(Headline USA) Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Minn., was the sole lawmaker in the House this week to abstain from voting in favor of a bipartisan resolution condemning Hamas’s sexual violence against Israeli women.
418-0-1: House approved a bipartisan resolution condemning rape and sexual violence committed by Hamas in its war against Israel. Tlaib (D-MI) voted Present. pic.twitter.com/2uOmRcaiPp
— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) February 14, 2024
The resolution, introduced by Rep. Lois Frankel, D-Fla., “condemn[ed] all rape and forms of sexual violence as weapons of war, including those acts committed by Hamas terrorists” and called on “all nations to criminalize rape and sexual assault, and hold accountable all perpetrators of sexual violence, including state and non-state armed groups.”
The resolution also called on all international bodies to “unequivocally condemn the barbaric murder, rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping by Hamas and other terrorists on and since Oct. 7 and hold accountable all perpetrators.”
It passed in a vote of 418-0, with 12 members not voting at all. Tlaib voted “present.”
Though Frankel didn’t directly name Tlaib, she took aim at progressives who have dismissed allegations of sexual violence against Israeli women during the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, according to Newsweek.
“Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7 and continuing [are] almost too difficult to speak about—raping, mutilating and burning to inflict psychological pain and unleashing trauma that continues to plague a grieving Israel,” she said. “Shockingly and alarmingly, Hamas’s violence has been met with a shrug from many corners in the world, and many deny it.”
When asked why she didn’t support the resolution, Tlaib deflected by attempting to paint a false equivalence, saying she was “disturbed” that it “completely ignores and erases any sexual violence committed” allegedly by Israeli forces. There is no evidence to support such allegations.
“War crimes cannot justify more war crimes,” Tlaib said on the House floor.
“We must stand up for everyone’s safety and human rights no matter their faith, no matter their ethnicity,” she continued. “There are numerous well-documented reports of sexual violence, including rape, committed by Israeli forces against Palestinians in their custody.”
Tlaib was censured by the House of Representatives in November following a 234-188 vote in response to her use of anti-Semitic slogans.
A recent report by the Israeli outlet Walla addressed the concern that many of the young female hostages among the roughly 250 individuals taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 may have been impregnated as the result of rape during their captivity.
Some of the rescued hostages who bore witness to the atrocities recalled that the captors were merciless, often dressing up females, including young girls and boys, in “doll clothes” to fulfill their sexual fetishes.
“The terrorists bring inappropriate clothes—doll clothes—and turned the girls into their dolls—dolls on a string with which you can do whatever you want and whenever you want,” recalled Aviva Siegel, a former hostage who was released after 50 days.
“… There wasn’t a minute that we didn’t go through some form of abuse. And they’re still there, surviving, barely,” Siegel continued. “I’m still there, my body is there. The boys are also abused, what the girls are going through. Maybe they don’t go in for pregnancy, [but] they are also a puppet on a string.”
Among the horrific atrocities that Hamas terrorist were reported to have committed during their Oct. 7 ambush in Israel was to rape the corpses of many of their murder victims.
“The terrorists, people from Gaza, raped girls. And after they raped them, they killed them, murdered them with knives, or the opposite, killed—and after they raped, they—they did that,” Raz Cohen, a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre told PBS.
