I don’t know who is advising the Democratic senator on this subject, but it is remarkable how many misstatements are packed into those two sentences.
Let’s start with her “concern about the deaths and injuries.”
The Gazans who have been killed were military-age men. Many of them are documented members of the Hamas terrorist organization. Even the ones who were not known to be official Hamas members were engaging in very Hamas-like behavior by throwing firebombs and rocks at the Israelis on the other side of the border fence, and by burning tires as a smokescreen in the attempt to breach the fence and infiltrate Israel.
Some of the Gazans who were injured were likewise throwing firebombs and rocks. More recently, they flew kites attached to incendiary devices in order to burn nearby Israeli fields and forests. Some of them were injured from tear gas or gunfire because they chose to venture into a live-fire battle zone — a battle that Hamas has initiated, organized, and sponsored.
I am disappointed that the senator did not express any “concern” about a terrorist regime busing thousands of women and children to a site where some of them will inevitably be injured.
Senator Warren went on to defend “the rights of Palestinians to peacefully protest.”
A line like that would have worked in say the 1940s, when most Americans didn’t have television sets. But anybody with eyes — and who wants to seek out the footage — has seen the videos of Palestinian mobs rushing towards the Gaza fence, hurling Molotov cocktails and rocks, and using sling shots and even catapults. No reasonable person can call them “peaceful protesters.”
And what exactly are they “protesting”? The Gazans have openly proclaimed that they want to tear down the border fence so they can overrun Israel, which they call “Occupied Palestine.” They are not “protesting” some Israeli policy. They are “protesting” Israel’s very existence. Shouldn’t that elicit some “concern” from the senator?
Warren also took Israel’s soldiers to task. She demanded that they “exercise restraint” in the face of mobs trying to murder them. If mobs of firebomb-throwing foreigners were trying to storm across one of America’s borders, I doubt that she would lecture our border guards to “exercise restraint.” There is no justification for making such demands on America’s ally Israel.
The irony, of course, is that Israeli soldiers do exercise restraint, often risking their own lives to avoid harming enemy civilians. Yet despite taking such risks, they still find themselves excoriated by Israel’s relentless critics.
Four years ago, another comment by Senator Warren about Gaza caused a stir. She was speaking at Tufts University outside Boston. At the time, Hamas was firing thousands of rockets into Israel and the Israelis were striking back. A woman named Eva Moseley, who claimed to be “a Holocaust refugee,” rose during the question period and said she was “extremely concerned that Jews don’t do to another people [in Gaza] what was done to them.” In other words, Israel was carrying out a Holocaust in Gaza. Moseley asked the senator if it was “fair” to raise that question.
“I think that’s fair,” replied Warren.
But Ms. Moseley was not merely raising a question. She is a virulent opponent of Zionism. She has, among other things, signed an online petition calling Zionism “colonialism” and accusing Israel of “racism and genocide.” Her question to Senator Warren was a way of making a point.
Remember how former presidential candidate Howard Dean said the notion that President George W. Bush knew in advance about the 9/11 attacks was “an interesting theory”? Remember how Donald Trump said he was “just pointing out” a National Enquirer report claiming that Ted Cruz’s father was connected to Lee Harvey Oswald and the JFK assassination?
Those are rhetorical devices that people use to make a point when they don’t want to take responsibility for it. It’s “just a question,” or “an interesting theory.” They’re just mentioning what somebody else said; they didn’t say it themselves. But, of course, they did.
Senator Warren could have slapped down the Gaza-Holocaust analogy. She didn’t. She called it a “fair” question. She could have told the truth last week about Gaza. She didn’t. She chose to falsely call the rioters “peaceful protesters.”
A United States senator should be more careful with her words.
Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.