[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 82 (Thursday, May 15, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H2058]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE NAKBA NEVER ENDED

  (Ms. Tlaib of Michigan was recognized to address the House for 5 
minutes.)
  Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, Peter Beinart said: ``When you tell a people 
to forget its past, you are not proposing peace, you are proposing 
extinction.''
  I introduced a resolution yesterday recognizing the 77 years of the 
ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people and the need for refugee 
rights. We know that thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed 
in 1948, and nearly 800,000 were violently removed from over 400 
villages, completely erased. Many of them carry their keys to this day, 
Mr. Speaker, hanging them on the wall of their new, temporary homes in 
hopes that one day they will be able to return to their villages.
  We acknowledge their trauma and the painful loss of their connections 
to their family members, land, the beautiful olive groves, and the 400 
Palestinian villages that they all grew up in. We, of course, see that 
the Israeli Government continues to illegally steal Palestinian land in 
the occupied West Bank where my family lives. They illegally evict 
Palestinian families, Mr. Speaker, demolish homes, and deny 
Palestinians basic human rights.
  We honor those all around the world and want them to know that former 
Congresswoman Cori Bush and I see them. We know the suffering. We know 
that there are lasting harms of settler colonialism, as well as ethnic 
cleansing and apartheid.
  There are days that I feel so alone in this Chamber as the only 
Palestinian American serving in Congress. The dehumanization and the 
anti-Palestinian racism here is painful, especially when my colleagues 
remain silent on the starvation of children and vote to send more bombs 
to the Israeli Government while they commit war crimes with impunity.
  Today, we are witnessing a genocide in Gaza. Many human rights 
organizations, advocacy groups, NGOs, and folks on medical missions 
have confirmed, the campaign to erase Palestinians from existence is 
happening right now, live-streamed for all of us to see while the world 
sits and does nothing.
  Palestinians were right. The Nakba never ended. Across Gaza, the 
medical system has been deliberately destroyed. The Israeli Government 
is using starvation as a weapon of war, which is a war crime. The 
thousands of trucks carrying food and lifesaving aid sit blocked at the 
border while Palestinian families starve.
  Instead of agreeing to a cease-fire, war criminal Netanyahu is now 
preparing a full-scale assault to ethnically cleanse and forcibly expel 
the entire Palestinian population from Gaza and to flatten and 
permanently occupy the land. This was always their plan. He said it 
himself.
  Israeli forces have killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, and nearly 
70 percent of them were women and children, babies who did not live to 
see their first birthday. There are thousands more who were 
dismembered, unrecognizable, burned alive, buried beneath the rubble, 
and presumed dead.

                              {time}  1030

  Mr. Speaker, nearly 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced once 
again. Each year, our country sends billions of dollars to maintain 
this apartheid state and support the ongoing cleansing of the 
Palestinian people. Our country is complicit, Mr. Speaker, because our 
Nation is funding this genocide.
  The Israeli Government will not stop until we put in place an arms 
embargo. The majority of Americans support it. We must save lives. No 
matter faith or ethnicity, a child is a child.
  Mr. Speaker, my ``grandma's''; ``sity's'' only crime in the eyes of 
the Israeli apartheid government was that she was born Palestinian. It 
killed me inside that she took her last breath without being truly 
free. I pray that the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinians will end 
and one day they will be free.


                   Sneaking In Nonprofit Killer Bill

  Ms. TLAIB. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about something that is 
happening right here in our backyard in regard to the Congressional 
Mamas Caucus.
  As a mother, I am dismayed. We started Mamas for Medicaid, which is 
mothers across the Nation sharing their stories about what it means to 
cut Medicaid and how cruel it will be for their families, especially 
those with children with special needs.
  What makes me even more angry is this so-called sneaking in of the 
nonprofit killer bill into the budget reconciliation package. We have 
to worry about that now.
  This is dangerous and unconstitutional legislation that would give 
the Trump administration unchecked power to target any nonprofit 
organization as a political enemy and shut them down--no evidence, no 
charge, no trial, no due process.
  This legislation is part of a broader assault on civil liberties, 
aiming to criminalize free speech, Mr. Speaker.
  Trust me, it won't just be Palestinian human rights organizations. It 
will be those who are fighting against the Medicaid cuts. It will be 
those who are fighting for Black lives and those who are fighting for 
climate justice. It is wrong, and I hope my colleagues will vote 
against it.

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