The Coalition for Jewish Values, which represents 2,500 Orthodox Jewish rabbis in American public policy, condemned Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., for rushing to blame Israel for the Wednesday bombing of a hospital in Gaza, despite increasing evidence that a misfired missile launched by the terror group Islamic Jihad caused the blast.
“Rep. Tlaib has repeatedly made it clear that she doesn’t value human rights, she merely hates Jews,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday.
“In this case, her devotion to an antisemitic lie is of a piece with blood libels spread by bigots of the past,” Menken added. “That a woman whose rhetoric recalls Nazi Germany is a member in good standing of the House Democratic Caucus should alarm every American, even given President Joe Biden’s strong moral stance.”
“Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that,” Tlaib posted on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday night.
She tagged Biden and directed her comments to him.
“@POTUS [President of the United States,] this is what happens when you refuse to facilitate a ceasefire & help de-escalate,” Tlaib added. “Your war and destruction only approach has opened my eyes and many Palestinian Americans and Muslims Americans like me. We will remember where you stood.”
Palestinian officials said an explosion at Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital killed 471 people Tuesday, Reuters reported. Hamas, the group the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization that runs the government of Gaza and the health ministry that reported the deaths, blamed Israel for the explosion.
Yet Israel claims the explosion traces back to a misfired rocket sent by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Iran-backed terrorist group that took part in the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel. Palestinian Islamic Jihad has denied involvement, saying it did not have any activity in or around Gaza City at the time.
Israel released video of Hamas terrorists speaking over the radio about the explosion.
“I’m telling you this is the first time that we see a missile like this falling, and so that’s why we are saying it belongs to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad,” one speaker says.
“It’s from us?” another asks.
“It looks like it,” the first speaker replies.
Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the explosion appears to have been “done by the other team, not you.”
The Israel Defense Forces shared footage around the area showing that the misfired rocket damaged a parking lot near the hospital, rather than the hospital itself.
Pictures and video of the area on Wednesday confirmed that the explosion took place at a parking lot.
Tlaib did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.
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