Ramallah, August 19 (RHC)-- The grandmother of U.S. congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan slammed Donald Trump after the U.S. president made an insensitive comment on Twitter about her granddaughter.
Muftia Tlaib, the grandmother of House Representative Rashida Tlaib, responded to Trump's comments by stating "may God ruin him." Ninety-year-old Muftia Tlaib, sitting in her garden in the village of Beit Ur Al-Fauqa, was not impressed. “Trump tells me I should be happy Rashida is not coming,” she said. “May God ruin him.”
Muftia has been at the center of a visit affair that has drawn Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu together against U.S. Democrats. On Thursday, bowing to pressure from Trump, Israel barred a visit by Rashida Tlaib and fellow Democrat Ilhan Omar that it had initially said it would allow.
The next day, Israel said it would let Tlaib visit her family in the West Bank on humanitarian grounds - but Tlaib rejected the offer, saying that Israel had imposed restrictions meant to humiliate her.
On Friday night, Trump tweeted: “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. The only real winner here is Tlaib’s grandmother. She doesn’t have to see her now!”
Her son, Rashida’s uncle Bassam Tlaib, said the women had not seen each other since 2006. “She was going to slaughter a sheep when Rashida arrived and prepare her favorite food, stuffed vine leave. “Rashida sees her granny as a second mother, she has always supported her. Rashida says she owes her success to her grandmother.”
Tlaib did not outline what the conditions imposed on her visit were. Israeli media reported that she had agreed not to promote boycotts against Israel as part of her request to Israel’s Foreign Ministry.
Tlaib, like Omar, has voiced support for the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which opposes the occupation and Israel’s policies toward Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. BDS backers can be denied entry to Israel by law.
The two women are the first two Muslim women to be elected to Congress, and Detroit-born Tlaib is the first Palestinian-American congresswoman. Both are members of the Democratic party’s progressive wing and sharp critics of Trump and Israel.
