- President Donald Trump sent a series of tweets on Friday night aimed at Rep. Rashida Tlaib and her decision to not travel to Israel to visit her grandmother in the West Bank under what she called “oppressive conditions,” after she had initially been banned from visiting the country.
- Trump’s tweets were yet another chapter in the days-long international kerfuffle over whether two Democratic congresswomen, Reps. Tlaib, of Michigan, and Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota, would be allowed to visit Israel.
- On Thursday, Israel barred the two from travelling to to the country, due to their support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions or BDS movement, a movement that aims at putting economic pressure on Israel over the conditions of the Palestinians.
- Tlaib, a Detroit native whose family is from Palestine, had written a letter to the Israeli government asking to be allowed in to visit her grandmother who is in her 90s and lives in the West Bank. Israel’s Interior Minister Aryeh Deri said on Friday morning that he would approve the trip on humanitarian grounds.
- However, according to Tlaib the preconditions for visiting were “oppressive,” and she decided not to go, citing the need to pledge to not “promote boycotts against Israel” while visiting.
- “Rep. Tlaib wrote a letter to Israeli officials desperately wanting to visit her grandmother. Permission was quickly granted, whereupon Tlaib obnoxiously turned the approval down, a complete setup,” Trump tweeted. “The only real winner here is Tlaib’s grandmother. She doesn’t have to see her now!”
Read the article by Sarah Gray in Business Insider Australia.