The so-called “Squad” in the U.S. House of Representatives, which is comprised of Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, did not fall in line and vote on a bill to oppose the anti-Israel BDS movement.
It was expected that two of the sponsors of a pro-BDS resolution (H.Res. 496) in the House, Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, and possibly Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, would vote against the bill, but it wasn’t known that Rep. Pressley would vote in favor of opposing BDS.
Tlaib has not been afraid to express her disdain for Israel, calling the bill an attempt to silence the “opposition to Israel’s blatantly racist policies that demonize both Palestinians and Ethiopians.”
The 398-17 vote was nothing less than a staggering display of bipartisan support for the measure with 16 members refusing to cast an up or down vote.
Strangely enough, Georgia Rep. John Lewis (D), who co-sponsored Omar’s pro-BDS bill, voted in favor of bipartisan bill to support the state of Israel.
Lewis tries to qualify his support for Omar’s pro-BDS resolution by stating that there was “no mention of Israel” in the measure.
“I guarantee that if members of the community actually read the text of H. Res. 496, a Judiciary Committee resolution introduced by Rep. Omar, they will discover it makes no mention of Israel. The resolution merely advocates for the right to protest as a central principle of democratic freedom.”
