Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) lambasted the US government for supporting Israel’s war effort in Gaza and predicted that the pro-Palestinian movement would continue to grow as a political force while speaking at an extremist-linked gathering over the weekend.

Tlaib made the comments during her appearance at the second annual People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit on Sunday. Donning a keffiyeh draped around her shoulders, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress angrily accused the US government of helping facilitate a so-called “genocide” in Gaza. 

“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. Well, guess what? Now we’re in Congress, and we’re in every corner of the United States,” said Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress.

“Every genocide enabler, look at this room, motherf—kers  we ain’t going anywhere. We are just growing and growing and growing,” Tlaib continued.

Tlaib dismissed the US federal government as being “the decaying halls of the empire” and argued that the Palestinian cause has won the broader cultural narrative regarding the war in Gaza. 

“Outside of the decaying halls of the empire in Washington, DC, we are winning. They are scared,” Tlaib added. 

Tlaib, one of the fiercest critics of Israel in Congress, encouraged the audience to continue their anti-Israel activism, arguing that federal lawmakers will not change the status quo in the Middle East. She claimed that lawmakers are “scared” of anti-Israel protesters and suggested without evidence that they are taking cues from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a lobbying group that seeks to foster bipartisan support for the US-Israel alliance, instead of listening to their constituents. 

“Change doesn’t come from the cowards and warmongers in Congress. It comes from the streets. It comes from all of us mobilizing and seizing the power to resist and fight back,” she said.

Tlaib also appeared at last year’s conference. Her presence sparked immense backlash, with many pointing out the event’s platforming and veneration of terrorists. 

Last year’s event featured speakers from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization. 

Beyond Tlaib, the conference featured a litany of speakers who demonized Israel and venerated Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that has ruled Gaza for nearly two decades and started the current war with its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of the Jewish state. 

Eduardo Martinez, the progressive mayor of Richmond, California, refused to explicitly condemn Hamas and received a round of applause after he compared the terrorist group to small children defending themselves from a school yard bully.

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

Martinez framed the Oct. 7 atrocities, during which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating rampant sexual violence, as an act of self-defense.

“We don’t know who we are until circumstances push us beyond our limits,” he said. 

Jenan Awaida, an activist affiliated with the radical Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) organization, said the conflict against Israel is part of a broader effort to dismantle Western institutions.  

“We are dealing with a world system that facilitates genocide through the role of governments, corporations, media institutions, a system manufactured by greedy corporations and billionaires,” she said. 

Omar Suleiman, a controversial imam and Islamic activist, issued a strong defense of the Holy Land Five — a group of leaders of the controversial Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), once the largest Muslim charity in the US. The US government shut down the HLF in 2001, accusing it of funneling money to Hamas, which is designated by the US (and several other countries) as a terrorist organization. 

Suleiman said that the men were imprisoned “for the crime of feeding Palestinian children.”

Nidal Jboor, a medical doctor and political activist, encouraged the audience to “neutralize” political leaders in Israel, the United States, and Europe. 

“We all know who they are, whether they are in Israel, Tel Aviv, in Washington, in Germany, in Europe. They need to be locked up. They need to be taken out. They need to be neutralized to save children, to save humanity,” Jboor said. 

“Speaking up alone is not enough,” he said. “Now it’s time to escalate and to act.”

Abubaker Abed, a self-described “journalist” operating in Gaza, lavished praise on the Hamas terrorist group and suggested that every civilian in Gaza is assisting Hamas. 

“Every single one in Gaza is a resistance fighter in their own way,” he said. 

Abed celebrated the Oct. 7 slaughters on social media. In a January 2025 post, he showered praise on long-time Hamas leader and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, saying that the terrorist’s “love of resistance and land is seen very clearly.” In a March 2025 post, Abubaker posted that international supporters of the Palestinian cause should “attack your governments.” He also defended Hamas’s murdering of dissidents, saying that the victims were “collaborating” with Israel.

Cori Bush, a former Democratic representative from Missouri, was slated to speak at the event. However, Bush quietly dropped out of the conference without providing an explanation. 

During her tenure in Congress, Bush established herself as one of the most vocal critics of Israel. Bush repeatedly condemned Israel as a “genocidal” country and was one of the first members of Congress to call or a “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas.

The event offered several panels, touching on subjects such as US military aid, legal accountability, and grassroots organizing, all presented through an anti-Israel lens, according to the event website.