Michigan Republican Rep. Tim Walberg recently declared at a town hall that the U.S. “shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid,” in Gaza. Instead, he posed, “it should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.”
After the shocking statement went viral, his office tried to soften the blow. It provided a full transcript of Walberg’s comments to CNN, which reported that Walberg had also said that a similar logic could be applied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Defeat Putin quick. Instead [of] 80% in Ukraine being used for humanitarian purposes, it should be 80-100% to wipe out Russia, if that’s what we want to do.”
Walberg then attempted to walk the comment back in a statement, in which he said he was not suggesting that nukes be used to end either war. Yet there’s no denying that he invoked horrifying instances of the U.S. dropping atomic bombs in reference to Gaza — just the latest vicious, warmongering statement by a Republican lawmaker since October 7.
While Walberg’s comments received a fair amount of critical media coverage, the response from his congressional colleagues was muted — underscoring a stark double standard in the public treatment of those who advocate for Palestinian rights, and those who dehumanize them.
Members of Congress like Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; and Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., have long been pilloried — and even censured — by their colleagues for speaking out against Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians, while the media class has spilled boats-worth of ink on bad-faith interpretations of the progressive Democrats’ statements. Republicans who belittle, or even encourage, Palestinian suffering have typically generated no such equal, let alone proportional, response.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries did not respond to questions about what party leadership is doing in response to lawmakers’ callous comments about Palestinians, especially as the death toll in Gaza continues to rise.
Yousef Munayyer, a political analyst and senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, noted that the cost of misspeaking — or having comments misconstrued — on Israel is unparalleled.
“The social and political costs of stepping on the taboos of saying anything that could be even possibly misconstrued as antisemitic are so high,” Munayyer told The Intercept. “And yet the costs of saying things that are undeniably and horrifically dehumanizing toward Palestinians are so low. I don’t know of a double standard as extreme as that on any other issue.”
Republicans’ hunger for violence began just days after Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7. “We are in a religious war here, I’m with Israel,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., declared on October 11, in an appearance on Fox News. “Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.” (Graham later said that no amount of civilian casualties in Gaza would prompt him to scrutinize Israel’s conduct.)
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., echoed Graham’s bloodlust on Fox in mid-October. “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza,” said the senator who famously called for the Trump administration to sic the military on protesters at the height of the George Floyd uprising. “Anything that happens in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas. Hamas killed women and children in Israel last weekend,” he added. In the months to come, Israel would go on to kill over 25,000 Palestinian women and children.
In the House of Representatives, Republicans have taken glee in fantasizing about Palestinian suffering.
On October 11, Ohio Rep. Max Miller lambasted Tlaib for planting a Palestinian flag outside her congressional office. He refused to recognize Palestine as a state, calling it “a territory that’s about to probably get eviscerated and go away here shortly, as we’re going to turn that into a parking lot.”
A few days later, Miller’s colleague Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., took the unusual step of donning the military garb of a foreign country in the halls of the Congress — wearing an Israel Defense Forces uniform he earned while volunteering for the country’s military in 2015. Shortly thereafter, he introduced an amendment that would slow down humanitarian aid to Gaza. “Any assistance should be slowed down — any assistance,” Mast said in a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the bill. “Because I would challenge anybody in here to point to me, which Palestinian is Hamas, and which one is an innocent civilian? … It should absolutely be every effort made to slow down any perceived assistance that’s going there.”
Mast later tripled down. “I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of ‘innocent Palestinian civilians,’ as is frequently said,” Mast said on the House floor. “I don’t think we would so lightly throw around the term ‘innocent Nazi civilians’ during World War II.”
In late January, when asked about the babies Israeli forces have killed in Gaza, Mast responded coldly: “These are not innocent Palestinian civilians.” Confronted with the idea that Israel has destroyed more infrastructure in Gaza than was destroyed in Dresden during World War II, Mast said, “There’s more infrastructure that needs to be destroyed,” repeated the line, and promised “there will be more that gets destroyed.” Finally, he vowed to do everything he could to stop the government from supporting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Mast described the creation of UNRWA as “moronic”; last month, Congress voted to defund the agency for a full year, even as a widespread famine looms over Gaza.
In late February, Tennessee Republican Andy Ogles vilely dismissed protesters who took issue with their taxes going toward killing children.
“I’ve seen the footage of shredded children’s bodies — that’s my taxpayer dollars going to bomb those kids,” a protester said.
“You know what, so, I think we should kill ’em all,” Ogles responded.
His spokesperson later clarified to The Tennessean that he was not referring to Palestinians, but rather to the Hamas terrorist group.
The protesters accused Israeli forces of committing war crimes such as starving women and children, killing healthcare workers, and targeting Christian women in churches. In response, Ogles only replied with “Death to Hamas” after being insulted as an “AIPAC zombie.”
In early March, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann from Tennessee yelled at a Palestinian American protester from Gaza, who had lost over 100 family members in Israel’s war. He vehemently defended Israel against accusations of genocide and declared his lack of support for Palestinians.
Despite the inflammatory behavior of Republicans towards Palestinians, none have faced censure or media backlash. Meanwhile, Rep. Jayapal faced criticism for calling Israel a racist state, which she later retracted and directed towards Netanyahu’s government specifically.
The attacks on Palestinian politicians like Tlaib and Omar have been relentless, with accusations of antisemitism for their criticism of Israel. Republicans have used these attacks to remove Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee after regaining control of the House.
Democrats, too, have made anti-Palestinian remarks, further complicating the discourse on Israel and Palestine. The acceptability of language on this issue often depends on the speaker’s stance on Israel. Can you please rewrite this sentence for me?
Source link
