A bipartisan furor erupted over comments made by Rep. Pramila Jayapal at a Chicago conference Saturday calling Israel a ‘racist state.’ Jayapal later walked back the comments and voted for the bipartisan resolution.
The House on Tuesday passed a Republican-led resolution reaffirming its support for Israel with strong bipartisan approval — an implicit rebuke of a leading Democrat who, over the weekend, called the country a “racist state” but later apologized.
The resolution, introduced by Rep. August Pfluger, R-Texas, passed with over 400 lawmakers backing the measure. It did not mention Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., by name, but was clearly a response to her remarks over the weekend in Chicago about the Jewish state. The measure was drafted soon after she criticized Israel and its treatment of Palestinians at the Netroots Nation convention on Saturday.
Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also voted in support of the resolution. “I am not going to be bullied by their political games, and I’m not going to let them try to continue this debate,” she told reporters after the vote.
The Washington Democrat had walked back her comments from over the weekend, insisting they were aimed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not the Jewish state.
“I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist,” Jayapal said in a statement Sunday. “I do, however, believe that Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies and that there are extreme racists driving that policy within the leadership of the current government.”
The GOP-led effort highlighted the divide among House Democrats over Israel, with younger progressives adopting a more critical stance toward the longtime U.
