Rashida Tlaib
D · U.S. House, MI-12 · Tier 6
Tier 6, “Most critical of Israel / supports Palestine”
Leads the H.Res.876 genocide resolution; arms embargo; Block the Bombs; calls Israel an “apartheid regime”. In 2018 she told In These Times she backs one state — “It has to be one state. Separate but equal does not work.” — and told The Intercept, “I personally support the BDS movement.” Wrote the Nakba resolutions dating the dispossession to 1948 and affirming the Palestinian right of return (H.Res.409, May 2025; H.Res.1289, May 2026). In June 2025 she led a letter of 19 lawmakers to Secretary Rubio condemning the “escalating use of starvation as a weapon of war by the Israeli government against the Palestinian people in Gaza,” rejecting the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and demanding “an immediate end to the blockade,” restored U.S. funding to UNRWA and a lasting ceasefire. She also signed letters urging the State Department to affirm U.S. opposition to the forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza (January 2024), backing refugee priority status for Gazans with U.S. citizen or permanent-resident relatives (June 2024), demanding answers on the detentions of the student activists Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi (March and April 2025) and urging Secretary Rubio to press Israel to allow a surge of aid into Gaza, above all infant formula (August 2025), and in February 2026 she was one of 15 lawmakers seeking accountability for Israel’s detention and abuse of Palestinian American teenager Mohammed Ibrahim. Tlaib sponsors H.Con.Res.83 (Mar 27, 2026), directing the removal of US forces from unauthorized hostilities in Lebanon. In August 2026 she led a letter, signed by 34 House members and six senators, demanding the release of 20-year-old US citizen Sama Safi from Israeli military detention, and on Sep 24 she signed the Pocan–Quigley letter on Palestinian medical workers held by Israel without charge. On October 6, 2026 she joined Chuy García, Delia Ramirez, Summer Lee, Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal in a joint statement demanding “an end to U.S. arms transfers to Israel, including the Trump Administration’s latest $2.8 billion sale of bombs,” and on October 9 she and Lou Correa reintroduced a resolution honoring Alex Odeh, the Palestinian American activist killed by a pipe bomb at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Santa Ana office in 1985, whose killers, she said, “have yet to be brought to justice.” Asked on CNN in July 2019 whether Israel has a right to exist, she answered “Oh, of course … But just like Palestinians have a right to exist”; in November 2023 she was the only member to vote Present on the House resolution reaffirming Israel’s right to exist (H.Res.888, 412–1–1). In October 2026 she urged Governor Gretchen Whitmer to block state support for a Sterling Heights facility of the Israeli counter-drone maker Capture Systems, calling Michigan an “anti-war and anti-genocide state” and saying the company has “no place in our state and should not be receiving a dime of public funds.” On Oct 19, 2026, sharing the Hind Rajab Foundation’s emergency request to the Justice Department, she called for the arrest of Sean Glass, an Israeli commander the foundation ties to the killing of five-year-old Hind Rajab in Gaza, who was reported to be in the United States: “As a party to the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Conventions, our government is obligated to arrest and investigate him for these war crimes and acts of genocide” (as quoted by Al Jazeera). In December 2018 she told The Intercept she would lead a congressional delegation to the occupied West Bank as an alternative to AIPAC’s trips for new members. In August 2019 Israel’s government barred her and Ilhan Omar from entering over their support for the boycott movement, days before a planned visit co-sponsored by the Palestinian group Miftah; allowed a “humanitarian” visit to her grandmother in Beit Ur al-Fauqa after she sent a letter in which, Israel’s interior ministry said, she promised not to promote the boycott during her stay, she declined, saying “Visiting my grandmother under these oppressive conditions meant to humiliate me would break my grandmother’s heart.” On Oct 23, 2026, after Netanyahu ordered Hebron sealed and a lockdown of the occupied West Bank prepared, following the shooting that killed two Israeli soldiers at Hebron’s exit, she wrote: “The genocidal apartheid state promises to commit more war crimes with U.S. weapons and tax dollars. This is the unbearable everyday reality for Palestinians, and it’s only getting worse. Block the bombs. Dismantle apartheid. Free Palestine.” On Oct 26, 2026, the eve of Israel’s election, she wrote: “Regardless of which war criminal becomes prime minister, Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid will continue to face genocide, land theft, and erasure. We cannot accept lies, excuses, or half-measures from our leaders. We must impose a full arms embargo and sanctions until Palestine is free.”
A 6, on the right of return in her own words. She leads the H.Res.876 genocide resolution, backs a full arms embargo and Block the Bombs, calls Israel an apartheid state, and wrote the resolutions recognizing the ongoing Nakba and affirming Palestinian refugees’ right of return (H.Res.409, May 14, 2025, and H.Res.1289, May 14, 2026). Backing the right of return reaches toward the Tier 6 end, and for her it is her own position, not a cosponsorship: introducing the 2026 resolution, she said “True peace must be built on justice and the inalienable right of return for Palestinian refugees.” The most prominent Palestinian-American voice in Congress — though, like all electeds, still trailing the movement's scholars and organizers.
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elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).