Democrat Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib is refusing to apologize for falsely accusing Israel of being behind the explosion outside of the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday even after it was confirmed that a rocket launched from Gaza caused the blast, ABC News reported.
Tlaib along with fellow “Squad” member Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, were among those who claimed that the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike. The two also falsely claimed that the hospital was destroyed in the explosion and more than 500 people were killed.
In a post on X, Tlaib claimed without evidence that Israel “just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians” and accused the Biden administration of failing to “facilitate a ceasefire.”
Sharing a post from the Associated Press that unquestioningly repeated the claims from Hamas, Omar also blamed the Israeli Defense Forces and described “bombing a hospital” as “among the gravest of war crimes.”
After video footage and other evidence confirmed that the explosion was not caused by an Israeli airstrike but by a faulty rocket fired by the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad, Omar walked back her previous claim while refusing to delete her initial post.
Instead, Omar added a thread to her false claim in which she blamed the Associated Press for her initial post and admitted that the IDF has since “denied responsibility” while the US confirmed that the explosion was not caused by an Israeli airstrike.
Rather than apologize outright, Omar reminded everyone who didn’t fall for the lie that during the “fog of war,” “information is often unreliable and disputed.”
Omar called for a “fully independent investigation” to “conclusively” determine who committed “this war crime.”
Meanwhile, Rashida Tlaib refused to acknowledge the truth, instead choosing to double down and tearfully repeat her false claims while speaking to pro-Hamas protesters outside of the Capitol on Wednesday.
Several independent intelligence sources and multiple European news sources reported on Thursday that the actual death toll from the explosion in the hospital’s parking lot was somewhere between 10 and 50, not 500 as Hamas initially claimed.
