Last Monday, the Republican-majority House of Representatives passed the only resolution censuring one of its members over the latest Palestinian-Israeli war. It censures Rashida Tlaib, the only member of congress of Palestinian descent, over some of her statements since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 Israelis and others.
Since that day, Israel has retaliated by massacring anywhere between five and 10 times that number of Palestinians, most of them women and children, depending on how much credence you give the humanity and value of a Palestinian life. Based on media coverage, the Biden Administration’s response and public reactions to the war, it’s safe to say that Palestinian lives matter considerably less, if at all, than Israeli lives.
Hence the Tlaib censure–which is not by any means undeserved, at least in part. Some of the resolution justifying the censure is propagandistic bunk cribbed from Irgund-era rhetoric. Not a surprise since the resolution was introduced by Rich McCormick, the Georgia Republican and election-denier who still thinks DeSantis will win the 2024 presidential election. This former American Gladiator’s grasp on reality is tenuous.
But the resolution is dead-on in one regard: “Tlaib published on social media a video containing the phrase ‘from the river to the sea,’” the resolution states, “which is widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel and its people to replace it with a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” That statement is indisputable.
Tlaib then doubled down, and pinned this statement to the top of her X page: “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.” I disagree, as I think most people who read English and know something about dog whistles or Hamas slogans would disagree. Tlaib describing “from the river to the sea” as she does would be like someone describing “lebensraum,” the infamous Nazi ideology of seeking “living space,” as an aspirational call for elbow-room coexistence a little past the Rhine on one side and the Oder on the other. No one is fooled.
Compare the river-to-the-sea call with these few lines from Jabotinsky, the Zionist poet: “There Arabs, Nazarenes and we / shall drink our fill in happy manner, / when both the banks of Jordan’s stream / are purged by our unsullied banner.” Of course the lines were written before Israel was born and before Zionism lost its idealistic wokeness. But there was a time when even a two-state solution was unnecessary, when Jews saw themselves as Arabs’ neighbors on an equal footing in a common homeland. Next thing you know Jabotinsky was founding a terrorist organization that went on to have a sordid history of civilian massacres and expulsions. So much for dreams in an unholy land of cherry-picking propagandists on both sides.
Still, I was surprised to see t-shirts hawking the river-to-the-sea imagery at an Arab festival in Orlando of all places, just last in May. It would have been no different than seeing the Confederate flag or swastika emblems at an Independence Day celebration at the county airport (as opposed to, say, a Trump rally). A certain kind of symbolism is simply unacceptable, and the river-to-the-sea imagery is unquestionably a different way of saying that Israelis have no right to exist.
Considering that Israel has denied Palestinians the right to exist for decades, and that it is wiping them off the map, genocidally, as we speak, Tlaib should have known better to just stick with deploring ongoing atrocities and war crimes against her people, not calling for one against Israelis. In that sense, the censure is justified.
So was Tlaib’s original statement: “I grieve the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today, and every day,” she said on Oct. 8, the day after the Hamas massacre of Israelis. She made the unpardonable offense, at least in the United States, of equating Palestinian lives with Israeli lives, and of doing so as the murdered of Oct. 7 were still being accounted for, though Palestinians have been accounting for their own being killed, murdered and lynched by Israeli troops and fanatical colonists for decades.
Tlaib was merely alluding to the fact. “I am determined as ever to fight for a just future where everyone can live in peace, without fear and with true freedom, equal rights, and human dignity,” she said–words that could have echoed Jabotinsky’s verses, or for that matter the words of Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican of our own Reconstruction era, reminding white supremacists of 1866 that Black lives do matter: “Every man, no matter what his race or color; every earthly being who has an immortal soul, has an equal right to justice, honesty and fair play with every other man.”
“The path to that future must include lifting the blockade, ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance,” Tlaib went on. “The failure to recognize the violent reality of living under siege, occupation, and apartheid makes no one safer. No person, no child anywhere should have to suffer or live in fear of violence. We cannot ignore the humanity in each other. As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support the apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”
There is nothing in that statement, not a thought, not a historical allusion or factual assertion, that is inaccurate, or that couldn’t have been said at any point, any day, since 1967, when Israel’s occupation began, and with it, by definition, the apartheid system that turned Palestinians under occupation into dirt-class non-citizens. (The condition of Israeli Arabs is another story altogether: Jim Crow lite.)
Tlaib’s statement is pretty much what those 300,000 demonstrators in London were reflecting in their own way on what they call Armistice Day in Europe, on our own Veterans Day, Saturday.
There’s unquestionably some river-to-the-sea anti-Semitism out there. It should be and is being denounced. But conflating all criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism is itself a form of bigotry that places Palestinian lives beneath contempt and Israeli policy above reproach, even as swaths of Gaza in November 2023 look like Dresden in February 1945 and anti-Palestinian rhetoric in media and government continues to be indistinguishable from the vilest racism.
Maybe now we can get Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert censured for referring to Omar, Tlaib and other Democrats as the “Jihad Squad,” or Boebert for suggesting that Omar is a suicide bomber, or Rep. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania for ridiculing an anti-Islamophobia bill that never passed, or Mark Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, for referring to Muslims as “hordes,” the way his colleagues a few generations ago routinely referred to Asians as the “yellow peril,” Or Florida Republican Rep. Brian Mast for referring to most of Gaza’s 2 million Palestinians, including its 1 million children, as Hamas “terrorists” or comparing them to Nazis.
That’s not going to happen, because Congress would have to censure almost every member every day. When it comes to denying Palestinians their dignity and their right to exist, there is no daylight between most American politicians and the brutality of the Israeli assaults they’re zealously paying for with our money.
Pierre Tristam is FlaglerLive’s editor. A version of this piece aired on WNZF.
The dude says
To be fair, we must also condemn the shooting and blowing up of dancing kids, and the kidnapping of grandmothers…
Nobody’s hands are clean here.
The world is on fire because of old men. Time for them all to retire and go count their winnings while the newer generations figure how to put the conflagrations, those old men started, out.
Full disclosure, I myself am not exactly a young man, just a man willing to let go of the past and try to keep pace with the present. Never once in my life have I ever pined for days gone by or “how things used to be”, simply because the past is the past, and the future is the future, and there’s no sense in trying to recreate the past.
20th century solutions simply do not translate t0 21st century problems, they just cause more.
We were promised jet packs by now… I want my jet pack.
Just saying.
R.S. says
To be fair, we should take a look at the count, no? More than 11,000 Palestinian civilians to 1,200 Israeli civilians makes me think about who’s the barbarian here, proportionality being a criterion in the morality of just warfare.
Not Shocked says
What 11,000 Palestinian civilians? Where does that count come from? These are citizens of Gaza; a country that recognizes Hamas as it’s government. How many of those Palestinians were soldiers? The Hamas government of Gaza orchestrated an unprovoked attack on the state of Israel and killed an estimated 1200 civilians.
This is a war. There has been no cessation of aggressions in this conflict. Hamas fires rockets at targets in Israel every day. Hamas holds hundreds of hostages. The Israeli government has set a clear military objective to kill or capture and punish every member of Hamas.
Sherry says
@not shocked. . . by your illogical thinking. . . I’m just hoping that “I” will not be labeled and jailed as a criminally corrupt, fraudulent liar, and fascist if, God forbid, trump were to be re-elected. . . since “I” would then be “forced” to live under his horrific government.
jake says
Equating another term with Trump as President, to Hamas, is sick, and fucked up. You’re just grandstanding your hatred for Trump, which is allowed, in this country. You’re not alone, but your comparison is disgusting.
Pierre Tristam says
Oh I don’t know. Considering that Trump’s disastrously irresponsible response to Covid unnecessarily ran up the death count by a few hundred thousand, that he put an end to any two-state solution pressures in Palestine, that he took Putin’s word over his own intelligence agencies, that he stacked the Supreme Court with mullahs and misogynists, became the apologist and champion of the worst resurgence in white nationalism and white supremacy since Jim Crow terrorism ran half the country, and left off where he’ll surely pick up should be become president again–at an insurrection–Sherry’s comparison of Trump with Hamas seems to me a tad understated. Hamas doesn’t have the power he wielded, nor has it run up anywhere near as many victims, nor did it damage democracy, as he will continue to, perhaps irreparably, once elected again. But you have that disgust and sickness, which you seem to admire, to look forward to, I’m sure.
Laurel says
Not to mention Trump wants to get rid of our Constitution. He will go after Americans who disagree with him. The only thing he got right was that our danger comes from within. That is him, the real danger. Most of his cult do not even know the difference between communists, Marxists, socialists, and fascists, and he knows it. Every day citizens will be his target.
Sherry says
@ Pierre, Thanks so much for this comment accurately comparing the long list of trump’s great harm to democracy, and to millions of our citizens, to the atrocities of Hamas.
Ole Jake lost his soul to the “cult” long ago, and is so mindlessly dedicated to trump that he just may be permanently lost to us who still live in the realm of reason. Sad and pathetic!
My point to “not shocked” is that painting, as terrorists, all those who happen to be living in Gaza when a terrorist organization called Hamas took over that territory is extremely biased thinking.
We, in the USA, suffered through 4 years of a government lead by a “white collar terrorist”! A criminally corrupt, treasonist madman who each and every day is still being successful in his hell bent mission to completely destroy our democracy from within.
If the very worst happens, and trump somehow becomes terrorist “herr fuhrer” because the most mindless people on the planet elect him next year. . . The millions of us who still believe in democracy should certainly NOT be thought of as anything like demented trump and his tribe of immoral fascists! We would be “forced” to either give up our homes/families/jobs/lives, and move to another country, or live in the dictatorship hell that is sure to be wrought by the criminals on the extreme right!
Hopefully, you can now consider the possibility that not all those who live in Gaza support Hamas. They have no choice but to live under its current rule.
A TWO state solution must be forged before a permanent peace is possible.
KEENAN says
Let me be frank. The way this whole thing has been handled is disingenuous, political,and religious. My father was a Syrian national,came to America,married a Finnish girl and eventually taught at Georgetown University. I was fortunate enough to travel all over the middle east and Africa thanks to that man. I’m sick to my stomach seeing the way the media and Biden administration is handling Benjamin Netanyahu and his short sighted murder campaign on civilians in Gaza. What happened on Oct 7th was horrific! Use the U.S. special forces and IDF. Even CIA! Will it take longer? Yes it will. we have the resources as well as 4 billion dollars Israel gets every year for simply being Israel. Hammas and Palestinians are two completly different entities! Terrorism is a tactic. Not a war. Calling this a out and out war greenlights Netanyahu’s ability, politically to kill as many Palestinians as he can. He knows that Hammas is a religious group that wants to eradicate Jews from the Earth, so he gets to call this a religious war,which makes him no better than Hammas! We are at 12,000 dead. 5,000 being children and 1.5 million displaced Gazans, but hey! Whos counting?
President Biden won’t call for a cease fire because of Americas ” blind devotion” for Israel. Put sanctions on Netanyahu! He is becoming a ‘war criminal” as well as the fact he is breaking every international laww there is. Calling him out does not make you anti-semitic!! EVERYONE SEES WHAT IS HAPPENING BEFORE THEIR EYES. Let me put it this way: If you think what Hammas did as horrable as it was, is worse than what Netanyahu is doing now? Then you are a racist. Full stop.
We can not afford to be this intellectually lazy anymore!!! This is not a war. This is an attack on top of an attack that pits a military against civilians that have nothing to do with it, and we are watching it happen in real time.
RonaldJustice says
the real question here Pierre is “does Israel have the right to exist”? Can you please post your response here on why they do or don’t have the right to exist?
Pierre Tristam says
I thought I’ve made that pretty clear in the piece and in every piece I write on the subject, though your question’s serrated tone suggests you’re coming at me with a different motive, so I’ll do you one better: yes, Israel has the right to exist–within the 1967 borders. It does not have a right to be in the occupied territories and Gaza. Its right to exist is not any greater, or less, than Palestine’s right to exist. An Israeli life is not more (or less) valuable than a Palestinian life, though Israel has done an excellent job not only of denying Palestinians the right to exist, but of obliterating their identity and humanity, to say nothing of their lands and dignity. No surprise, considering how some Israeli officials have no scruples calling Palestinians animals. So the salient question isn’t whether Israel has the right to exist. That’s been answered, and the blaring of that certainty is being sealed and delivered daily by way of Gaza’s carpet bombing. The question, to you, is whether Palestine has a right to exist. But getting back at the serrated tone of your earlier question, I suspect it’s as pointless to ask as to wonder whether a country that could have the likes of Begin, Sharon, Shamir and Netanyahu as prime minister can really be expected to be believed whenever it still claims adherence to a two-state solution, since you probably consider these terrorists and mass murderers heroes.
TR says
You will not be “forced” to live under Trump’s leadership at all. You have other options. Just like the right has options under this administration. I don’t see anyone holding a gun to anyone’s head and forcing them to live under any administration at all. So to say you will be “forced” to live under his administration isn’t really 100% true now is it? But let me guess, you’ll stay here and complain and complain and complain without doing what is best for you.
Sherry says
@tr. . . NO RESPONSE is warranted for such a hate filled imbecilic comment. “You” are not worth one moment of my time!
Sherry says
Thank you Dude! Excellent comment. . . as usual!
R.S. says
I have not read the “river to the sea” metaphor as genocidal; I read it as a wish to metamorphose the nation state of Israel into a democratic nation with rights for all who live in the region. With that interpretation, I would not see that comment as “anti-Semitic,” whereby I keep wondering about that expression anyway: by that archaic system of classification, also Arabs are Semites, are they not?
DaleL says
How many of the descendants of the estimated 700,000 Jews that once lived in Palestine outside of Israel and in the surrounding Muslim countries still live there? They all fled to either Europe or Israel. The “River to the sea” is part of the 2017 Hamas constitution. For more information and background, read the Anti-Defamation League explanation as to why it is a chilling and anti-Semitic phrase. https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/allegation-river-sea-palestine-will-be-free
R.S. says
That’s ADL’s interpretation. What Hamas might have meant by it, we’d have to check with Hamas. Is this the poem you refer to by Sarah Sassoon, a Jewish poet?
Poem: “From the River to the Sea”
Or do you mean the original slogan that Wikipedia writes about:
The slogan, which has been used since the 1960s by the Palestinian nationalist movement, has come under international scrutiny following its use by various groups. In the 1960s, Fatah used it to call for a democratic secular state encompassing the entirety of mandatory Palestine which would only include the Palestinians and the descendants of Jews who had lived in Palestine before the first wave of mass Jewish immigration.
Or do you mean the latest interpretation of the Islamic State of Iraq and A-Sham that is trying to turn the entire world into an Islamic Republic ruled over by the strictest interpretation of Sharia Law–which, obviously, is not shared by any of the groups–Christian Orthodox, Arminians, Indonesians–residing now in Palestinian regions.
And, of course, you’re right, there also is the ADL interpretation. I suppose we’d have to talk to all those groups before we go off half-cocked, no?
Laurel says
I’m sick of the whole thing. I resent the U.S. being involved in any way, shape or form. It’s just more division for our already divided country.
These people have been fighting like Hatfields and McCoys because that’s just what they do. If they really wanted peace, they’d figure it out. Aren’t there types of artillery that can implode the tunnels under Gaza, and leave the civilians alone? Why can’t the Israelis make a deal with the Palestinians to rid them of Hamas, promise a two state system, and leave each other the *f* alone?
Nah, then what would they do? Maybe it’s just the human condition.
Pierre Tristam says
Laurel, “These people have been fighting like Hatfields and McCoys because that’s just what they do” is an awfully prejudiced perpetuation of a stereotype we, in the west, really are not in a position to speak since a) the Hatfields and McCoys are as homegrown as Kentucky moonshine, b) you can count on a hand slightly deformed by Agent Orange the number of years the United States has not been at war in its brief history, inflicting violence overseas on a level even the Israelis have a very, very long way to match, c) the crusades literally exported violence, bigotry and massacres, in the shadow of the Christian cross, on the Middle East for longer than there have been colonists and Americans in America, and d) Europe’s genocidal religious and nationalist wars went non-stop almost from the end of the crusades to the end of Napoleon’s massacres-across-the-continent, and only for a warm-up to the obliterating world wars of the 20th century, and the biggest genocides ever known–against Armenians, against Jews, against Balkans (and Asians and Africans having learned from European colonists, against Cambodians, between Rwandans). In comparison, and aside from the Crusade-inflicted madness, the Levant for most of those years was a peaceful copse of olive trees and Mediterranean swoons, with mostly Arabs but not just a few Jews pretty much gettinga long as if they were all subjects of Akbar the Great (actually, it was thanks to Ottoman indifference). At least until Britain fucked it all up with its reprehensible imperial presumptions in the wake of the Ottoman empire’s rotting from within. Where has the British empire been that it hasn’t fucked up? Same can be said of the United States, Hitler’s and Hirohito’s defeats aside. But I like your solution.
Sherry says
Great article and a perfectly stated comment, Pierre!
As stated by the Dude, “nobody’s hands are clean here”! Ray W. wrote a thorough analysis of what will likely be left of Gaza once all the Hamas tunnels are blown up. . . taking the lives of innocent children and women as mere collateral damage along the way.
My question is, what is the calculation here? What is the retaliation equation? ONE Israeli life taken should equal what? When is enough, enough?
Minimizing this horrific, tragic loss of life on both sides “should be” beneath us as human beings. Saying that, I do not believe our country can, or should try to, solve this problem with military power. . .
Ray W. says
Winston Churchill’s six-volume historical account of WWII was published in 1948. In his chapter titled “The Follies of the Victors”, Churchill offers his interpretation of the long interlude between wars.
“In these pages I attempt to recount some of the incidents and impressions which form in my mind the story of the coming upon mankind of the worst tragedy in its tumultuous history. This presented itself not only in the destruction of life and property inseparable from war. There had been fearful slaughters of soldiers in the First World War, and much of the accumulated treasure of the nations was consumed. Still, apart from the excesses of the Russian Revolution, the main fabric of European civilisation remained erect at the close of the struggle. When the storm and dust of the cannonade passed suddenly away, the nations despite their enmities could still recognize each other as historic racial personalities. The laws of war had on the whole been respected. There was a common professional meeting-ground between military men who had fought one another. Vanquished and victors alike still preserved the semblance of civilised states. A solemn peace was made which, apart from unenforceable financial aspects, conformed to the principles which in the nineteenth century had increasingly regulated the relations between enlightened peoples. The reign of law was proclaimed, and a World Instrument was formed to guard us all, and especially Europe, against a new convulsion.
“Now in the Second World War every bond between man and man was to perish. Crimes were committed by the Germans, under the Hitlerite domination to which they allowed themselves to be subjected, which find no equal in scale and wickedness with any that have darkened the human record. The wholesale massacre by systemised processes of six or seven millions of men, women, and children in the German execution camps exceeds in horror the rough-and-ready butcheries of Genghis Khan, and in scale reduces them to pigmy proportions. Deliberate exterminations of whole populations was contemplated and pursued by both Germany and Russia in the Eastern war. The hideous process of bombarding open cities from the air, once started by the Germans, was repaid twenty-fold by the ever-mounting power of the Allies, and found its culmination in the use of atomic bombs which obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki
“We have at length emerged from a scene of material ruin and moral havoc the like of which had never darkened the imagination of former centuries. After all that we suffered and achieved, we find ourselves still confronted with problems and perils not less but far more formidable than those through which we have so narrowly made our way.
“It is my purpose, as one who lived and acted in these days, first to show how easily the tragedy of the Second World War could have been prevented; how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous; how the structure and habits of democratic states, unless they are welded into larger organisms, lack those elements of persistence and conviction which can alone give security to humble masses; how, even in matters of self-preservation, no policy is pursued for even ten or fifteen years at a time. We shall see how the counsels of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger; how the middle course adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may be found to lead direct to the bull’s-eyes of disaster. We shall see how absolute is the need of a broad path of international action pursued by many states in common across the years, irrespective of the ebb and flow of national politics.
“It was a simple policy to keep Germany disarmed and the victors adequately armed for thirty years, and in the meanwhile, even if a reconciliation could not be made with Germany, to build ever more strongly a true League of Nations capable of making sure that treaties were kept or changed only by discussion and agreement. When three or four powerful Governments acting together have demanded the most fearful sacrifices from their peoples, when these have been given freely for the common cause, and when the longed-for result has been attained, it would seem reasonable that concerted action should be preserved so that at least the essentials would not be cast away. But this modest requirement the might, civilisation, learning, knowledge, science, of the victors were unable to supply. They lived from hand to mouth and from day to day, and from one election to another, until, when scarcely twenty years were out, the dread signal of the Second World War was given, and we must write of the sons of those who had fought and died so faithfully and well:
‘Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light.’ (Siegfried Sassoon)”
Volume I, The Gathering Storm (pgs. 17-18)
Laurel says
I knew I’d get zapped by the Hatfield and McCoy analogy, but I think I still made a point by stating it may be the human condition. As you know, genocide is used to remove the younger generation who will hate, and will retaliate. They know this, they do know this, and yet they do nothing to stop it. No side becomes the heroes to end the horrible killing. It goes on and on. I resent us being dragged into it.
The British screwed themselves when they sent their prisoners to Australia! :D
My reasoning about imploding tunnels doesn’t work. I learned soon after that Hamas may be keeping Israeli prisoners in the tunnels. The Hamas are surely chicken shits.
Aside – Our best man died from acute leukemia, believed to be caused by Agent Orange. It took him 30 years to get his Silver Star as Vietnam was considered a police action.
JimBob says
You see? It’s just that sort of factual bullshit that prompts the likes of Hunt, Furry, and Chong to find it necessary to steer public school curricula to the christian nationalist point of view. Remember—America is not a racist country, white lives matter just a tad more, and every Palestinian child is a budding terrorist and, thus, fair game!
Bill C says
” …conflating all criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism is itself a form of bigotry that places Palestinian lives beneath contempt and Israeli policy above reproach…” Perfectly stated. But there is a greater unexplored question: what is the strategic interest of the US unquestionably supporting “our friend” Israel ? The middle east is organized around tribal relationships, not the western concept of the virtues of individualism (freedom). From the western point of view Israel is a bulwark against the spread of “radical Islam”, terrorists opposed to freedom. This calls to mind the “domino theory” that justified the Viet Nam war- that if communism succeeded there it would spread to all of Asia. Did that happen? No. Yet the US, virtually alone in the world in supporting the savagery of Israel bouncing the rubble in Gaza, with US financing and weaponry, thinks that will change minds and advance our strategic interests in the world? Think again. It will only have the opposite effect- even more jihadists. The Palestinians have every right to their own homeland as Israel does. Israel’s refusal to accept this is the root of the conflict, and until Israel accepts this, the US should cut aid and support to them.
The dude says
The US unequivocal support for Israel is religious in nature.
Israel takes our money and tells us what to do, in return for allowing the US evangelicals the hope of starting Armageddon there and converting all the Jews before the second coming.
It has nothing to do with democracy.
Bill C says
Agree to a point, that religion plays into the conflict. But have you ever experienced the middle east? Hailed a cab there?
The dude says
Not really sure what hailing cabs has to do with American evangelicals intent to kick off armageddon there and forcibly convert all the jews during the second coming…
Not Shocked says
Condemn Israel’s Genocidal War?
On October 7, 2023 the armed, uniformed soldiers of Hamas invaded Israel. These soldiers killed an estimated 1400 Israelis. I say estimated 1400 because some human remains are still left to be identified. These well armed and uniformed ‘soldiers’ took hundreds of civilians hostage. These civilian hostages are still being held today. No proof of life is being offered by Hamas.
You wrote: “Israel has retaliated by massacring anywhere between five and 10 times that number of Palestinians, most of them women and children, depending on how much credence you give the humanity and value of a Palestinian life.”. Prove that claim. Prove the number of Palestinian casualties. Prove the claim that the casualties are largely women and children.
What has been well recorded is the number of rockets fired by Hamas against Israel since Oct 7th. 85oo. 8500 rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza since October 7th. The same Gaza where hospitals have run out of fuel. Where citizens have little or no food or water. Where hundreds of Israeli citizens and others are being held hostage.
The problem is that you keep writing about Palestinians. Gaza is a land ruled by Hamas, a terrorist group that is operating as the government of Gaza. The PLO left Gaza years ago. Hamas has been in power in Gaza for years. The Israeli leadership has been clear in their objective when they declared war after the October 7th attack. Israel intends to kill or capture and punish every single member of Hamas.
If there are Palestinians left in Gaza they should leave. Other countries in the region that allow Hamas leaders to live and direct the Hamas fighters should detain and turn those Hamas leaders over to the International Criminal Court for prosecution of their crimes against humanity.
Pierre Tristam says
My mistake. Every person—well every thing, every animal, killed in Gaza is a terrorist, so they count as less than zero casualties, while the 1,200 killed in Israel obviously negates the tens of thousands of Palestinians—I mean terrorist animal scum—killed and hundreds of thousands expelled and 2 million Gazan animals caged (deservedly so: they’re either animals or Hamas enablers) and even more West Bankers massacred and murderer and lynched and uprooted for years and decades before that by saintly colonists and Israeli Templars. Of course. My mistake. Peace Be Upon Menahem Begin and Benyamin Netanyahu, princes of brotherly love. Fucking Arabs like me really shouldn’t open their mouths to start with. My apologies, Massa.
Not Shocked says
No need to ‘apologize’. Palestinians living in Gaza are being used by Hamas as human shields.
So Palestinians are being used. Again. Long ago they were made subjects by the British. Then the British left and the lands that many Palestinians called home was divvied up with new borders created by some ‘United Nations’. And then those borders were challenged and rewritten again in 1967 and again in 1973 and again in the 1990s. I object to that.
There are Palestinians in Egypt and Lebanon and Jordan and Syria and Iraq and Iran. And elsewhere in this world. Just like there are Catholics and Jews. Why won’t the Palestinians who reside elsewhere in the middle east respect the human rights (mostly right to practice a religion) of each other and their neighbors? No matter the religion. This isn’t only a fight over some land.
I don’t believe (and did not express) that any Palestinians are terrorists. Terrorism is equal opportunity capability. Anyone of any religion or citizenship in any state can be a terrorist. Terrorism cannot be tolerated.
I wish peace be upon all Arabs. And Jews. And everyone else. And may they find some way to get along with each other and the others residents of this world no matter what religion they practice.
Laurel says
Not: I wish the same peace too. Here in the U.S. there is a concerted effort to turn this country into White, “Christian,” Nationalism. One religion for all. Any way you look at it, there are people, in the name of religion, who want to go back in time, and control all. All at the cost of freedom and peace.
R.S. says
I believe that those “armed and uniformed” soldiers of Hamas came on hang gliders and motorcycles. Compare that to the military hardware of Israel, courtesy of your tax dollar. And where, pray tell, are those Palestinians to leave to? According to the Guardian, a 2,000 pound bomb made short shrift of one of the refugee camps.
Wow says
As a left-wing progressive person I do t understand really why the left is throwing all their weight to support people who oppress women and murder LBGTQ+ people. Doesn’t even enter the discussion. No one’s hands are clean here.
And, interesting point, they are all Semites. Anti-Semitism sounds like anti-Jew but that’s illogical.
Pierre Tristam says
Good point. Let’s unleash the Israel “Defense” Force on the Florida Legislature next. That’ll teach them.
TREEMAN says
CRAZY that two people (Arabs and Jews) who look like each other ( their DNA must be close) have been fighting FOREVER for the same KRAP land!!! Time for PEACE-NOW!! England and France SCREWED UP the Middle East at the end of WWI. America must PROTECT it’s own border BEFORE it tries to Protect other Nations borders!!
R.S. says
Actually, there were people in the Promised Land before Moses and Joshua led them there. There were the Amorites, Hittites, Jebusites, Hivites, Perizzites, and Girgashites–who all were variously killed or displaced or driven out–if you read your bible carefully enough. And–Oh, yes!–Netanyahu referred also to the Children of Amalek that needed killing. So land-clearing by genocide ain’t all that unusual: Europeans did it right here in the US of A also.
Pogo says
@Rhetorically speaking — was you ever stung by a dead bee?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dUZYI7rcuU
People with stingers…
https://www.google.com/search?q=nuclear+arms+by+country
marlee says
Would this war have happened if………..
Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu was not prime minister of Israel????
Charles says
Killing innocent children and adults is murder anyway you look at it. There needs to be two States Palestine State and Israel State. Dictators need to stop thinking they can go to another state and make it their state.
Humas obviously isn’t friends with any state except their barbaric regime. They are the ones that need to be stopped.
R.S. says
Dear Charles, have you ever seen a map of the West Bank and the settlements all over? Do you really think that a two-state solution is in any way feasible? What law would govern this second Palestinian state? Israeli? With a perpetuation of the occupation? You’re dreaming! Wake up to see all the innocent children and adults being slaughtered in Gaza by military hardware that your tax dollar pays for.
DaleL says
Jabotinsky, the Zionist poet, did help found Irgun in 1931. However, it is important to review history. In 1929 there were a series of Palestinian riots directed at Jews. Hundreds of Jews were killed or injured. In August 1929, Palestinian mobs attacked the Jewish families in Hebron. They killed between 65 and 68 Jews and wounded another 58. Many of the victims were raped, tortured, or mutilated. Later in August was the Safed massacre.
The more militant Irgun offshoot from Haganah was an understandable response to the violence against Jews.
There was the Palestinian revolt in 1936 to 1939. The violence was directed at both the British authorities and Jews. The violence deterred immigration from Europe to Palestine at a time when the USA and other countries would not accept Jews fleeing from Nazi Germany. The practical effect was to condemn tens of thousands of Jews to death.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini, played a prominent role in the revolt. He later traveled to Italy and Germany in WWII. He worked as a broadcaster in propaganda targeting Arab public opinion for Nazi Germany.
History is messy. However, it is important to work through the details.
R.S. says
You are quite right: let’s dump all those stupid religions, turn everyone into moral atheists, and start from scratch in that unHolyLand.
Mark E Poole says
I would like to know why you block people on Facebook when they call you out. Please explain how that aligns with your statement of values?
FlaglerLive says
It has nothing to do with being called out, as you should be able to tell from comments here and on Facebook. If you were banned on Facebook, you must’ve been pretty vile. Comply with our comment policy and you’ll be fine. Don’t comply, and you’ll be banned. We value civility. We don’t value trolls. And this is not a discussion. Thank you.
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
Look, I know that Israel is in the middle of committing genocide after engaging in apartheid for the last 65 years, but can the Palestinians at least be civil and polite, and say nice things about Israel while they’re doing it? It makes them just as bad.
Sherry says
You simply cannot erase a passionate faith/ideology by bombing or torture or murder. . . such horrific acts against humanity only serve to inflame hatred and radicalize future generations.
A political solution is the only viable choice, but I fear that will not happen as long as the extreme right is ruling Israel, and “expanding occupied territories”. . . and, while there is no acceptance of Israel’s right to exist by Hamas.
Father of Alto says
Hamas is a Jihadist organization and not interested in peace. Do yourself a favor and listen to Sam Harris. As a liberal atheist he presents compelling arguments that until Moslems reject Jihadists in their culture there can never be peace. Google his podcast and become enlightened.
Larry says
All these comments say nothing about the real reasons for the continuous wars and slaughtering of the innocent.
There can be no peace or a 2 state solution as long as the parties of God refuse to allow it to happen.
oldtimer says
As a vet who was involved in 2 foreign policy fiascos, I agree with Pierre that the U S has stuck its nose into places it didn’t belong. I do wonder what most people think Israels response should be? If your neighbor raped and killed your wife, took your kids would you talk to him calmly or shoot him? I think we should stay out of it completely and let the neighbors work it out among themselves. Then our sons and daughters won’t die for someone else’s idea of the true God.