Trump: Shut up and go home Palestinian

On July 14, 2019 the President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, tweeted that “Progressive Democrat Congresswomen” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”, then come back to the US and “show us how it’s done”.[1]

This was in response to criticism President Trump had received from Democrat Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley.

Three of the women were born in the US. Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia and has been a US citizen since the year 2000 after moving to the US as a refugee at the age of ten in 1992.

A few days later when President Trump had finished criticising Ilhan Omar at a rally in Ohio his supporters began chanting “send her back”[2]. Despite claiming otherwise, at the time the President did nothing[3], only a few days later did he denounce the chant stating, “I was not happy with it. I disagree with it.”[4]

Trump has since stated that he is not sure whether he can stop his supporters potentially chanting “send them back”, though he would prefer they did not.[5]

Another of the Congresswomen Trump targeted in his original tweets was Rashida Tlaib, born and raised in Detroit (USA) to parents from the West Bank of Palestine.

Some days after Trump’s tweets it was reported that Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was considering whether to allow Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar to enter the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank[6] as part of an official visit. The reason being the pair’s support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) campaign – a peaceful protest movement that “works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law.”[7]

On August 15, 2019 Netanyahu announced that the two Congresswomen would indeed not be allowed to enter the West Bank.[8] During this time Trump again made public his view: Tlaib and Omar should not be allowed into the West Bank, thus rendering moot his original suggestion for Tlaib to go back and fix the place from which she came.

Rashida Tlaib was now in the position of being encouraged to ‘go back’ to the West Bank (or if the mood should take, being sent back) without actually being allowed to. By virtue of Israel’s refusal to grant a ‘right of return’ to Palestinian refugees displaced by decades of conflict, this is a not uncommon fate for Palestinians around the world.

Nevertheless, Tlaib appealed to the Israeli government to allow her into the West Bank in order to visit her elderly grandmother stating that she would, “respect any restrictions and will not promote boycotts against Israel during my visit.”[9]

Netenyahu then altered his decision stating that Tlaib could enter the West Bank, however, not as part of an official visit, but for a personal visit.

Rashida Tlaib ultimately rejected Israel’s offer, stating:

“Silencing me & treating me like a criminal is not what she wants for me. It would kill a piece of me. I have decided that visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions stands against everything I believe in–fighting against racism, oppression & injustice.“[10]

Subsequently, Tlaib has came under heavy criticism from several US politicians and media outlets with the President of the United States himself tweeting:

trumptlaibtweet

While it is true that Tlaib wrote a letter asking for Israeli permission to visit her grandmother, any desperation therein was precisely because of the conditions set forth by the Israeli Prime Minister. Also, even though Tlaib initially accepted the conditions of the personal visit, the reasons she gave for turning down a possible final visit to see her grandmother show a personal sacrifice for morals she believes in, rather than Trump’s “complete setup” theory.

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It has been commented on social media that if Rashida Tlaib wants to boycott Israel, then Israel can boycott her. However, she doesn’t want to boycott the state of Israel in all its entirety. The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions campaign is precisely concerned with ending Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians and disregard of international law.

Furthermore, the West Bank is not Israel. It is an occupied territory that belongs to the Palestinians. While Israel argues that its control over the West Bank is due to security reasons (a claim rendered questionable when considering the presence of Israeli civilian settlements in the territory), the BDS movement does not pose an existential threat to the state of Israel as defined under international law.

In fact, the actions of the state of Israel only go to threaten its existence as the Western liberal democracy it claims to be. To ban someone from entering Israel proper would go against one of the fundamental tenants of democracy that governments are meant to uphold: the freedom of speech – a value that Israel, as an occupying power, is also duty bound not to infringe upon in the West Bank.

Footnotes

[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1150381394234941448

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/17/trump-rally-send-her-back-ilhan-omar

[3] Despite later claiming that he had tried to stop the chant, video footage of the incident shows otherwise: