On September 24, ProPublica revealed that Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly ignored two different reports from within the Biden administration concluding that Israel was deliberately blocking aid into Gaza. Only days after receiving detailed memos explaining exactly how the Israeli military was blocking humanitarian aid, Blinken told Congress that US does not “currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance.”
Now, the Secretary of State is facing calls for his resignation. “[Blinken] lied. People went hungry, and some died. He needs to resign now,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich) wrote this morning. Tlaib, who is the only Palestinian-American in the US House, is the first member of Congress to call for Blinken to resign.
It is so so strange to me that there are Americans who want Tlaib to ignore her Palestinian heritage, and be “American first” because she is a representative of the American electorate.
Ignoring the fact that she probably has Palestinian/Arab constituents, these are also usually the same people who shout about their European heritage 5 generations back or whatever (don’t even get me started about their claims of descending from Henry the Eight or whatever), and also never actually “claim” Tlaib as American in any other circumstances because she’s not visibly of European descent.
Like…make it make sense, Robert from HR, who can’t be a direct descended to Henry the Eight because it is literally impossible.
Easy: they’re lying bigots. When they say “America first", what they mean is " White cishet Christian men from America first and the rich ones first amongst them"
That’s far too long, complicated, and honest for a jingoistic slogan, though…
Anti-immigrant sentiment has always been thinly veiled racism in America. Islamophobia, which is normalized in America, hasn’t even been thinly veiled, it’s just been straight up racist. But Americans have been conditioned into just thinking it’s just normal, dehumanizing Muslims and all non-white immigrants without being aware of it (It’s intentional to the US State Department ofc, to justify it’s imperialism)
I hope this is the catalyst for Americans to confront this for the racism it is. I feel like many still think racism has been ‘solved’ in America since the Civil Rights Movement, but the reality is that it simply shifted and still needs to be addressed seriously