Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement and video Wednesday on Facebook expressing condolences for the victims of the attack as well as the need to defeat radical Islam.
All of us are targets.
We believe that all people are created in the image of God.
ISIS, by contrast, believes that all people who aren't just like them deserve to die.
We will not be terrified into submission.
We will fight back. And we will triumph.Today I ask you to reach out to friends in the LGBT community. Comfort them.
Tell them you stand together, we stand together as one. And that you will always remember the victims.Tell them they will never be alone, that we are all one family deserving of dignity, deserving of life.
I have no doubt that those who seek to spread hate and fear will be defeated.
Working together we will defeat them even faster.
We need to stand united, resolute in the belief that all people regardless of their sexual orientation, regardless of their race, regardless of their ethnicity, all people deserve respect, deserve dignity.
Compare this to what President Obama said in his address to the nation: he didn't mention radical Islam at all, and instead focused on guns.
It's been quite odd how Mateen's motive for the attack--which the shooter explained in his own words mid-spree--has been purposefully muddled to make it seem as though he was inspired by social conservatives. Mateen was a (possibly) gay Muslim and registered Democrat who celebrated 9/11. I don't think he's exactly getting his marching orders from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. One of the survivors of the attack reported that Mateen said that he wished for the United States to "stop bombing [his] country." (Mateen was born in the United States to Afghani parents.) If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and acts like a duck, I don't see the harm in calling the thing a duck.