EXCLUSIVE — House Republicans are publicly reaffirming their support for Israel, seeking to draw a sharp contrast from their Democratic counterparts who have come under fire after blaming Israel for a deadly airstrike at a Christian hospital in Gaza earlier this week.
In a newly released video first obtained by the Washington Examiner, several Republican lawmakers are featured pledging support for the Middle Eastern country by repeating the phrase: “I stand with Israel.” The video comes in response to claims from liberal Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) that the hospital strike was caused by the Israeli military despite U.S. intelligence reports suggesting otherwise.
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“The four words extreme House Democrats will never say? ‘We stand with Israel,’” National Republican Congressional Committee national press secretary Will Reinert said in a statement.
The video comes after Tlaib refused to walk back her comments, even after President Joe Biden and other U.S. officials affirmed evidence that the Tuesday explosion was caused by a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Omar later walked back her comments blaming Israel, noting her office had relied on news reports that were later updated with different information.
“It is a reminder that information is often unreliable and disputed in the fog of war (especially on Twitter where misinformation is rampant). We all have a responsibility to ensure information we are sharing is from credible sources and to acknowledge as new reports come in,” she said in a statement.
Tlaib went so far as to repeat the assertions during a protest at the Capitol on Wednesday, prompting swift backlash from House Republicans who decried the Michigan Democrat for spreading misinformation.
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“It is appalling and unacceptable that Democrats in Congress partook in Hamas’s misinformation campaign, which falsely accused the Israel Defense Forces of bombing a hospital in Gaza,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) said in a statement. “Rep. Tlaib and her radical colleagues helped spread this insidious lie far and wide, without remorse, and as of this morning have yet to take down their posts, issue an apology, or place blame on the actual perpetrators with the same conviction.”
The hospital explosion comes amid a larger war that emerged earlier this month between Israel and the Hamas militant group. It’s not yet clear how many people died as a result of the explosion, but a spokesperson for the Gazan health ministry said the death toll could be in the hundreds.
