Speaker refuses to condemn Hamas at conference attended by US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib

Rashida Tlaib, a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, spoke at a conference in Detroit in which a fellow speaker refused to condemn Hamas.

The event, titled the People’s Conference for Palestine, hosted a wider variety of speakers, of whom Tlaib was one.

The conference seeks to “continue building and strengthening the movement for Palestinian liberation in North America.”

Eduardo Martinez, the mayor of Richmond, California, was one of the speakers at the conference.

During Martinez’s talk, he said he was once asked if he “supported Hamas,” to which he responded that the question is “complicated.”

“The writer wanted to know if I supported Hamas. This is a complicated question, like asking if I support my country,” Martinez said. “A yes or no would never address the complexity that created Hamas, nor the complexity that created this nation.”

He went on to compare Hamas’ actions to his own use of physical violence as a child against school bullies who had verbally and physically abused him.

Martinez said that the adults in his life would consistently take the side of the bullies.

“There was nothing I could say to convince any adult that I was not the problem,” he said.

“If Palestine were a schoolyard playground, I would be a Palestinian,” he concluded. “And that part of me that couldn’t endure the abuse anymore would be Hamas.”

This line received loud cheers from the audience.

Martinez clarified that he is personally a “pacifist,” but stated that “we don’t know who we are until circumstances push us beyond our limits.”

In Congresswoman Tlaib’s talk at the conference, she leveled harsh criticism against Zionists.

“They thought they could kill us, rape us, imprison us, violently uproot us from our olive tree farms, starve our children to death, and we would disappear,” said Tlaib, whose Palestinian parents immigrated to the U.S. in 1976.

“Well, guess what, now we are in Congress and we’re [in] every corner of the United States.”

“They will never truly comprehend, even after seven decades, that we aren't going anywhere,” she continued. “We are just getting started. I want to say to all of them, every genocide enabler, look at this room, motherf***s, we ain't going anywhere.”

Also present at the conference was popular left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, who said that “spite” was a legitimate motivation in opposing Zionism.

“If you can’t find it in your heart to see a better future, do it out of spite to continue this movement,” he said, as the audience cheered.

“Find that anger in your heart to continue. Spite is also a good enough motivator.”