Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib could be censured as soon as Wednesday for persistently uttering what many of her colleagues say are antisemitic remarks regarding Israel’s war with Hamas.

On Tuesday, the House cleared a key hurdle to censure the Michigan representative, which could possibly see her removed from committees, as befell her nemesis, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, when Democrats still controlled the House.

On Tuesday, the House refused to table the motion to censure Ms. Tlaib, the only Palestinian-American member of Congress, by a vote of 208–213 with one member voting present. One Democrat, Congressman Brad Schneider, who is Jewish, voted with 212 Republicans to allow the censure resolution to move forward on Wednesday. There were defections on the GOP side, with six members voting to kill the motion: Congressmen Ken Buck, John Duarte, Mike Garcia, Thomas Massie, Tom McClintock, and Ryan Zinke. 

Once the motion to table the resolution failed, the House began one hour of debate on censure, with members on both sides of the aisle delivering impassioned speeches both for and against Ms. Tlaib’s censure. 

Ms. Tlaib, who recently accused President Biden of abetting “genocide” by Israel in a video posted online, received a strong defense from her fellow Michigander, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell. “She is the only Palestinian-American in the Congress,” Ms. Dingell passionately said on the House floor. “Congresswoman Tlaib is entitled to the same constitutionally protected freedom of speech.”

Congressman Jim McGovern said that “if we’re going to start censuring anybody for saying something we don’t like, then all we’re going to do is spend all day censuring each other.”

One of only two Jewish Republicans in the House, Congressman Max Miller, said Ms. Tlaib wants “to push Israel off the map from the river to the sea.” Mr. Miller further said that by using the notorious phrase “from the river to the sea,” Ms. Tlaib is explicitly calling for the “erasure of the Jewish state and the people who call it home.”

The phrase “from the river to the sea” is widely considered to refer to driving all Jews between the west bank of the Jordan River and the Mediterranean into the ocean, where they would perish, allowing for the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state. Ms. Tlaib, however, denies that the phrase is antisemitic and calls it “aspirational.”

During Tuesday’s debate, Mr. Buck, the retiring Colorado conservative, stood up to defend Ms. Tlaib. “We lower ourselves when we try to take actions against someone for their words,” he said passionately. “This is the wrong time to do this. It is wrong.”

The House will also take up a separate censure resolution against Ms. Tlaib from Ms. Greene, who has accused Ms. Tlaib of aiding and abetting an “illegal occupation” of House property last month during an anti-Israel protest at the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill. This is the second time she has introduced a censure resolution against Ms. Tlaib. Ms. Greene has referred to Ms. Tlaib as “Terrorist Tlaib.”

Several Democrats have denounced Ms. Tlaib’s statements, even if they did not vote to censure her. One Jewish Democrat from her home state of Michigan asked her to apologize. Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin wrote on X that “the phrase ‘from the river to the sea’ is one of division and violence, and it is counterproductive to promoting peace.” Ms. Slotkin said that Ms. Tlaib should retract her statement.