- President Donald Trump, who publicly pressured Israel to bar Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from visiting the country, tweeted on Friday that the only “real winner” in Tlaib’s declining her eventual approval to visit the country was her grandmother, who Trump said “doesn’t have to see her now.”
- Tlaib, a freshman congresswoman representing Michigan, declined Israel’s offer of a humanitarian visit to see her elderly grandmother in the West Bank after she and Omar were initially barred from visiting the country.
- Tlaib’s grandmother reacted to Trump’s tweet on Saturday, telling Reuters from her garden in the Palestinian village of Beit Ur Al-Fauqa: “Trump tells me I should be happy Rashida is not coming. May God ruin him.”
After Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan was barred from entering Israel and then attacked by President Donald Trump on Twitter, her 90-year-old grandmother living in the West Bank, Muftia Tlaib, had some choice words for the US president.
“Trump tells me I should be happy Rashida is not coming,” the elder Tlaib told Reuters, from her garden in the Palestinian village of Beit Ur Al-Fauqa. “May God ruin him.”
The latest turn in an unprecedented conflict involving the US president, the country of Israel, and two US congresswomen, Tlaib’s grandmother’s seething words came after Trump’s Twitter tantrum and Tlaib’s refusal to accept the terms of a humanitarian visit to see her Palestinian family.
Trump on Thursday publicly urged Israel to block visits from Tlaib, of Michigan, and Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. The country then officially barred the two freshman congresswomen, who have opposed Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Read the article by Kat Tenbarge in Business Insider Australia.