bank, has been the leading voice for Palestinian rights in Congress.
This year, thanks to a redistricting shake-up, she began representing one of the largest Arab American communities in the country, as well as parts of the largest Jewish community in the Detroit area. The war has put her in the increasingly difficult position of representing both constituencies, whose views of the conflict are both deeply personal and often extraordinarily difficult to reconcile.
Interviews in Ms. Tlaib’s district revealed a split-screen view of the war in Gaza and laid bare the grievances that have shaped it. It is a particularly acute version of the national debate over the conflict, rooted in family histories of the Holocaust and personal experiences of lost lives and land since the advent of Israeli statehood.
The divide would pose a formidable challenge for any politician. But for Ms. Tlaib, who has staked out a position that alienates many of those constituents, it could be unbridgeable.
After the Oct. 7 attack, in which Hamas attackers killed about 1,200 people and took about 240 hostages, Ms. Tlaib was one of 10 House members who voted against to resolution to condemn Hamas and reaffirm $3.3 billion a year in US military assistance to Israel.
On Nov. 3, she posted a video on social media accusing President Biden of supporting the “genocide of the Palestinian people” and including footage of demonstrators chanting “from the river to the sea,” a pro-Palestinian slogan that many see as calling for not only the restoration of Palestinian land claims but also the eradication of Israel.
Ms. Tlaib has said she saw it as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction or hate.” In a statement released after the censure vote, she vowed to “continue to work for a just and lasting peace that upholds the human rights and dignity of all people, centers peaceful coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians, and ensures that no person, no child has to suffer or live in fear of violence.”
Ms. Tlaib’s defense of the slogan drew condemnation from the Biden administration, as well as criticism from Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, and disavowal from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, both Democrats.
On Tuesday, 22 of Ms. Tlaib’s Democratic colleagues joined House Republicans in passing a resolution to censure her and accuse her of “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.” Democratic Majority for Israel, a group led by Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, is running television ads in the Detroit area criticizing Ms. Tlaib.
“I think Congresswoman Tlaib is radically out of step with her colleagues in Congress, radically out of step with the Democratic Party, and radically out of step with Democrats in Michigan,” Mr. Mellman said. “We hope she will change her views of her, and if not, perhaps someone might be interested in running against her.”
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