Rep. Pressley Needs to be Reminded
To the Editor,
Rep. Ayanna Pressley spoke against last week’s House Censure of Rep. Tlaib as, “a waste of time,” and an effort to, “silence a progressive woman of color.” Viewers watching the hearing would have been impressed by the honest struggle Republicans and Democrats supporting the censure evidenced as they quite correctly concluded that, “Free Palestine from the river to the sea” -repeatedly used by Talib – is in fact a call to genocide. The rallying cry has been used for decades by anti-Israel groups, and constitutes hate speech. Tlaib knows this, and Pressley should.
Rep Pressley needs to be reminded that in Boston’s Public Garden there is a memorial to hundreds of New Englanders killed on 9/11. Terrorism is real, and means what it says. Chants by Representatives calling for genocide deserve censure for moral clarity. That congressional activity is not a waste of time, nor an attack of women of color.
The censure was an instance of the House at its finest by both sides of the aisle.
Barry Zaltman