US Rep.-elect Rashida Tlaib announced her garment choice on Instagram.
“Sneak peek: This is what I am wearing when I am sworn into Congress,” she said.
She included the hashtags #PalestinianThobe and #ForMyYama, CNN reported.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BrYkJU5ASt3/?utm_source=ig_embed
Palestinian women traditionally wear hand-embroidered gowns. Each gown’s embroidery is unique and represents the city that its wearer is from. For Palestinians, it is considered a way of showing pride in one’s heritage.
Tlaib is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants from Beit Our al-Foqa, a village in the West Bank near Ramallah.
Tlaib will fill the seat formerly occupied by Democratic Rep. John Conyers, who left office last year amid accusations of sexual misconduct. She ran unopposed in the general election following her August primary win in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District.
Following that win, Tlaib appeared at a celebration rally where she was draped in a Palestinian flag and her mother broke out in ululation, a high-pitched vocal sound many Middle Eastern women make in celebration.
A self-styled progressive, Tlaib is a critic of President Donald Trump and was arrested two years ago for disrupting a Trump speech in Detroit.
She has been considered an anti-Israel activist for her support of BDS, Middle East Eye reported.
Congresswoman-elect Rashida Tlaib has become just the second US lawmaker to express support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.
“I personally support the BDS movement,” Tlaib said in an interview with The Intercept news website published on Monday.
“I want us to see that segregation and how that has really harmed us being able to achieve real peace in that region,” said Tlaib, a Palestinian-American lawmaker who was elected to the US House of Representatives last month.
Tlaib, who is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, was elected in a Michigan constituency that is home to a large Arab-American population.\
She also said she plans to skip a trip to Israel organised by the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) for new US lawmakers, the Intercept reported, opting to lead a Congressional delegation to the occupied West Bank instead.
“If our country is sincere about being an honest broker to peace than my sity [grandmother] deserves to be seen and heard just like any other human being. She deserves human dignity. Let’s try a different approach, shall we,” Tlaib tweeted after the Intercept report was published.
Her delegation will focus on Israel’s detention of Palestinian children, clean water and poverty, the Intercept reported. It remains unknown which other elected officials will join her delegation or when they plan to travel.
